It might seem like a nice gesture, Fox News talking head hot-air balloon Bill O'Reilly speaking at an event in Manalapan for the It Happened to Alexa Foundation, a rape survivors advocacy group based in New York.
But rape victims and anti-O'Reilly enthusiasts are circulating a petition asking the foundation to cancel O'Reilly's appearance. (Keith Olbermann's leading the charge.) The petition, found at www.onemorevoice.net, says:
"Not only has O'Reilly been accused of sexual harassment at work (settling out of court and paying his accuser a multi-million dollar sum); he also has a history of making blame-the-victim comments about sexual assault."
That second part is a reference to the clip you see above, in which Bill O'Reilly and evil goblin Michelle Malkin debate, among other things, how complicit 18-year-old Jennifer Moore was in her own RAPE and MURDER. Again, the woman they are discussing had just been found raped and murdered.
And if the video isn't offensive enough, in this clip from his radio show, O'Reilly calls Moore and the friend she was with the night of her murder "moronic girls" and seems to imply something along the lines of that old, fun adage: "She was asking for it."
The purpose of the foundation, according to its web site is to "help support rape survivors through the trauma of the criminal trial, in the hopes that more survivors will go through with the prosecution in order to put these perpetrators behind bars."
The foundation did not return calls earlier today.
I guess technically O'Reilly might not have a conflict of interest here though. This group helps survivors, and the girl he was blaming for her own rape didn't survive and will never have the chance to testify.
