After the Fox network show “Glee” featured a trans character last week, Fox News’ resident social scientists Bill O’Reilly and Gretchen Carlson did a segment on O’Reilly’s show in which they warned Fox News’ audience of predominantly elderly viewers that teenagers who watch “Glee” without parental supervision, often while doing drugs, are likely to choose to be gay:
Partial transcript:
O’REILLY: Here’s the problem with a show like this, though. If you make the behavior of these people … if children hear it, unsupervised children, okay who don’t have parents watching their — they might go out and experiment with this stuff.
PIRRO: Do you really think that this is the kind of thing that’s contagious?
O’REILLY: I don’t know.
PIRRO: That if kids see this, that they’re going to say ‘gee, I want to be a girl even though I’m not going to wear my mom’s high heels tonight.’
[…]
O’REILLY: When I was a teenager and I saw James Dean smoking, it made me want to smoke.
[…]
CARLSON: I don’t think that watching Glee is going to suddenly make kids want to be transgender or suddenly make them wake up one morning and say that they’re going to be –
OREILLY: Experimentation. Experimentation.
CARLSON: But experimentation. I’m with you on this Bill because I wholeheartedly believe, in today’s society, that kids are experimenting with homosexuality. We see it in celebrities who maybe just do it on the side, and it may be drug-fueled.
[…]
O’REILLY: If you make it glamorous in a program like Glee, which is undeniably a good program… a lot of these dopey kids are confused about who they are. They’re confused.
PIRRO: Yeah, but you know what Bill, that’s one of the things you can’t change about yourself because you think it’s interesting or it’s new.
O’REILLY: But do you want to encourage experimentation in these areas?
[…]
CARLSON: Why do we have rules for anything then Bill?
PIRRO: We all parent our kids but you can’t parent their sexuality. You’re saying they have a choice in it.
CARLSON: No I’m not saying this is suddenly going to turn somebody gay, but I totally agree with Bill that this causes kids to experiment. And if we didn’t– why do we have any rules in society then if we don’t try and set some parameters for our children to live their lives? I just think that this is way over the top
Source: EqualityMatters
Hmmmm-on the basis of that reasoning, am I to assume that every kid who went to Catholic school will want to be a nun or a priest when they get religious urges? I didn’t start smoking because of a movie star-instead I saw my parents smoke and my older siblings smoke so I started. Clearly the influence of television shows on teens is being greatly exaggerated. I, for one, really am tired of this man (O’Reilly) and his riduc-rants. I wish he, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Rush would just fade away.
Smoke who?