O'Lielly: I falsely accused Plano of banning red & green clothing.

[edbermac]

On the December 20 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly retracted his false claim that the Plano Independent School District (Texas) banned red and green clothing. As Media Matters for America reported at the time, the legal complaint filed against the school district did not allege any ban of red and green clothing.

O'Reilly originally asserted on both the December 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor and that day's broadcast of The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly that the Plano school district told students "they could not wear red and green because they were Christmas colors" and labeled the move "fascism."

O'REILLY: In The Factor follow-up segment tonight, ground zero this year in the Christmas controversy is the town of Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas. Four families of second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders have filed a lawsuit in federal court saying their children were denied their rights of free expression. The case centers around children giving each other religious messages at Christmastime.

Now, I made a mistake a few days ago when I said clothing was included in that party dictum. Clothing was not included. It was colors of plates and cupcakes and things like that.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512210005

O'Lielly ADMITS to making an error? Hell has just frozen over...:sarcasm:

[hatrack]

1. "I made a mistake"?!?!?

How about "I FUCKING LIED for the mouth-breathing fundie assholes who hang on every word that falls from my tired, quivering liver-spotted lips."?

[Ian David]

7. I bet the ACLU will side with the kids

The ACLU defended the rights of kids to distribite "The Legend of The Candy Cane" before.

It looks like aside from official school-organized Christmas parties, the courts (and The ACLU) will side with letting the kids do what they want on their own behalf and be as "Christian" as they want to be.


See also:

ACLU of MA Defends Students Punished for Distributing Candy Canes with Religious Messages (2/21/2003)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NORTHAMPTON, MA -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts today asked a federal district court in Springfield to protect the First Amendment rights of high school students who were disciplined by school officials for distributing candy canes with religious messages just before Christmas.

"Students have a right to communicate ideas, religious or otherwise, to other students during their free time, before or after class, in the cafeteria, or elsewhere," said ACLU cooperating attorney Jeffrey Pyle, the main author of a friend-of-the-court brief submitted in the case.

As a high school senior in 1993, Pyle was the plaintiff in a landmark ACLU case that established the free speech rights of secondary school students in the state. Today's case is the first litigation in Massachusetts involving student free speech since Pyle v. South Hadley School Committee was decided in 1996.

In today's case, the court is reviewing whether officials at Westfield High School in Western Massachusetts violated the rights of a student-initiated Bible Club by punishing them for handing out handing out candy canes with religious messages attached. The basis for the discipline is a school rule that prohibits the distribution of all literature that is not related to the curriculum.

The students each received a one-day suspension, which school officials agreed not to enforce after they were contacted by the ACLU of Massachusetts. The students subsequently filed a lawsuit asking the court to order to school not to interfere further with their right to hand out religious information.

In legal papers filed today, the ACLU of Massachusetts argued that the school rule interferes with the free speech rights of public high school students in Massachusetts under both state law and the First Amendment, which protects their speech as long as it does not disrupt the educational process. This principle was firmly established in the Pyle case, which concerned various messages on t-shirts worn by then-high school student Jeffrey Pyle and his brother, Jonathan.

Pyle went on to graduate from Trinity College in 1997 and Boston College Law School in 2000. He is now a First Amendment attorney in the Media and Intellectual Property Group at the Boston law firm of Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye. Pyle represents newspapers and magazines throughout New England, including student newspapers such as the Harvard Crimson.

The case is scheduled for a hearing this Tuesday, February 25 in federal district court in Springfield before Judge Frank Freedman.

More:
http://www.aclu.org/studentsrights/expression/12828prs20030221.html?ht=christmas%20christmas

[FreedomAngel82]

2. Did he really??

[xchrom]

3. i think they were gonna sue him if he didn't.

don't i have that right?

[TomInTib]

4. Took him long enough. Fox must have forced him. I would have

loved to be a fly on that wall.

[laststeamtrain]

6. I wanna be a fly on the wall when he....

schtoops a hot falafel and his head explodes.

[Loonman]

5. What a craven asshole

He lied, plain and simple.

[kcwayne]

8. Help me out here, it is not as it would seem

O'Reilly said he made a mistake about clothing colors being banned, but the school district was controlling the color of plates, cupcakes, etc.

The lawsuit filed complains that these first graders are being denied their right to free expression because the school will not allow them to hand out items with religious messages, or bring religious symbols into school events.

(I would like to meet the first grader with the intelligence to understand what his complaint is all about).

So O'Reilly is only admitting to a clerical error, but the basis of his complaint is intact. That complaint is in essence that schools should be free fire zones for Christians to spread their dogma and seek recruits, and the school should not put obstacles in the way of these Christians, such as tools that would allow the school to keep all forms of religious proselytizing out of the school.

I presume he would not object to the school not allowing the use of Star of David, black clothing, pink silk, beads, tambourines, incense, chicken feet, or any other non-Christian religious symbol at school functions, since it is only Christians that the school is presumably discriminating against, and the Constitutional right to free speech is not extended to these other "swarthy" religions.

[triguy46]

9. So, no red or green plates....

Um, I guess they have caught us with our master plan to eliminate christmas throught the no red or green plan strategy. Rats! What do we do now???