Apparently, Pope Francis’ speech at the White House yesterday was just too full of things Fox News hates: encouraging tolerance and inclusiveness, reducing air pollution and fighting climate change, e.g. So Bill O’Reilly used the pope’s visit as yet another excuse to attack President Obama, but this time under the guise of concern for the pope’s message urging everyone “to protect the vulnerable in our world.”
“Most Americans are very generous folks. But we must all be careful not to make problems worse in the name of compassion,” O’Reilly warned. Apparently, O'Reilly thinks protecting the vulnerable is something fraught with danger.
So O’Reilly – after generously acknowledging that the intent of ObamaCare is noble – went on a jag against it.
O'REILLY: By forcing subsidized health insurance payments on businesses, President Obama has made it more difficult to create full-time jobs in America. Thus, while some of the poor benefit, other Americans are punished because the job market is smaller and salaries are lower.
I’d like to know where O’Reilly got his stats, other than pulling them out of his hat (or somewhere else on his body). Because a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that contrary to right-wing media assertions, the overwhelming majority of employers have not responded to health insurance mandates in the Affordable Care Act by slashing jobs, converting full-time positions to part-time, or putting off hiring new workers.
O’Reilly moved on to attack President Obama and Democrats (and Planned Parenthood) over abortion – including the “compassionate” announcement that he has posted on his website the names of those who voted against the Republicans’ latest “born alive” legislation. Mr. Compassionate failed to mention that it’s already illegal to fail to provide care to an infant born alive.
Later, O’Reilly blamed Obama for the migrant crisis. Then, it was on to the environment.
I suspect that using a papal visit to attack your political foes is not exactly what Jesus or the pope would think of as tolerance or inclusiveness. But pretending you’re doing so in the name of protecting vulnerable people? Outright despicable.
Watch it below, from the September 23 The O’Reilly Factor.
Ellen
Yes, the vulnerable in our world should be protected – which includes workplace subordinates who are being sexually harassed by dirty talking, falafel-rubbing, threatening bosses and wives who are being dragged down the stairs by their throats by their ill-tempered, abusive husbands.
It was predictable that BOR would take the Pope’s words, politicize them and work it all up into an attack on Obama/progressive policies. But wasn’t it interesting how BOR couldn’t be bothered to elaborate on the words of the Pope that could be used to go after any of the GOP candidates or conservative policies?
Despite BOR’s spin to contrary, he is just an attack dog for the right-wing against Obama and those on the left. Not fair & balanced, not non-ideological and certainly not an honest broker of the news/world events.
Yes, the discussion of the bogus additional “Born Alive” material left out the most important information – that the procedure is already illegal. The new GOP hard right wing bills are actually intended to add more penalties and to attack all clinics that provide any abortions, regardless of whether this illegal procedure is involved. The votes here were intended to pull a “gotcha” on the Dems, and they backfired. O’Reilly’s sham outrage at the Dems who refused to vote for even more penalties and additional attacks is laughable.
More laughable is O’Reilly’s attempt to spin the Pope’s statements as “a shot at Obama”, when in fact the Pope was offering mutually supportive and friendly statements. Sadly, O’Reilly was so committed to his feelings on this that he refused to allow Jessica Ehrlich to finish a sentence in correction to his rant. It’s interesting that he allowed Andrea Tantaros to throw some fairly nasty invective, including a shameful cheap shot at the end of that segment – and showed none of the righteous anger he’s displayed at moderate or liberal guests who have behaved similarly in the past. For Ehrlich’s gentle statements, O’Reilly had no patience at all – he cut her off and began lecturing her before she could even make her point. In fact, she was reminding him that he was taking the Pope’s sentences out of context and even trying to speak for the Pope. She tried to note that the very next sentence from the Pope completely disproved what O’Reilly was saying, and that his body language (something O’Reilly has always professed to study) showed his support and friendship toward President Obama. O’Reilly’s response was to have a bit of a tantrum – “You’ll see that I am RIGHT and you are WRONG”, etc.
O’Reilly’s only little allowance to Dems or President Obama was that he acknowledged that the President was a good host and showed good manners. Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, seems to have abandoned his earlier statements along those lines. Maybe three years ago, Huckabee sounded a bit like John McCain at times, noting that he disagreed with the President but didn’t doubt his faith or his sincerity. This week, Huckabee tried something fairly vile – he threw in the notion that the President is only “pretends” to be a Christian, and issued an embarrassing apology to the Pope for what Huckabee somehow thinks is disrespectful behavior by President Obama. Like Huckabee’s frantic rush to the side of Kim Davis, this move was similarly disregarded by most media. It was seen for what it is – a desperate attempt by Huckabee to stir up more of the hard right GOP base and thus allow him to stay in the race a little longer. (It’s becoming obvious that Huckabee and Cruz are each attempting to outlast each other – they’ll wind up as the Santorum/Gingrich couple of the 2016 campaign. This is why Cruz is desperately trying to say he’s raising “so much” money and why Huckabee keeps jumping up and down for every extremist cause. (I confess to enjoying the spectacle of Cruz trying to crash Huckabee’s Davis event and being told no.) When the 2016 election is over, we’ll see if Cruz gets his wish and winds up in Huckabee’s old slot at Fox News, or if Huckabee himself takes it back. I’d guess the latter, with Cruz getting a “commentator” position like that of Sarah Palin. But the bad blood between these guys is palpable, even thousands of miles away. You can see it directly through all the false piety and the desperate clambering for the moral high ground neither man possesses.