Bill O'Reilly blames Whitney Houston for her own death - VIDEO
Posted on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 03:09 AM
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| Bill O'Reilly |
Anyone who's had to stand helpless watching someone they love consumed by addiction knows all about it.
Whether the source of that addiction can be found in your DNA, or your individual circumstances, or your history, or whether it's just that your will is somehow weaker than the next guys doesn't really matter when addiction calls.
That's why I want to take a moment to contemplate the latest heinous outburst of conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly. On his show on Monday O'Reilly referred to Whitney Houston's tragic death to claim the singer was suicidal and seeking her own demise.
O'Reilly fumed: 'Whitney Houston wanted to kill herself. Nobody takes drugs for that long if they want to stay on the planet. The hard truth is that some people will always want to destroy themselves, and there’s nothing society can do about it.'
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The question is how does O'Reilly know what impulses, conscious and unconscious, were driving a woman that he doesn't know? The answer is he doesn't. Critics claim it was just another slow night at Fox News and he needed hot copy for his program. And if he dovetails from her tragic passing to an equally inchoate attack on the legalization of drugs, so much the better for his ratings, right?
The casualty, as so often at Fox News, is the truth.
People who struggle with addiction usually start at a place of trauma, then quickly experience the growing shame over their inability to cope with the unruly emotions and the addiction they feed - and this can lead to depression too, which turns the lock on a self destructive spiral.
What people in this cycle do not need is a finger pointing blowhard stigmatizing them over and over again.
O'Reilly knew his words were incendiary, he may even have crafted them to be, and he knew the pain those words could inflict on those closest to Houston, but he went ahead.
Newsflash for O'Reilly: people pop pills or drink because they can't cope, and they want to cope, not because they're embracing their own demise. We don't even, at this point, have a report that clearly tells us what happened to Houston yet. So wouldn't it be better for your conscience (if not your ratings) not to rush to judgement?
People who are addicted to drugs are addicted to drugs, not suicide. Scolding and blaming Houston is a way of lessening the impact of her death (and blaming her for it) and it's also throwing a bone to the kind of people who have been burning up the Fox News comments pages since her passing.
31 Comments
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jamieLM | Feb 16, 2012, 10:37 AM EST
Self-medicating to deal with one's pain is a common human behavior. We're all responsible for how we deal with our problems and what we put in our mouths, but it's human nature to try to find ways to numb overwhelming pain. Abusing food, sex, alcohol, and drugs is just a short-term fix and just adds another problem to deal with. Eventually, destructive behavior leads to our demise or we have to find a way to end that behavior by coming to terms with our pain and what's causing it. Easier said than done. Some people have addictive personalities that make it even more difficult to get off their drug of choice and to stay clean/sober.
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hooligan6a | Feb 16, 2012, 10:04 AM EST
All addicts know that if they continue to use and drink, that it will eventually
kill them. Was her death suicide? I guess you can say that, but I think she is
the latest in a long list, Elvis, MM, John Belushi, janis Joplin, etc, that thought
they could beat the odds.
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SeamusMor | Feb 16, 2012, 09:53 AM EST
Bill O'Reilly's head is so far up his own ass, he thinks his farts are thunder!
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etig1130 | Feb 16, 2012, 09:43 AM EST
To Bill O'Reilly: Amen! To Cahir and those who agree with him: you're all liberal morons!
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Madeliene | Feb 15, 2012, 08:41 PM EST
O Reilly, got kids? what goes around comes around be careful!
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Madeliene | Feb 15, 2012, 08:36 PM EST
drug addiction in America is rampant- it will touch every family in one way or another ( we just think "not mine'- Their IS a cure for heroin addiction and VERY few Doctors are even allowed to prescribe it! It is not addictive ether like Methadone ( which is worse than the heroin) There is BIG money in Drug treatment ( useless rehabs etc) useless Dare programs- but the Gov't of Country & States do not really WANT a cure for addictiion or Cancer TOO BIG A MONEY MAKER! God help any of us who cannot bring the water to put out our own fire inside us. "DO NOT JUDGE LEST YE BE JUDGED THE SAME WAY" Jesus Christ ( but for the Grace of God, there go I( my mom!)
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borefield | Feb 15, 2012, 07:51 PM EST
Cahir, you are such an idiot. You missed O'Reilly's entire point. Common knowledge, prescription drugs are destroying our youth, families and on and on it goes. Fools like you are nothing short of enablers, you are certainly not helpers.
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hollabackgurl | Feb 15, 2012, 06:32 PM EST
The truth is never pure and rarely simple. What you see can depend on where you stand. People like PiperMac52 can reach their twilight years and still miss that fact. O'Reilly blames Houston for her demise, because that's easier than asking yourself the harder questions.
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PiperMac52 | Feb 15, 2012, 06:22 PM EST
This article misses O'Reilly's point completely, his assertion regarding the liberal use of prescription drugs(as well as illegal) by Hollywood and the entertainment industry is no secret. Of course greedy doctors who prescribe them share some blame but at some point we make our own decisions and bare responsibility for them. The truth is the truth, it may not always be what we want to hear. The problem with this new cultural relativism is exactly that there are no moral absolutes anymore, anything goes and is acceptable. Every opinion is a s valid as the next, the idea of right and wrong does not exist.
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cillowen | Feb 15, 2012, 06:00 PM EST
rocket scientist analysis by car wreck billy whose
show attracts like a jerry springer's.
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eiriamach | Feb 15, 2012, 04:49 PM EST
It's politics. If addiction is a character flaw rather than a disease, then addicts should not expect government to help pay for their cure. If addiction is a sin, not a health condition, then insurance companies need not pay for rehabilitation. It's interesting that O'Reilly rebukes Ron Paul in the video because Ron Paul takes O'Reilly's own approach to the logical next step": legalize narcotics (and let addicts kill themselves with drugs so that we'll be rid of them. Hey! we're all born free, right?). Conservatives hate Darwin, but you can count on them to invoke his "survival of the fittest" principle to heap scorn on the latest celebrity who dies by overdose.
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seanomelb | Feb 15, 2012, 04:15 PM EST
Take my advise,if you want to watch the no spin zone turn the dial to Judge Judy.
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hollabackgurl | Feb 15, 2012, 03:40 PM EST
By O'Reilly's rubric people who get cancer are looking for a way out, consciously or unconsciously, they want to end it. He's the worst kind of demagogue because he doesn't believe his own nonsense himself, he just wants ratings.
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kwsunshine | Feb 15, 2012, 02:43 PM EST
clearly mr. o'reilly has no experience of any kind (self or someone close to him) with addiction. i am appalled at his callousness and lack of compassion. people do not wake up one morning and decide, "hmmm, think i'll become an addict today." addiction is an insidious disease; would he make the same type of comments about someone who died of cancer?
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