Women Should Be Allowed to Be Falling Down Drunk, Wearing No Clothes, And Not Get RapedIn a perfect world. Unfortunately this is
not a perfect world.
Our post — which never criticized the Alexa Foundation — highlighted the fact that in the past, O’Reilly has implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped. Here is what he said on his radio show on Aug. 2 about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered:
Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.
O’Reilly’s comments about Moore were part of a larger segment about the dangers of drunkenness. His other example was Mel Gibson going on a drunken tirade and yelling anti-Semitic comments. “I think it’s safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn’t get drunk, he wouldn’t be in this terrible situation he finds himself in,” said O’Reilly. “And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, NJ, didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.”
I don't know if Amanda Turkel, who wrote the piece, has a teenaged daughter, but if she does, I hope she's not telling her that she can get as drunk as she wants anywhere and anytime, with no fear of rape.
That said, the behavior of O'Reilly's producer seems a little out of line.
Update: Commenter Bob thinks I was slamming O'Reilly. I was agreeing essentially with what he said while thinking that he could have phrased it a little better. I think this "blaming the victim" backlash has gone a little too far. Sometimes the victims create their own misfortune; this does not remove the actual guilt for her rape and murder from her attacker, but it does acknowledge that people do have to use common sense.
And having seen the actual "stalking" video, I have to say that I don't think the producer was out of line.
