When Will Keith Olbermann Apologize?

According to an AP story on AOL.com, Michael Devlin, the kidnapper, rapist, torturer, and would-be murderer of young Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby, was sentenced today. He has accumulated a total of 20 consecutive life sentences, with an appearance in Federal Court coming up on Wednesday.

With the sentencing came the revelation, by Devlin, that he at one point started to strangle Shawn Hornbeck, but the 11 year-old talked him out of it. Shawn Hornbeck is my new hero. So what does all this have to do with Keith Olbermann? The occasion of this revelation caused Olbermann, on his show Countdown, to re-name TV personality Bill O'Reilly the Worst Person in the World.

You see, O'Reilly offered some rather unusual analysis on his TV show at the time of Shawn's rescue, and Keith at that time named Billo the World's Worst. In August, I weighed in on my show, The Jung Jurks. The clip is embedded here, but be warned, it does contain profanity. Check it out, and I'll explain why Keith owes an apology when you're done.

I also wrote a companion piece to the video at DailyKos. I'm going to assume you watched the video. It's only 4 minutes long. In a nutshell, Keith Olbermann, in August, named Mike Stark the 2nd Worst Person in the World, for "ambushing" O'Reilly at his house. Reaction on DailyKos was about 50/50 for and against Stark. My point is that these guys should have been pinning a medal on Mike, not excoriating him, and I think I made a pretty good case.

Now, I am again calling on Keith Olbermann, and those posters at DailyKos who criticized Mike, to apologize. The funny thing is, a lot of people at DKos got pretty mad at me for this, (lots supported me), while missing the point that calling for apologies and all that was just window dressing for my excoriation of Bill O'Reilly. I could give a crap what Keith or the posters think about Mike Stark. It worked, as this is one of my most popular videos. I'm very proud of that, and I hope many more people see it. This is a case where sunlight really is the best disinfectant.

You can see I took this somewhat personally, and here's why. What O'Reilly did was more than just his usual knuckleheaded, fake-joe-sixpack "straight talk". By saying that Shawn enjoyed his captivity, rape, and torture, he was victimizing Shawn again. Worse than that, he was victimizing every child who, even now, struggles with whether to trust an adult with their own tale of abuse. He did tangible harm.

I wish I could meet Billo face-to-face. I'd like to ask him what chapter of "The O'Reilly Factor For Kids" covers the joys of playstation and anal rape. I honestly doubt I would get the sentence out. I am the father of 3 boys, one of them about Shawn Hornbeck's age. They've all been on my show, they're great kids, the light of my life. I can barely form the notion, let alone contemplate it, of Shawn's ordeal happening to one of them.

I was so worked up at the time, I forgot to slice off a chunk for Greta Van Susteren for her pathetic, nonsensical, token "resistance" to The Bildo's tirade. Greta, you knew better, way better, you should've made him cut your mic.

Shawn Hornbeck is unbelievable. His father must be so very proud of him. I hope Shawn knows that, by talking Devlin out of killing him, he very likely saved more than a few other boys from that fate. Once a predator kills for the first time, successive murders become easier, more frequent. Shawn may very well have arrested Devlin's pathology.

Are there enough life sentences for Devlin to really receive justice? The fact is, it's all we have. What about Billo? Should he remain free to spew this crap? It's a free country, but Don Imus' comments were nothing compared to this. You mean to tell me that Billo's sponsors approve of this? Guess so.

A nice symmetry would be achieved by giving O'Reilly a conjugal visit with Devlin, but that's probably not in the cards. For his sake, I hope that if he ever meets up with Shawn Hornbeck's dad, Mr. Hornbeck is a billion times more saintly than I am. I suspect he is, having been given a gift of unimaginable joy, the return of his son, safely.

Tommy Christopher co-hosts "Unusable Signal",on BlogTalkRadio, Tues through Thurs at 10pm, and Fri, and Sat at 11pm. (Eastern) Click here for the Unusable Signal homepage.