The Cultural Collapse Is Your Fault?

Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly reporting this evening from Los Angeles.  And we'll be here all week long.  Thank you for watching us tonight.

The collapse of the culture and the Janet Jackson incident is your fault.  That is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo."

In a column entitled "My Hero, Janet Jackson," far left "New York Times" writer Frank Rich (search) accuses you and me of fostering the debasement of American culture.  It's not the fault of the corporations which peddle garbage to children, nor is it the fault of the artists who make thegarbage.  No, it's you and me.

In a diatribe full of disdain for everyday Americans Rich opines, "Theact of a man tearing off a woman's clothes was as thrilling to the audienceas whatever flesh was revealed therein, perhaps more so.  But to say thataloud is to travel down a road that our moral watchdogs do not want totake.  The 'folks,' as Bill O'Reilly is fond of condescending to them, are always the innocent victims of the big, bad cultural villains.  They're never complicit in the crime."

Incredibly, this guy Rich goes on to say that if you don't like what MTV puts out, you shouldn't have watched the most highly publicized TV event of the year, the Super Bowl.  Like anyone could have predicted what was going to happen.

How dumb is this guy?

That kind of aggressive secularism is what the elite media trafficsall day long.  No judgments are to be made about irresponsibility.  Andthose who do object are labeled moral scolds.  If you, the viewer, don't like your kids being flashed by Miss Jackson, tough.

There's no way gangster rap, violent video games, glorification of prostitution, drugs, violence, and perversion could have been becomemainstream in this country without newspapers like "The New York Times," the network news operations, the celebrity press, and most other mediapassively endorsing those things as not harmful to society.

Again, adults aren't the issue here. Kids are. Frank Rich and his secular ilk couldn't care less about American children.  And now the situation has even become one of life and death.  As you know, Congress overwhelmingly passed a ban on partial-birth abortion.  Immediately, some secular judges began trying to overturn that law, saying it wasunconstitutional because there's no health of the mother provision.

The reason for that is anything can be used under that umbrella, including a headache.  Partial-birth abortion advocates deny that, but when the government attempted to prove that healthy babies were killed in the womb at the behest of healthy mothers by subpoenaing records of the gruesome abortions, "The New York Times" and others screamed violation of privacy, all the while knowing the government didn't even ask for the names of the women, just the diagnoses.  They don't want you to know.

Once again, the powerful secular movement wants a new America where no judgments are made but for one. Your opinion doesn't count.

And that's The Memo.

The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day

Time now for "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day."

You might have noticed in this evening's broadcast the following people are hiding under their desk: Governor Schwarzenegger, who is incredibly silent about the gay marriage fiasco going on in San Francisco; the editors of "Entertainment Weekly," who incredibly left out of their cover story the vicious personal attacks on Mel Gibson -- how could they do that; and Mark Halperin (search), the ABC News political director, who edited a column on the ABC News Web site that described most network political journalists as biased left.

Now running away from the stories that you are either involved in orprovoke is becoming a disturbing trend in America where powerful people dothings, and then they run and hide. It angers us, and it's ridiculous, and we'll continue to point it out every time it happens. We expect Governor Schwarzenegger to do something tomorrow.

--You can watch Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo and "Most Ridiculous Item" weeknights at 8 & 11p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel. Send your comments to: oreilly@foxnews.com