Jonah Goldberg asserts innocence:
Vox Day is frothing at the mouth about Bill O’Reilly and the silence of conservatives about him. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of patience with arguments like his which boil down to the suggestion that if I don’t write what he wants and when he wants it, then it must be because I sold out. It’s a shabby form of argumentation bordering on bullying someone into trying to prove a negative.As for the substance, the comparison to Bill Clinton is faulty at countless turns, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. As for my motives for not writing about O’Reilly, they’re pretty straightforward. I don’t care very much about the guy. I’m not a fan of O’Reilly and I’ve said so countless times in print. I have a contract with CNN so I couldn’t appear on O’Reilly’s show even if wanted to. Actually, I wouldn’t mind appearing on the show for the fun of butting heads with him. But I don’t care enough about the guy or the story to spend much time following his shennanigans, sexploits or whatever. However, should he run for president of the United States, I will pay much closer attention.
Yes, I’m sure everyone just happens to be completely disinterested in this whole thing, especially in light of how the publisher-to-be of a certain disrespectfully titled book told me that he would have to run the chapter on The Freaky Factor past a well-known Fox star, (not B’OR), before they could decide if I’d be allowed to write on any perceived right-wing figures.
Perhaps the entire staff of NRO is much holier than this conservative publisher and they have no interest in the opportunities afforded by Fox News. Although the only mention of O’Reilly today came from John J. Miller saying that he’d been on The Factor talking about his book – which is a book on France that actually sounds very interesting – last Friday. I suppose it’s possible that the virtual water cooler talk at NRO revolves solely around minimum tax credits and stem-cell research issues; it’s just not very plausible.
Still, it was never my intention to single out Jonah, who was and is one of my favorite political writers. His name simply popped into my mind as a conservative commentator who came to prominence as a result of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and was far from silent with regards to it. I never expected him to devote a G-File to loofahs and Scandinavian stewardesses, (although it would seem to be a rich comedic vein worth mining), but the silence on The Corner and other conservative blogs with regards to the matter struck me as very, very uncharacteristic.
In any case, I’m not telling Jonah or anyone what they should write about. I’m simply pointing out the apparent cowardice and seeming hypocrisy of what many conservatives have chosen to avoid writing about. I could be wrong. As Mises writes, only the acting man can give definitive meaning to his actions, or, presumably, nonactions.