TPM:
On Monday night, O’Reilly Factor host Bill O’Reilly and Fox News host Megyn Kelly sat down to discuss what really happened at UC Davis on Friday and whether campus police acted appropriately in showering a group of sitting students with pepper spray. Their conclusion? No big deal.
“Pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?” O’Reilly asked Kelly.
“Right,” Kelly said. “I mean, its like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”
Twitter explodes:
“Mustard gas: it’s a hot dog condiment, essentially!”
“Stabbing: It’s just acupuncture, essentially!”
“Waterboarding: It’s a really high-powered shower, essentially!”
“Arranged marriage: it’s just your parents being concerned about your love life, essentially.”
“Forest fires: They’re tree candles, essentially!”
“Beheadings: They’re really close haircuts, essentially!”
There’s more at #fakemegynkelly
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par for the course, and no of the elderly shut-ins and hausfraus watching fox thought it was anything but heelarious.
Reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where Marge becomes a cop and she finds Homer using her pepper-sray to season his food…”Mmmm, incapacitating…”
When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of a [pepper spray cannister]
Fucking O’Really, Is there a human alive today you’d rather see fed through a tree shredder?
Well, there’s only one solution—let O’Reilly enjoy some “food product” on the air and show the rest of the nation how inconsequential it is.
Occupy’s focus on refining police crowd control techniques is really gaining traction.
Hard to see how Linda Katehi can remain as chancellor, really. She’s shouted down when floating a lame apology; faculty and staff all want her to go; UC System president says he never wants to see a repeat on any campus and demands a review of police procedures on all campuses.
Perfect example of the Peter Principle: an evidently brilliant electrical-engineering researcher rises to administration and falls flat on her face. Nearly 700 technical publications and 70-some doctoral students doesn’t leave much of a window for learning how to handle interpersonal conflicts in the real world; lab heads are absolute dictators in their own domains.
Maybe Arianna Huffington, a fellow Greek-American, can offer her a job.
some people choose pepper spray over GUNS for keeping charging bears at bay.
would that mean anything to mrs. kelley?
So, like, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind putting a 1/2 cup of diced scotch bell peppers in her hoo-hoo. Right?
@4: there are several more deserving candidates.
@5 – Exactly. Didn’t some conservative radio guy do this same thing with waterboarding a few years ago, quickly realizing that it was absolutely torture?
Oh yes: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Man…
Please, Megyn and Bill, show their viewers that pepper-spray is no big deal. Do it.
“It’s a food product, essentially.”
So are cyanide and ricin, essenitally.
I’ve been exposed to tear gas as part of my military training, which is a more harsh experience compared to pepper spray, but pepper spray is quite painful. Anyone who’s been handling, hot peppers and accidentally touched their eyes can attest to that. I challenge anyone dismissing pepper spray as a food product to fill a spray bottle with the juice from canned or bottled hot peppers, (an actual food product) and squirt it into their own eyes.
Hell, I chopped up habaneros (sp?) without gloves and then showered, making the mistake of washing… sensitive areas… before making sure all the juice was off my hands. That hurt enough to give me a respect for pepper spray.
Now, to be fair, it IS much less harmful than actual mace or tear gas, Rob is right there. ‘Less harmful’ of course being a matter of degree.
But, hell… Congress thinks pizza is a vegetable. I’m not at all surprised Fox News thinks the same thing of pepper spray.
Fox viewers will simply accept this and continue to vote republican.
None of them pay any attention to liberal twitter feeds, or if they do, it’s only to deny them wholesale.
Both Fox and the twitterers are preaching to their own choirs. As usual.
Loved this from reddit: “Putting bamboo slivers under fingernails is acupuncture, essentially.”
I mean water boarding. It’s just swim lessons, essentially.
Quartering? It’s just Chiropractic adjustment, essentially.
coming to school lunches soon, a new vegetable…
pepper spray!
no chopping, no cooking, easy to serve, just hit ’em as the pass down the line – no chewing, no dishes.
it’s not just a food product, it’s a wonder food 🙂
That reminds me of Jean Chretien’s old quote about pepper spraying peaceful protesters: “Pepper? I put that on my plate.” Oddly, I think his approval ratings went up…
maybe they should rename it something scarier, like “capsaicin gas”
@5, 11, 12: All of these thoughts raced through my mind, and you all beat me to each one of them. I have nothing specially to add. Just letting you know that you’re voicing the thoughts of many, many others.
As an unrelated question, am I the only one who has been tempted to TRY using it as a condiment? I do like spicy…
Honestly, the only reason those students were complaining was that it wasn’t fresh ground pepper spray.
