Sujal and I were just watching bits from Rachel Maddow’s show where she shows some O’Reilly clips and his incendiary sputum about Dr. Tiller and then his “clarification” that he said nothing that advocated violence.
I told Sujal, I wasn’t really writing about this murder, because I didn’t have a lot to say other than I’m disgusted, saddened, and disappointed. It makes me feel a little bit more hopeless. It is coersion at its worst.
I went on to say that I don’t know that I really feel O’Reilly is culpable. He is culpable only in the way that he is part of a society that purveys this kind of hatred. I really see culpability in a greater, more pervasive misogyny that exists in our culture. It manifests itself in all sorts of forums, and this is one. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is an issue that is deeply important to me, as are all women’s rights. So I write to say I don’t know what to say. It’s like reading a Jhumpa Lahiri story or some Faulkner pieces — I’m just left feeling like I just got kicked in the stomach.
The book Absolute Convictions by Eyal Press details the anti-choice movement and events in Buffalo, New York (my hometown) that culminated in the murder of Dr. Slepian, who happened to by my best friend’s gynecologist. Check it out, because it reads less biasedly than anything else I have read. It closely examines the chaos and high emotions surrounding the issue.
The Connecticutian 