Lessig: Shame on you, O'Reilly

Larry Lessig has written a long open letter to Bill O'Reilly that opens "You have declared a 'war' on the New York Times. That's good for you, good for them, and good for our democracy: Strong opinions deserve strong spokesmen. Your battle will help sharpen a debate about matters important to the Republic." Lessig then proceeds to take O'Reilly to task, point-by-point for an ongoing campaign of pathological libel agaist Jeremy Glick, the son of a 9/11 victim who spoke out against the Bush Presidency and the war. Glick appears in Outfoxed, a new documentary that criticises O'Reilly and his network, and in answering the charges raised in Outfoxed, O'Reilly has chosen Glick as a symbol of what he hates, and in order to make his point, he has been lying repeatedly about what Glick said and did. Lessig's point is that attacking a giant media organisation is one thing, but using your on-camera bully pulpit to repeatedly slander someone who has already lost so much is unconscionable.

# on February 5th, you told your viewers that "Glick was out of control." He may have been out of your control. But you and our government have got to learn that just because someone disagrees with you, he doesn"t become a security threat. Again, watch the interview, Mr. O"Reilly. He was not "out of control."

# on February 5th, you told your viewers that Glick was "spewing hatred for this program." Watch the interview, Mr. O"Reilly. He criticized you, not the program, for unethically using sympathy for the 9/11 victims for your own political ends. He was calling your behavior improper. You had not earned his hatred.

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