"Terry Jones Caused Murders" Meme Spreads, Infects Bill O'Reilly

Have you ever heard someone say that a rape victim was “asking for it” by dressing a certain way, entering a certain place, or behaving a certain way? You’d rightly dismiss them as sociopaths or enablers or sociopaths. However, a growing number of media figures– Mediaite, Time’s Joe Klein, and now even FNC’s Bill O’Reilly— would have you believe it’s a valid assertion, if we’re to apply their logic concerning Floridian Koran-burner Terry Jones. Instead of framing the recent murders in Afghanistan as a shocking overreaction to an insensitive expression of free speech, these personalities and publications focused their ire and blame on Jones.

“This Terry Jones idiot has blood on his hands; he had to know fanatical Muslims would go crazy,” O’Reilly stated. Ah, yes, because as we all know, the only possible response from the Muslim world would be violence; that’s not an ugly, condescending stereotype at all! I’m no fan of Sharia, but to insinuate Jones “should have known” that someone would take anger beyond any acceptable societal standard without personally knowing any of the individuals who killed is just like saying that a rape victim “should have known” that the sight of her would cause her assailants to fly into an uncontrollable lustful rampage.

While O’Reilly does go on to throw a heap of indignation at the rioters who performed beheadings, the backwards meme he’s feeding with the “blood on his hands” bit is sickening. The underlying assumption here is that murdering people was a perfectly logical and predictable reaction to an indefensible, heinous crime, so the person we should shame to correct the underlying problem is not the murderer but the motivator– the perceived provocateur instead of the actual perpetrators. Let’s contemplate that a bit.

To get a better idea of this absurdity, let’s go back to the question of rape and provocative dress, and we’ll change the details of the analogy to better match the circumstances of what happened in Afghanistan. So, the premise is that we should all know that she shouldn’t act in such-and-such a way because it will directly cause some antisocial behavior, but instead of blaming a woman for her own rape because of her dress, we’re saying that a woman dressing and behaving in a way that incites lust can actually make her responsible for someone else getting raped– someone she’s never met who lives in a different city.

Er, different country, I mean.

Oh, sorry, different continent.

Nuts! My bad, it’s actually a different hemisphere.

And, here’s the ticket– she can be responsible for someone else in a different hemisphere getting raped because of an exaggeration about her behavior! From the very ABC piece linked to by Mediaite:

Police told ABC News the protest started peacefully but took a violent turn after a radical leader told those gathered that multiple Korans had been burned.

Jones should have known they’d lie about him! He has blood on his hands!

To say that a pastor in Florida burning a Koran provokes dozens of murders in Afghanistan after someone else lied about the extent of his offense and he should feel remorse is to say that a woman wearing a short skirt in Florida provokes dozens of rapes in Afghanistan when someone lies about the extent of her offense and she should feel remorse. It is normal to react to offensive behavior with anger. It is not normal to react to offensive behavior with violence, especially mass violence toward people who have no relation to the person who offended you. That is only normal behavior to sociopaths, and “they were asking for it” is an enabling lie that only benefits said sociopaths. That Mediaite, Klein, and O’Reilly defaulted to this response when covering mass murder is certainly telling.