Bill O'Reilly Is Not a Nice Man
Reported by Marie Therese - November 10, 2004 -
The O'Reilly Factor. November 8, 2004.
O'REILLY (Talking Points Memo): You know, sometimes I think I live in the twilight zone instead of the No Spin Zone. Rod Serling must be running the DNC because I've never seen a political movement so detached from reality.
Today, "New York Times" columnist Bob Herbert put forth that many who voted for President Bush are simply dumb. Now that's going to persuade a lot of people to see it your way, isn't it Bob? Talk about dumb. [N.B. Mr. Herbert was referring to the PIPA report, covered earlier by News Hounds. Go to "Could Watching Fox News Be Hazardous to Your Intelligence?".)
And then there's our pal, Michael Kinsley, who runs the editorial page at "The L.A. Times." You may remember that Kinsley has attacked me and others with whom he disagrees personally. He was the leading proponent of the O'Reilly faked his upbringing crowd. Remember that? Haven't heard from Mike since I produced the deed to my house in Levittown, New York.
Anyway, in a column yesterday, Kinsley put forth this amazing thesis. "We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We are if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist."
Yes, sure and I'm Teresa Heinz Kerry. Kinsley actually believes he's open-minded and misunderstood. He actually thinks his attack mode style leads to persuasion.
Well, when you think about it, it might have. Kinsley and other left wing bomb throwers persuaded millions of Americans to vote for Bush. Billoreilly.com poll attracted more than 70,000 Americans who answered this question, what motivated your presidential vote? 54 percent said terrorism, 33 percent said anti-Bush media, 7 percent said Iraq, 6 percent said the economy.
So Mike, baby, you are persuading, but in a way you never imagined. The truth is that the Democratic party has been hijacked by the far left and really can't persuade anyone anymore. Exit polls say 70 percent of those voting for John Kerry did so because they don't like Bush. Do the math. Kerry persuaded very few Americans to his side.
Finally, moderate Democrats like Evan Bayh and Joseph Lieberman continue to be overwhelmed by the Michael Moore/George Soros Hollywood-Left crowd. And that's not going to change because those people have the money.
So here's a prediction and you can take it to the bank. In 2008, the Democrats will run a Hillary and Bill co-presidency campaign. She'll get the nomination, but he'll be all over the place urging Americans to get back to the go-go '90's. Bill and Hill are what the Democrats have. Persuaded? (End of excerpt.)
COMMENT
Right after reading this pompous piece of claptrap, Bill O'Reilly interviewed two men about the future of the Democratic Party.
One of them was Robert Reich, Clinton's Labor Secretary and a professeor at Brandeis University.
The other was Tony Snow, Fox News Contributor, radio talk show host and all-around rah-rah boy for whatever viewpoint his masters at FOX News want him to hype. Global warming a hoax? Yeah, that's good. Dead civilians in Iraq are really terrorists? Hey, right on, Bill! Star chamber liberal judges out to get the Christians? Wow! Great stuff! Just let me at those pagans! Sis-boom-bah! Hand me the hatchet!
In this posting, I am not going to report equally on both men. Snow's responses were totally predictable and, for today at least, his opinions are not worth my time or yours.
The interview with Robert Reich is another matter entirely.
Reich is one of my favorite political people. He's a decent, articulate, caring, astute man, well able to argue his positions intelligently, a class act all the way.
O'Reilly on the other hand is none of those things.
In the TPM above he used a vaguely worded "Billoreilly.com" poll to justify his statement that "Kinsley and other left wing bombthrowers persuaded millions of Americans to vote for Bush." He alluded, of course, the 33% who answered that "anti-Bush media" influenced their vote. Not only did he rely on a self-admitted "unscientific poll" to back up his opinion, he neglected to point out that the "anti-Bush media" referred to in the poll might just as easily have persuaded someone to vote against BUSH!
He later states "do the math." Well, the math shows that 56 million Americans sided with Kerry and the Democrats against Bush. Who the hell cares if they voted for Kerry or against Bush? What it really means is that the Republican MESSAGE was so narrow and conservative and tinged with crusading, separatist fervor that it was (is) unpalatable to 56 million Americans.
However, if you want some scientific fact, here it is, from FAIR's website:
"Doing the math--rather than letting O'Reilly do it for you--is always a good idea. Exit polls actually showed that 69 percent of all respondents voted "for [their] candidate," while 25 percent said they voted ''against his opponent.'' Of the 25 percent who said they were mainly voting against a candidate, 70 percent voted for Kerry and 30 percent voted for Bush. That translates to 17.5 percent of votes being anti-Bush, and 7.5 percent being anti-Kerry. Since Kerry got about 48 percent of the vote, approximately 36 percent--not 70 percent--of those voting for Kerry did so because they didn't like Bush."
