The Company I Keep
By Jeffrey Page
I want to say something nice about Bill O’Reilly, a man whose typically loud, boisterous, and right-wing protestations usually annoy the hell out of me.
But first some background. In 2006, the Rev. Fred Phelps and some of his acolytes picketed the funeral in suburban Maryland of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, a Marine who died in a vehicle accident in Al Anbar Province in Iraq. He was 20 years old.
Picket a funeral? Phelps’s people carried signs with incendiary messages such as “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” None of the Phelps gang had any knowledge of the life or death of Matthew Snyder. Their reasoning for terrorizing the mourners at a small cemetery in suburban Maryland was this: America has allowed itself to be subsumed by gay culture. Matthew Snyder and other fallen soldiers enlisted in the armed services to defend and protect America. So it follows that Snyder and the others must have been gay. And therefore they are despised by the Lord.
The cruelty and the ignorance are monumental.
But not only does God despise the dead soldiers, Phelps says. He also hates their families and their friends. He hates their ministers. He hates their military commanders. He hates everybody who ever had anything to do with them.
Phelps is good at naming all the people God hates, but you start to wonder how he can ignore the guidance of 1 John 4:8: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”
Phelps’s disgrace at the Snyder funeral was just one of hundreds of similar demonstrations. I first came in contact with Phelps and the people from his Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas four years ago when I wrote columns for The Record in Hackensack. It was Phelps’s daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper who informed me that God hates not only the individual soldiers but everyone associated with them.
After speaking with several of Phelps’s victims – relatives of fallen soldiers – I finally understood the extent of his savagery. He visits a cemetery where a soldier is being interred, makes his God-awful noise and then prances happily back to Kansas, leaving the soldier’s family devastated and at a loss to understand the degree of his hatred.
Most people try to get past it.
Not Matthew Snyder’s dad, Albert Snyder. He sued Phelps for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and won a $5 million judgment in a federal trial court. But Phelps appealed and not only had the judgment against him reversed, but got an order from the appellate judges requiring Albert Snyder to reimburse him for $16,510 in costs.
Enter O’Reilly. “That is an outrage and I will pay Mr. Snyder’s obligation,” O’Reilly said on March 31. “I am not going to let this injustice stand.” Bravo for a man who puts his money where his mouth is.
Incidentally, the case has been accepted for review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Regarding O’Reilly: This my second gentle encounter with him. Several years ago I was writing a series of columns about an epidemic of child murders in New Jersey. It seemed to me there wasn’t as much outrage over the killings as you’d expect. The news stories seemed to come and go, and I don’t recall any especially passionate opinion pieces on these wretched felonies.
But there was O’Reilly on the Fox News Network displaying admirable rage at people who would kill an infant. He yelled. He slammed his hand on his desk. At least in that one area, I was a fan.
Our agreement on Phelps is not complicated: A family has a right to grieve its loss without a bunch of yahoos celebrating the death. Can it be any plainer than that?
Albert Snyder had the guts to sue and he got screwed. Cheers to O’Reilly for offering to write a check. A Snyder family spokeswoman told me that any money left over from what Albert Snyder has to pay Phelps would go toward a scholarship in Matthew’s name.
I decided to send my own check to Barley Snyder at 100 East Market St., York, Pa. 17401.
Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com
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