Luke O’Neill: The Next Generation of Yellow Journalism

Luke O’Neill: The Next Generation of Yellow Journalism

Luke O’Neill: The Next Generation of Yellow Journalism

Wednesday, the Boston Globe found itself in hot water for an editorial written by contributor Luke O’Neill. With a wink and a nod, he suggested waiters “contaminate the food of Trump administration officials.” Oh, he put in lip service, telling them not to. Then he went on to say they’d regret it later if they didn’t. Somehow, this managed to get past the Boston Globe‘s editorial board, at least until the backlash and condemnation, including some from their own employees, took off.

As for the waiters out there, I’m not saying you should tamper with anyone’s food, as that could get you into trouble,” O’Neil wrote. “You might lose your serving job. But you’d be serving America. And you won’t have any regrets years later.”

See how easily he moved from discouraging them from breaking the law to encouraging them to do just that? And it’s all for America!

But that wasn’t enough for O’Neill. He added this, referring to his own days as a waiter approximately a decade ago:

‘not pissing in Bill Kristol’s salmon’ when he was a waiter was one of his eternal regrets. ‘I was waiting on the disgraced neoconservative pundit and chief Iraq War cheerleader about 10 years ago at a restaurant in Cambridge and to my eternal dismay, some combination of professionalism and pusillanimity prevented me from appropriately seasoning his entree.’”

Can you imagine the outrage if a Conservative wrote something similar concerning a member of the Obama Administration? That’s assuming it even made it past the editorial board in the first place. The fact this dreck did says a great deal not only about the Boston Globe but about mainstream media in general.

It didn’t take long for the public to take note of O’Neill’s piece. The majority responded much as we see in this tweet and op-ed piece by Herman Cain.

But the Globe didn’t sit still, at least not for too long. It edited O’Neill’s piece three times, including adding a note at the top to the effect the original version didn’t meet the paper’s editorial standards and had been updated. That included changing “pissing on” to “defiling”.

Big whoop-ti-do.

Oh, the Boston Globe also noted in another comment that O’Neill isn’t on the paper’s payroll. A fine point of distinction since he has been a regular contributor.

I guess that’s what you call “plausible deniability”.

Except the internet is forever and once someone tweets about something, it will go viral given a chance.

But O’Neill still had more to say. He wasn’t happy with the actions of the paper in first editing and then removing his piece. So he took to social media to let us all know how wronged he’d been. Here’s a screen grab via the Washington Post of his response (because he’s locked down his Twitter account.)

Wow, so this is now an issue of “siding with labor”. How quickly he forgot what he was encouraging workers to do.

What else did he have to say?

I really like the lead,” O’Neil told The Post in an interview late Thursday night. “I think it’s a really good lead. . . . It’s evocative.”

Then there is this:

I wasn’t really advocating to piss in somebody’s food, that’s crazy,” said O’Neil, who had been writing weekly columns for the Globe. “But I do think these people should be made uncomfortable in public. I don’t think that’s a . . . radical idea.”

Riiight. And if you believe he didn’t mean for someone to follow his advice, I have some land I’d like to talk with you about.

But never fear, there are those who, as the Federalist pointed out, have tried to support O’Neill. They’ve claimed he has a First Amendment right to express his opinions. The Federalist is also absolutely correct in its response to those claims.

O’Neil’s statement encouraging readers to serve America and avoid regret by tampering with a government official’s food is vile, and deserves public censure. The Globe’s editors should never have published it. Clearly, it endangers Nielsen, who was verbally accosted in a restaurant last summer by protesters who disagreed with the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Who knows what O’Neil might motivate someone to put in a government official’s food.”

Remember, we have politicians like AOC claiming that pointing out the bias in her cohort, Omar’s, comments about “some people doing something” on 9/11 is advocating violence against Omar. So where is their outrage over what O’Neill wrote?

This wasn’t just asking waiters to make “these people feel uncomfortable”. It was suggesting they do something illegal that could make “these people” ill–or worse.

Yet we hear no outrage from the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of the world. We hear no condemnation from the rest of her ilk as well. Why? Because they none-too-secretly want that and worse to happen to anyone who opposes their agenda. O’Neill is an excellent tool for their propaganda campaign.

But who is Luke O’Neill and why should we care?

He is a contributor to New York Intelligencer. According to him, people who watch Fox News, etc., are, well, I’ll let his words speak for themselves. “One problem is that once someone gets pulled into the Fox News vortex it naturally leads to other scummier enterprises.”

From the piece the Intelligencer article references:

Mom don’t read this one. I love you very much and I will call soon I promise but don’t read this one ok because it’s about me jacking off just kidding it’s about a sore spot for me which is feeling like you’ve lost a piece of your loved ones to Fox News brain cancer. Or maybe do read it maybe it will be beneficial I don’t know I don’t know anything aside from this one thing which is that Fox News has stolen something from all of us. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and the rest have kidnapped and brainwashed many of our otherwise lovely and kind family members and I’ll piss on their graves one day with a huge fucking boner that makes it hard for the piss to come out and I’ll be like ah fuck and it’ll splash out weird. Don’t ask me why they’re buried next to each other it just makes sense.”