[end snark]
Lead shot in a canvas bag fired from a shotgun: it’s a beanbag, essentially!
This from a man who cannot tell a loofah from a falafel: http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/billo…
So…
If a person pepper sprays a cop, there’ll be no problem, because they were just giving the cop some food. Right?
@16,
That’s more of a manicure, essentially.
And ladies and gentleman, you now see the effects of non-violence. It is turning conventional wisdom on it’s head. Which is exactly what it should do.
Yeah, I was waiting for them to pull that.
Food is never dangerous. That’s why we roast cashews and core apples!
An officer walking up and down a line of students huddling and crouching together, casually soaking them with pepper spray. Yeah, they totally had it coming to them.
Next, they’ll be kicking some newborn kittens for meowing too loud.
The O’Reilly Factor: it’s just fact-free reactionary propaganda, essentially!
@22
Scoville Scale
Bhut Jolokia – 1,000,000 units
Pepper Spray – 2.3-5,000,000 units (depending on brand)
Eat at yr own risk.
@5: That was my thought exactly.
@22: It’s not food-grade refined capsaicin, so I wouldn’t recommend ingesting it (allowable tolerances for impurities like byproducts from the refining process are likely to be much higher in the spray, though they still may not be toxic levels).
@24: Heh, funny because it’s true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean_bag_ro…
@26, I was actually asking myself the same question. What would Bill’n’Megyn say?
Having been gassed in the convenience of my apartment during the WTO, I can attest that all of this stuff is just dreadful. I think O’Reilly, Kelly and that horrid police officer down in Davis should all be tied to chairs and delivered a dose right in the face.
If it isn’t ‘any big deal’ O’Reilly should allow himself to be pepper sprayed live on air.
Then we can all see how it isn’t any big deal (and have the pleasure of watching him writhe in agony).
@34: You mean the pepper spray crept into your building from the street. The police did not spray you on your livingroom couch. If you had been, it would have been major news and you would have been on Good Morning America.
In Fiji, in the 1800’s, YOU’RE a food product, essentially.
Cannibalism: it’s just sharing a meal with another human, essentially.
Megyn Kelly and I prefer ours peppered.
Falafel is also just a food product.
Yes, Phobe dear. I would have thought that was a given, but thanks for the clarification.
I actually got the full treatment when I went out into the courtyard of my building, looking for my cat. The gas had accumulated there, and after a whiff of that, I thought I was going to die. And when I got back to my apartment, it had gotten in there too, since I left the door open. The place stunk for days.
@39 when you want to rub it all over your production assistant in a hotel room shower on a Caribbean island because you’ve confused it with a loofah it becomes a sexual harrassment suit.
You know, I never wish harm to come to another human being, but I have to admit, I wish some dumbass would run on stage during a taping and spay these fools in the eyes with pepper spray, just to see what their reaction would be.
Although, I’m sure they would say something like “that was way worse than we expected it to be… well, they protestors probably deserved it.”
@9 Asparagus,
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (or up Rush’s hemroid encrusted patootie)
I don’t want to think about it, essentially.
Beating with clubs – a vigorous massage, essentially!
A kick in the balls – a form of masturbation, essentially!
@40
Was the cat okay?
#5 beat me to it. I’d LOVE for someone to show up with a can of pepper spray, set it on his desk, and give him the following choice:
1) Put your money where your mouth is and take a whiff
2) Admit that you’re full of shit
Whatever he chooses would be so fucking sweet
Oh, the “it’s just a food product essentially” pales in comparison with the “it allows the ‘hands-on’ part to be less confrontational”.
Yeah. Just like beating them on the head with sticks makes the protesters less confrontational because they’re unconscious.
I’m sorry, I know what assault looks like when I see it. And “they don’t react much” because they’re covering their eyes and nose to prevent the spray from hurting them. Kind of like if they had curled up in a fetal position to avoid serious injury from being bludgeoned and kicked.
Zebes dearest, the cat was there in the courtyard, and came out of it totally unscathed and rather contemptuous of my frailness. He lived a good long life, and was called home to Jesus four years ago. In my grief, I bought a new refrigerator which has disappointed me at every turn.
Let that be a lesson for all you young people: never buy appliances during the grieving process.
@ 49
Well, I’d like to say that story had a happy ending, and it almost did, until it didn’t. But the ending wasn’t as sad as it could have been, which is good.
Zebes, dear, as Dorothy Parker said to Sam Goldwyn “in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.” and that applies to pets as well.
But he – the cat – took it much better than I did. And much better than I would, if I knew I was going to meet my maker starting from some strip mall in Burien. Animals are so stoic.