Did you get that? Based on a handful of loony comments that were troll rated -- indicating that the Daily Kos community disagrees quite vehemently with them and takes great offense at them, and clear evidence that they are not representative of this site or its users -- O'Reilly compared us to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.

Do you not see why that's inappropriate? Let me tell you a little something about myself; maybe you'll learn something.

I am a Jew, the grandson of four survivors of the Holocaust. Each of my grandparents had very large families prior to the Holocaust, but three of them were the sole survivors from their families. My mother's parents met in Auschwitz shortly before liberation; my father's parents met in a displaced persons camp not long after the war ended. They all eventually made their way to safety and freedom in the Milwaukee area.

I've written about my childhood on Daily Kos in the past, but since you're backing Bill O'Reilly over us, I'm sure you never read this site, so here is a recap of what I wrote about in this diary:

My parents raised my sisters and me in a small town in rural Wisconsin. Never mind exactly which one -- I have to maintain my anonymity here in order to keep my jobs for grad school. Suffice it to say it's a good distance away from Madison, and in terms of worldview, it might as well be on a different planet. You might recall the story of the Indian River School District in Delaware, which ran a Jewish family out of town with death threats and other harassment after the family complained about the district's official promotion of Christianity. Well, the Indian River School District has nothing on my hometown. Growing up, my mom, dad, three sisters, and I were the only Jews in town, and a lot of people were all too happy to remind us of that on a regular basis. Everyone else was Christian -- more specifically, a fundamentalist Protestant variety of the sort we all recognize from Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and their ilk. Everyone was white, too, except for us -- "Jews can't be white, they're just lighter colored niggers," my sisters and I were often told by our classmates. After hearing that for all of my formative years, pardon me if I don't want to be "white." My sisters and I are all pretty close in age -- my oldest sister is two years older than me, my second sister is a year younger than me, and my youngest sister is two years younger than me. And my sisters are easily my favorite people in the world, largely, I would bet, because of what we endured together growing up. My sisters, for the most part, were very lucky -- they suffered only from some of the most disgusting verbal harassment I've ever heard of, usually consisting of grotesque, sexually explicit comments mixed with vile accusations of the blood libel and "you murdered Jesus" variety. "Only?" you might be thinking. Yes, "only" -- they suffered verbal harassment, but were never physically attacked except for one time. My big sister was a senior in high school then, I was a sophomore, and our middle sister was a freshman. Whenever our schedules coincided, which was pretty frequently, big sister (I won't name my sisters either -- there's that anonymity thing again) would drive us all home. On the day in question, she had a yearbook meeting, I had football practice, and our sister the cheerleader had cheerleading practice. Little sister and I finished at about the same time, and we were supposed to meet big sister at her locker. When we got there, we saw three of the anti-Semites around her -- they had been among the many assholes who had physically assaulted me over the previous decade -- and one of them had her arm twisted behind her back. I sent little sister to get help and tried to stop them myself. The two assholes who didn't have their hands on my sister came after me, one with a switchblade. The guy with the blade slashed me across my lower left ribcage as I punched the other guy. Fortunately, it was just a flesh wound and I broke his arm when I took the blade away. Then I broke the jaw and arm of the guy hurting my sister. That's when little sister came around with the principal, who promptly threatened to suspend big sister and me from school -- her for "provoking" the incident and me for fighting -- until we threatened to sue him personally for allowing the assholes to harass my sisters and assault me on a regular basis. On the way home, we stopped by the nearest emergency clinic and I got 15 stitches. That's when my parents started thinking about moving us away. In total, though, I was physically assaulted 27 times, stabbed two more times, and shot at twice before we finally moved away the summer before my senior year in high school. Now, I've been very fortunate for the most part in that I am a stereotypical linebacker -- very big and very strong -- so my attackers usually walked away from their attacks with much worse injuries than I suffered. But they knew they wouldn't win a fight and attacked me anyway because it was so important to them to draw Jewish blood. Thank God their chauvinism worked in my sisters' favor, or they would have been attacked, too. The local authorities never did a damn thing to protect me or to stop the people who were attacking me, even though it was widely known who they were, there were often witnesses, and attempted murder is generally frowned upon. Indeed, they all but tacitly approved what happened to me. I think the only kid who had it worse than me was the one openly gay kid in school -- and he leaned on my sisters and me and our very small, close-knit circle of friends for support. Ultimately, though, he couldn't take it -- he ran away when he was 15, and I have no idea what became of him. I can only hope that he is alive, safe, and happy somewhere.

I have dedicated my life to fighting the kind of bigotry and hatred that nearly wiped out my family among six million other Jews and millions more other innocents over 30 years before I was born. I have dedicated my life to fighting the kind of bigotry and hatred that surrounded me in my childhood. I am hardly alone in my dedication on Daily Kos, where we fight against anti-Muslim bigotry, racial slurs, hatred based on sexual orientation, and many other injustices.

And for our trouble, because we dared to stand up to the constant lies and propaganda produced by the Fox News Network to discredit our political party and the causes for which we fight, we got called Nazis.

And we were called Nazis by a man who allies himself with Ann Coulter, who revels in referring to one of our presidential candidates by a hateful term. Who is revered by those who say that slurs such as faggot, kike, and nigger ought to be used in polite discourse and even in the midst of presidential campaigning. Who hosts on his show guests who call Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a racket, who openly advocated for al-Qaeda to blow up San Francisco, who confesses that the only reason he doesn't kill everyone on the internet who disagrees with him is that he couldn't get away with it. (Hat tip to frontpager mcjoan for these last three.)

In fact, if you want to know exactly what kind of man Bill O'Reilly is, you might want to listen to Keith Olbermann:

And yet you caved in to this hateful, spiteful man. You bought into his smear of us. You let him call us Nazis and, by giving him what he wants at our expense, you imply agreement with him, however unintentionally.

Shame on you.

I am not a Nazi. My friends here are not Nazis. We know a hell of a lot about what real Nazis look like, and we aren't them. Calling us Nazis trivializes the suffering of my grandparents and all other victims of real hatred and bigotry. It is just another cheap shot in the organized campaign of slander and libel by conservative blowhards in the media against a group of progressive bloggers who have had enough with the abuses of the past several years and refuse to stand idly by as our nation is destroyed. By taking O'Reilly's side on this issue, I hope you're not indicating that you're going to be fighting on his side. It's generally not good business practice to ally yourself with dishonest folks.

If this is merely a one-time mistake on your part, so be it. I'm sure we'll all accept your apology here. But if this is part of a corporate strategy to capitulate to liars, slanderers, and supporters of true hatred and bigotry, you're going to leave us with no choice but to fight you with every weapon in our rhetorical arsenal, and that's not going to be good for your business.