Friday, April 06, 2007

Geraldo: Voice of Reason

Check out these flames from Bill O'Reilly, debating with Geraldo Rivera on a tragic accident in Virginia Beach where a teenage girl was killed by a drunk driver. The drunk driver was an illegal immigrant, and O'Reilly tries to make that into the story. Rivera would have none of it, pointing out that the issue was that of drunk driving, and that for this girls family it wouldn't matter if the driver was an illegal alien or some random Jewish guy.

It's pretty amazing to watch, but I just want to point out that Rivera, who is often mocked and maligned in more "sophisticated" circles, really was impressively zealous in defending the right side here. I give him a lot of credit for it, and for standing up to a Bill O'Reilly whose normal setting of loud anger carried over into abject fury.

3 comments:

Trickish Knave said...

I get O'Reilly's point:

The driver was drunk, he was an illegal, if he had not been in this country he would not have killed those little girls.

Geraldo's point:

If he hadn't been drinking and driving and killed those girls- someone else would have?

Si's blog said...

There are some definite immigration issues here, mostly at the Federal level. My problem is O'Reilly using something like this so blatently just to boost his ratings. He saw how successful O'Donnell and Trump were at that so he decided to do the same. At the expense of the Mayor of Va. Beach. Like O'Donnell and Trump did at the expense of Miss America.

PG said...

Trickish Knave,

OK, so if the guy had gotten an H2 visa to enter the country, he wouldn't have been the same kind of asshole who drinks and drives? There might be some correlation between willingness to break the immigration law and willingness to break other laws, but I haven't seen any study about it. Personally, I follow all the other laws relating to driving (maintaining a current license and registration and insurance, being sober, not carrying contraband in the car) so that when I get pulled over for speeding -- which is an illegal activity in which I frequently engage -- at least I don't get busted on that stuff.