Additionally, John Kerry got the SECOND largest number of votes for President in the history of the United States. (George Bush garnered three million more to take the top spot in the same election.)
The Democrats only need to BUILD on their base - just as Rove did for the Republicans. They need to target an untapped voting block or sway an already committed one and the elections of 2006 and 2008 are theirs.
But Karl Rove wants to pull the strings, control the agenda, create a smokescreen, make everyone who voted for Kerry feel like a loser. And the FOX attack dogs go along for the ride, snapping and snarling, biting and barking at anything that resembles a Democrat.
Rove wants the Democrats to reject the gays (he lost his Log Cabin Republicans, so wants to level the playing field and marginalize the rest of the gay vote). He wants the Democrats to move so far to the right that they lose their working women voters and their labor vote. The RNC rationale at this point goes something like this: The Democrats largely voted "against Bush" not "for Kerry." Bush can't run again. Therefore, those Democratic voters motivated by hatred of Bush will simply fade into the woodwork, never to be heard from again.
On Monday's show Robert Reich, who is the epitome of a centrist Democrat, gamely put himself into the three-ring circus that passes for news on The O'Reilly Factor. He fired an opening salvo by saying: "Well, Bill, as usual you don't know what you're talking about."
It was downhill from there. Throughout the interview a very smug and patronizing O'Reilly continually interrupted or ovetalked his guest. At one point I gasped in shock as O'Reilly "joked" that the reason Kerry lost was because Reich himself visited the swing states.
REICH: "... and most people where I talk to them and I was in almost every battleground state ..."
O'REILLY (cutting him off): "That's why they lost (smiles broadly) That's why they lost 'cause you showed up.
REICH: I shouldn't have been there."
O'REILLY: "I know."
REICH: "Look it, most people say..."
O'REILLY (cuts him off): I mean you and Michael Kinsley, if you'd been out of it, Kerry'd be President (self-satisfied cackling).
REICH: No, No, I am. (O'Reilly continues to chortle.) Jobs and wages and health care, Bill, the people care about this stuff."
O'REILLY: "Yeah, they do, but they don't want to live in Cuba."
Reich, ever the patient understanding professor faced with a difficult student, tried yet again to get his points across. O'Reilly, using no facts or figures other than the data his team had cobbled together from a cursory Lexis-Nexis-Google search, attacked Reich's point of view using the stock push-button catch-phrases the O'Reilly audience so loves: Bombthrower, secularism, progressive movement, morality,elite, etc.
ASIDE: Speaking of the O'Reilly audience, here are some stats about his viewership that came to light during the Jon Stewart "Stoned Slacker" episode. The median age of "The O'Reilly Factor" 8:00 p.m. airing is 63 with a median income of $54,000 a year. His audience is comprised largely of high school graduates, with only a 24% likelihood of four-years of college or more. Over 80% of the O'Reilly viewership is "blue collar."
Later in the interview:
REICH: "But you and I can now agree. Now, why can't civil people have a dialogue, a reasonable dialogue about issues ..."
O'REILLY (interrupts): "I'll tell ya' why. I'll tell ya' why and this is the God's honest truth - pardon the pun with God. The Michael Kinsleys of the world, the Bob Herberts, the George Soroses, the Michael Moore [sic], if you are a committed Christian or Jew or whatever, if you're deeply religious, they think you're just a total jerk. And the folks know it and that's why, if you continue to embrace these people, never gonna win."
O'Reilly ended the interview a bit later by reiterating what will become one of his stock phrases: "Hill and Bill in 2008."
By the end of this segment I wanted to claw O'Reilly's eyes out. Guess it's the she-cat in me, the earth mother with fangs and claws ready to do battle with the fox that threatens the nest. With all due respect to Mr. Reich, who is a decent human being, he didn't stand a chance against Falafel O'Reilly, the adulterous loofah king, whose ravenous audience demands it's daily dose of "Slaughter of the Liberals."
Guess it helps to take their minds off the fact that the very party they overwhelmingly support has eroded their incomes, limited their children's opportunities for advancement, threatened to do away with social security as we know it and is sending their children home in body bags and wheelchairs, the daily fodder for a Presidential jihad against a country that had no viable weapons of mass destruction and no connection to September 11th.
Yes, Bill. This is the Twilight Zone. Happily for us, were he still alive, the talented and trenchant Mr. Serling would be espousing our agenda, not yours.