And this is someone who managed to get a piece published by the Boston Globe without proper editorial oversight. Not only do I share Herman Cain’s concerns about who is running the show over at the paper, I have to wonder if the piece managed to make it all the way through to publication simply because it followed the MSM’s general marching orders of doing everything it can to undermine the current Administration. No one can accuse the paper of not showing its bias time and time again. But this. . .this goes beyond the pale.

They say Hearst and Pulitzer were the originators of what we now know as “yellow journalism”. What Hearst, and then Pulitzer, did in the opening years of the 20th Century has nothing on what the main stream media is doing today. I wonder if they’d be proud or horrified by what those who came after them have done?

 

Featured image: PDPics via Pixabay license.

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12 Comments
  • Jim says:

    Just another form of urban terrorism by vicious socialist left progressives for whom anything goes in the pursuit of Power.

  • CaptDMO says:

    And as it escalates, there’s limited options to respond.

    • Amanda Green says:

      One way we can and should respond is by not subscribing to their rags. Another way is to make sure we have our own media outlets. They may not be traditional, but they are out there. We simply need to support them the best we can.

    • GWB says:

      Eat all of your food at Chick-fil-A. It’s pretty well guaranteed to be safe. And it will irritate the progs no end. 😉

  • sound awake says:

    they hate us
    and they want our guns
    all of them
    this will not end well

  • Kathy says:

    As a person with allergies, “or worse” was not a strong enough statement in my view. Contaminating a food with something that isn’t supposed to be there can KILL if there is a serious reaction in the recipient.

    This character’s article was not acceptable, but consequences could be much worse than a political irritation.

  • GWB says:

    Wow, so this is now an issue of “siding with labor”.
    Oh, there’s a hypocrisy deeper than that in the tweet, too.
    bad faith critics who would hate them no matter what
    This is the epitome of the prog hate mob. When people say “liberals project” this is exactly what they mean.

    I don’t think that’s a . . . radical idea.”
    Because you are viewing it from the point-of-view of a communist revolutionary, where the only ‘radicals’ are those who would not support communism.

    They’ve claimed he has a First Amendment right to express his opinions.
    Well, yes, he does. This, however, crosses the line into incitement. It’s also a grotesque opinion that should be censured but not censored (unless it does cross that line into incitement.

    What’s going to be fun is if any well-known (not even nationally famous, just well-known by the locals employed at the eatery) conservative anywhere now finds his food tampered with, they have a cause of action against both O’Neill and the Boston Globe. Welcome to the Alinsky party, Skippy.

    It was suggesting they do something illegal that could make “these people” ill–or worse.
    What if the person has AIDS? Or any easily communicable disease (if you swap bodily fluids). Or an allergy to an ingredient (that wouldn’t normally be in the dish)? Yes, “worse” is a real possibility.

    Because they none-too-secretly want that and worse to happen to anyone who opposes their agenda.
    Well, these people celebrate Che and Lenin and Mao. None of them were exactly subtle about their intentions or their methods.

    But who is Luke O’Neill and why should we care?
    I don’t really care who he is. But we should care very much about this sort of revolution. Because revolution is what it is.

    What Hearst, and then Pulitzer, did in the opening years of the 20th Century has nothing on what the main stream media is doing today.
    Oh, I think I disagree with that. But it certainly has more reach than it used to. And a near monopoly on certain areas of information dissemination.

    I have to say: get past the idea that this is somehow “beyond the pale”, because these people are interested in nothing less than revolution, and Mao’s Cultural Revolution is their model. These people are an existential threat to yours and my freedom and our prosperity. They will gladly put you up against a wall, if the shaming doesn’t work.

    We still have the power, at this point, to change things with our advocacy and education.
    But the day is soon coming when the only viable option will be Lexington and Concord.

    • Scott says:

      Well said GWB, especially the last paragraph. This ass clown IS the leftist party of today, he is not an abberation, and we all must remember that, do what we can to prevent what they’re trying to do, and as you pointed out, be ready if, God forbid, the call does come to man the bulwarks…

  • 370H55V says:

    Following in the tradition of other asshole O’Neills from Boston:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_O'Neill

    Wouldn’t surprise me if he was related.

  • patriot says:

    i agree! it is a shame! KRISTJEN NIELSEN WAS ONLY DOING HER JOB BY SEPARATING CHILDREN. IT IS NOT HER FAULT THAT THE US GOVERNMENT HAS LOST 1,475 MIGRANT CHILDREN. stop victimizing her!!!!!

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