First Norman Mailer blasts poor Esther Wu. Now Bill O’Reilly is attacking Macarena Hernandez, and trying to bring down The Dallas Morning News in the process.

Hernandez, a Morning News opinion columnist, criticized The O’Reilly Factor in a weekend column. On Tuesday, O’Reilly called on both his radio listeners and TV viewers to boycott the paper — a crusade that he continued on Wednesday, and one that is likely to go on until O’Reilly’s spleen is fully vented.

O’Reilly told his television audience:

A few weeks ago six Mexican farm workers were murdered in Georgia. The town’s mayor responded by flying the Mexican flag in sympathy, and apparently some residents complained about that.

Enter Dallas Morning News columnist Macarena Hernandez, who wrote these astounding words: ‘Were the complainers angrier about the red, white and green Mexican flag fluttering in the Georgia air than they were about the horrific murders? Do they watch Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, where the anchor and the callers constantly point to the southern border as the birth of all America’s ills? … such rhetoric gives criminals like those in southern Georgia license to kill.’

What Ms. Hernandez is telling her readers that this program preaches hate and encourages murder. That’s what this dishonest woman is doing … Shockingly, the Dallas Morning News allowed the column to be printed. Talk about promoting hate! The publisher has dodged our calls and Hernandez refused to appear. Talking Points realizes that American journalism is disintegrating quickly. But for Ms. Hernandez to write a column this vile is beyond the pale.

O’Reilly enlisted a number of allies Tuesday night, including Dallas radio host Darrell Ankarlo, and Geraldo Rivera on Wednesday night to join him in his anti-Morning News riffs. Said Ankarlo:

The Morning News has slowly become a liberal paper. If these kinds of stories continue unabated without shows like yours calling attention to it, The Morning News will continue to slip in that direction. Illegal immigration is a huge problem in this area, but you have the paper refusing to call them criminals or ‘illegal.’

On both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, O’Reilly called “for people to stop subscribing to The Morning News if they don’t apologize.”

Media Matters for America, meanwhile, blogs that O’Reilly misrepresented Hernandez’s column.

Rod Dreher, assistant editorial page editor for The Morning News, offered this perspective in the paper’s editorial-board blog:

Well, I just watched “The O’Reilly Factor,” and was floored that our own Macarena took up two segments of the program! I know I must be a jaded media guy, because my first thought was, “Dang, I’ve been writing opinions for print for years, and nobody’s ever gone after me like that on a national program. I’ve got to get Macarena to tell me her secret!”

I know it’s got to be hard to be raked over the coals like that on national TV, but look at it this way: there are hundreds of opinion writers in this country, Macarena, who would do anything for this kind of exposure. I have, in fact, been attacked at a much less conspicuous level, and the worst are the hate e-mails you’ll receive from people who wouldn’t have the guts to attack you to your face. I remember the email I got from a guy who said he hoped my newborn son died. All because he disagreed with my opinion. There’s no accounting for people. Anyway, I suspect you’ll also learn that you have friends and supporters you never thought you had.

Now that I’ve heard O’Reilly’s side of the story, it does seem to me that he has a point when he says that your column blamed him and his listeners for creating a climate that led to the murders of those immigrants. O’Reilly says those immigrants were robbed for their money, not killed in a hate crime. According to this USA Today story, that is true … I don’t think it was at all fair to blame O’Reilly and his callers for the murders of these immigrants, when the cops say it was not a hate crime, but a straight-up robbery.

O’Reilly obviously wasn’t aware of Dreher’s post, didn’t consider it apologetic enough, or just needed an “elite media” mule to whip this week come hell or high water.

Technorati tags: Bill O’Reilly, Media, Dallas