There are many things that one can rightly call Los Angeles Times columnist and Nation contributing editor Robert Scheer. But “anti-American” is just not one of them. A lifelong “moderate radical,” Scheer has spent decades arguing sensibly and passionately against extremism on all sides. He’s also one of America’s most accomplished journalists and interviewers–having interviewed every US president from Nixon to Clinton, and one of the few voices on a major op-ed page that regularly dares to speak truth to power. Animated by moral outrage, Scheer’s commentary is also infused with a keen sense of what it means to be a truly patriotic citizen.

So when Bill O’Reilly uses his TV program and website to attack Scheer as a “traitor,” and as “blatantly anti-American,” he’s distorting the truth. The taunts are a cheap way of trying to tarnish Scheer’s reputation without having to rebut the merits of his arguments. Unfortunately, with his platform, when O’Reilly encourages his viewers to contact the Los Angeles Times and demand Scheer’s dismissal, which he did a few weeks ago, a bunch of people do just that.

Though I’d suspect that many of these folks were misled by O’Reilly’s propaganda, it’s nonetheless, of course, their right to complain. And it’s our obligation to respond in turn. So please be in touch with the LA Times. Click here for contact info. Let them know that you think Scheer is one of the best things about the paper, that you appreciate their balanced op-ed page, and that you think that the Scheer column which set O’Reilly off was an important expression of patriotism.

Even better, contact your local newspaper and ask them to consider carrying Scheer’s syndicated weekly column (which appears on The Nation’s website). Tell them it’s available from Creator’s Syndicate at reasonable rates. Expanding the audience of the column would go some way to redressing the awful conservative imbalance in the media today. Click here for contact info on local media nationwide, part of the Nation‘s activist page.

There are also two good websites striving to document, satirize and thwart O’Reilly’s daily disinformation: O’ReillySucks.Com and O’Reilly Exposed. They both sponsor interesting activist campaigns, including a boycott of O’Reilly’s regular advertisers.