July 26, 2017 update: I could not get Wikipedia to correct the errors so I have requested  removal of the page. Today, after repeated requests, I was told that it would be taken down. Hooray!

So long, Wikipage with alt-facts from Bill O’Reilly!

 

Original post written on July 3, 2017:

An entry on Wikipedia makes an assertion about me that is untrue, but which I am unable to fix, even after trying to contact Wikipedia editors directly. It leaves the impression that I am a proponent of open borders. That is not true.

I am not nor ever have been an advocate of open borders, nor have I ever written anything to suggest that I am. The smear comes from a former TV news host whose name isn’t worth mentioning. He made the baseless claim on his show on Oct. 25, 2005, but cited no proof.

At the time, I was a columnist at the Denver Post and wrote a piece defending Macarena Hernández, a columnist at the Dallas Morning News who was getting barraged with hate mail incited by that TV host. I knew what it was like to get death threats and other threatening emails from viewers of that disgraced TV host because the same thing happened to me after I wrote this column dissecting untruths he had written about undocumented immigrants taking welfare.

In neither column do I say I’m for open borders. Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog organization, came to my defense. Media Matters did a Nexis search of my Denver Post columns and found no proof to back up that assertion. <– This link was in the wikipedia entry for several years but has since been removed.

Anyone who has a Nexis account can search and find five articles that contain my name and the phrase “open borders.” In none of those articles am I defending that concept. I am certainly pro-immigrant and will defend the rights of undocumented people living in the U.S. who contribute to society, but borders make sense. I don’t even know anyone who advocates for open borders.

Fear mongers use this term to scare people into thinking those who are different from them will take over their country. It’s a term used by nativists, the alt-right, neo-Nazis and other xenophobes.

Trying to get this corrected has been proven near-impossible, but I’m hoping that perhaps Wikipedia would consider ME a credible source on myself. (I’m not too hopeful, considering the lengths Philip Roth went through to try to correct untruths on Wikipedia about his novel, “The Human Stain.” But it’s worth a try.)

Another untruth listed on that wiki page and attributed to the disgraced TV host is that I was influenced by George Soros. It got appended to the wiki page because that host wrote the lie in a book. As is the case with his other smears, he offers zero proof. Honestly, at the time the book was written I had no idea who George Soros was. So, no, I was not influenced by him. (That said, now that I’m more aware of who Soros is I can state without equivocation that I am not a fan.)