Mr. O'Donnell,
Thank you for choosing to handle Orly Taitz the way you did on last night's broadcast. I understand you've been targeted by many progressives for being "overly harsh" or "sinking to their level" or "channeling Bill O'Reilly" or whatever. I disagree.
It was clear that Taitz got onto your show by promising to talk about the "long form" birth certificate Obama released earlier in the day. It was also clear that once she got the camera on her, she had no intention of talking about the certificate, even though for nearly three years she has talked about little else. She pulled a bait-and-switch on you, and attempted to do the same to your viewers.
At that point you had two choices: enable her or hold her accountable. Most interviewers would have followed standard practice: let her have her head, give her a platform to say her message (in this case, the latest iteration of her litany of fraudulent accusations about Obama), and then, after she was done, perhaps tweaked her or called her out. That's standard practice, and justified by a number of rationalizations, most likely the "let her make herself look crazy" bit.
You chose the second path, and I applaud you for it. Taitz is a veteran of this kind of encounter, and expected some resistance. She concocted a "tie-in" to piggyback from the birth certificate onto her Selective Service bit, and expected you to just go with it. She has learned to just keep talking over the interviewer, sticking like glue to her talking points, and most interviewers would have, after a couple of attempts to get her back on track of the promised discussion, just let her talk. You refused to give her a platform for her presentation.
Instead, you insisted that she stay with the promised topic of discussion, refused to go down her road, and gave her multiple chances to refocus on the topic at hand. She repeatedly refused, and attempted to "talk you into submission." You refused, and after giving her that final chance, threw her off the show. That was EXACTLY the right course of action.
I teach middle school, and the first thing you learn when dealing with kids is to hold them accountable and keep them on track. If you let them go off on the "yeah, but Larry did thus and such" or "you say I did this to Barack, but what about what he did to me?" tangents, you've lost control. You get bogged down in a morass of teenage drama and a mare's nest of accusations, and good luck trying to sort the truth from the lies, half-lies, and fantasies. The kids don't give a damn about what's true and what's not. They just don't want to be held accountable for what they did to get them in front of you in the first place, and ideally, send you off after the target of their ire instead.
Had I brought Orly in after class and sat her down to explain why she had concocted such a welter of lies about her classmate Barack, and had she responded in the way she did on your show -- "yeah, well, let's talk about this new accusation I have against him" -- I would have slapped her down the same way you did, and probably ended up raising my voice to her. I would have taken whatever disciplinary actions were appropriate, but you didn't have that option -- she is, after all, an adult (and supposedly accountable as such) and a "guest" on your show. So you threw her off the show. You denied her a venue for her new raft of accusations, held her accountable, and when she refused multiple opportunities to address the issue at hand, you ended it entirely.
Progressives and moderates should have treated these extremist nutjobs like this all along. One example out of so many: 1993, Rush Limbaugh slaps Chelsea Clinton's picture on the tube and calls her "the White House dog." Clinton, choosing to take the high presidential road instead of handling it like a father whose child has just been denigrated on national television, says nothing. Poor decision. Had Clinton taken Limbaugh to task, called him out as any father would, and held him sternly accountable, it would have taken a hell of a lot of hot air out of that windbag's sails. It would have "disempowered" him, if that's a word. Hell, it's possible it would have broken him as a credible voice of right-wing ideology. (Me, I would have walked into Limbaugh's studio the next day and beat his head down between his shoulders, but that's one of many reasons why I don't need to be president.) It would have also marked Clinton, and people who supported him, as a president, and a group, who weren't afraid to stand up to bullying and public denigration. It might have fundamentally changed the tone of the discourse as we now experience it.
You were dead right to stand up to Taitz the way you did. It was the right thing to do, and it's irrelevant if some of the progressives and moderates found it distasteful. It needed to be done, and it needs to be done every time, by every progressive and moderate out there when faced with extremist lies and hate.
Good job, sir.