There is a petition out there in the world of conservative computer users and media outlets (i.e. FOX) that is charging that Kevin Jennings, assistant deputy secretary of education for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, intends to spread homosexuality and encourage statutory rape in America’s schools.

I’d laugh, but somehow campaigns like this gather followings quite quickly.

Kevin Jennings is a guy who told a story once about how gay youth sometimes turn to unsafe communities when they find no kindred spirits at their school or in their home. It involved a 15-year-old student who picked up an older man in a bus station because he had nowhere else to meet men. The idea behind the speech, no doubt, was that isolation and disapproval don’t teach gay kids to be straight, they just put gay kids at higher risk than they already are.

But now, this noble message has been turned upside down. It represents, now, Jennings encouragement of statutory rape (this charge is not true as it has been revealed that the student was actually 16 at the time of the incident).

But Jennings is not the point, really. These campaigns, aimed at “vulnerable” members of Obama’s staff, have been successful in the past. Van Jones, for one, was forced to step down because of placing his name on one petition years ago. Jennings has done even less to warrant this kind of abuse, but the abuse doesn’t rely on fact.

One wonders how the media will react to this witch hunt. Major newspapers may choose to ignore the smear campaign, but it would be nice to see a myth debunking article somewhere in a major publication. At least then we can start to chronicle all the lies told by the right.

Wasting words about talk drip Bill O’Reilly is…well a waste. Try not to do it because it’s hard to take seriously anyone who is convinced there is some battle to keep people from hitting their knees on  Jesus’ birthday (Christopher Hitchens sliced that hobby horse with ease).

Anyway it looks like O’Reilly is a bit confused about this internets medium. When discussing Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor, he confused some lame comment left about the justice for an actual article on the site HotAir.com.

Wait a minute. I take that back. An over worked Fox intern was the one who was confused and passed the offending words to her boss. The HotAir people were rightfully upset but O’Reilly being who he is could only muster a half baked apology, and the usual bluster how internet comments need to be monitored. He then offered his site, BillOReilly.com, as a paragon of virtue when it comes to civil and respectful dialogue.

As usual, O’Reilly  has no idea what he’s talking about. The gentleman who runs Patterico.com, signed up to the Fox News commentator’s site (a mere $4.95) and discovered some commentator who went the high-school route when talking about gays and lesbians. This person has posted 1,960 comments  and his “homo” rant  has been up since May 23.

Patterico has been permanently banned from O’Reilly’s little piece of internets heaven. Oh Bill. I thought you were bigger than that.

Blame Ta-Nehisi Coates for this blog entry. I’ll take the usual responsibility but the rest is on Coates. Recently Williams was opining on Bill O’Reilly’s show and described Michelle Obama, the week old First Lady, as “Stokely Carmichael in a dress.”

Sigh. What is there to say about this nonsense? When was the last time anyone heard the First Lady make a speech about Black Power? To flip it, can anyone point to Carmichael’s (Kwame Ture) position on working mothers? Anyone? Ahhh, but in the world of Williams Michelle Obama is a black woman and therefore can be reduced to caricuture. And here is the kicker, Williams feels no need to offer proof for his theory. But why offer proof when you throw out a line that will get you a chuckle at the next high powered cocktail soiree?

Williams does have an interesting pedigree. He was a reporter for the Washington Post, is the author of books that are required reading, and now works for Fox News and NPR. Apparently he cried when Obama was sworn in as president; however, despite this historical knowledge, Williams can’t seem to break free of a small vision when it comes to race and gender. I’m sort of surprised he didn’t say in her private moments, Michelle Obama is really Shug from the movie Hustle and Flow.

If Williams has a concern about the First Lady it would have been nice if he described it without resorting to the sloppy “she’s like this scary black man” rhetoric.

RIP: John Updike.

Sorry to bore you with a Bill O’Reilly post, but this was way too good to let go. The mouth over at Fox News is in a tizzy over two displays in the Olympia, Washington statehouse. There is a Nativity scene and right next to it a sign sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. You can imagine what the sign says right?

Anyway Mr. O’Reilly, who sees himself as the bodyguard of Jesus’ birthday, is on a one-man war calling Washington’s governor Chris Gregoire (yes she is a Democrat) a pinhead and coward for not standing up to those mean secular atheists who have nasty things to say about faith.

Ahhh, but there is a problem with , as there always is, with the O’Reilly “logic”. Something called the First Amendment. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly went on O’Reilly’s show and carefully explained to him the meaning of free speech.

Now this is the funny part. Kelly is no soft-hearted liberal and makes it clear she is defending the law and not Gregoire; however, once O’Reilly gets his fake outrage up nuance takes a holiday. And O’Reilly  comes off as rather slow (I’m being kind) when he attempts a legal debate with someone who was the editor of her law review.