Photoshopped picture Top Story on O'Reilly Factor
Reported by Chrish - July 31, 2007 -
With all that's going on in the country and the world, Bill O'Reilly decided to make some rude picture of Bush, Lieberman, and former Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson posted on DailyKos.com his top story tonight 7/30/07. Oh, the horror, some juvey with a computer defiled the Internets. Shut 'em down.
Of course, O'Reilly's intent in making a federal case over this is to reinforce HIS claim that DailyKos is a far-left hate-site filled with degrading filth, and the Democratic presidential candidates who are going to address the YearlyKos convention this weekend are "afraid" of the manipulative far-lefties. Beyond that, it is his desire to get the candidates to pull out of the convention to retaliate for the success of the netroots in getting the Demcratic candidates to decline to appear at FOX-sponsored debates.
His voice drips with loathing and his vocabulary reaches for the most extreme language: the "vicious" DailyKos, whose people "savagely attack;" the candidates decision to speak to liberals at YearlyKos is "beyond shameful." The picture is "very offensive," and he suggested viewers might want to change the channel - lol! He's been building it up since Thursday and there have been commercials all day long; now he's telling them to change the channel? Hilarious. He only showed it once; it was necessary to show viewers what kind of "haters" these "Kos people" are, and why no politician should ever legitimize them.
He showed the picture - left it onscreen for 15 seconds, even - as he ranted about how this "disgraceful exhibition" is what the Kos traffics in, and decent people should condemn it. He showed graphics of Democratic contenders who are going to YearlyKos and, said that "these Democratic candidates are supporting a website that would run a picture like that...", when in reality they are addressing a convention hosted by the same guy who hosts the website where the picture was allowed to remain.
Of interest, O'Reilly said that Lieberman is a patriot and "deserves respect, not hatred." This conflating of disrespect with hatred is just another drill, drill, drill ploy to demonize the left in the "no-spin" zone.
He addressed the candidates directly (as if they're home watching him, LOL!) and said that it's a huge mistake to go to YearlyKos, and admonished them to apologize to Senator Lieberman. Associating with "haters" will not bring them credibility, and voters will not forget. (I sense a little threat there.)
After this emotional Talking Points Memo, he had guests Lanny Davis (former Clinton adviser and good friend of Joe Lieberman) and Republican consultant Genevieve Wood, of the Heritage Foundation (which she divulged, not O'Reilly).
Davis said the depiction was disgusting and all Democrats should be repulsed, but quickly came to the defense of the DailyKos as a whole, noting it was one "hater" who goes by "The diarist." Davis took issue with the anonymity and said what he objects to is the practice of not putting your name to something, to be held accountable.
O'Reilly, after all this fuss over the picture, dismissed the diarist as insignificant; what matters is that the entire Democratic field (with the exception of Joe Biden) has been "intimidated" by the DailyKos (and MoveOn.org, and MediaMatters.org). He declared that all last week he documented all this hate (he harped on the same five comments all week) and said this is a disaster for Democrats, legitimizing this website that's just like the KKK and Nazis.
Davis disagreed, saying there's plenty of good discussion on DKos and plenty of hate-speech on right-wing sites like FreeRepublic.com. O'Reilly said that the "Republican candidates are not going into the right-wing websites; they're not going in there! They avoid them." Davis said we''ll see, and O'Reilly promised that if any of the Republicans "do that" ("go into the right-wing websites" - is that like Through the looking glass???) he'll report it. As Davis said, we'll see.
Wood bemoaned that the DailyKos website is getting so much more attention because of this blow-up, and noted that the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council, known to some as Republicans-Lite) had a convention that none of the candidates attended. As Kirsten Powers responded to O'Reilly, later in the show, the DLC is an election year destination, when the nominees are trying to appeal across party lines. O'Reilly went back to his talking point, that Democrats are "afraid" of the Kos people, "afraid" that they'll be "smeared" like Lieberman was (as opposed to being "smeared" as 'fraidy cats by the O'Reilly Factor.) He even said "These presidential candidates who are afraid of a website - my God, how are they going to deal with Al Qaeda?" Hmm, where have we heard that before?
When Democrats won't appear at a FOX-hosted debate, they're afraid of FOX. When they DO go to a liberal convention, it's because they're afraid of the posters. Lose-lose, if you're a Democrat on FOX.
When Davis disagreed with O'Reilly again about the scope of the "hate" and lack of any other substance at Kos, the shouting began. See for yourself, and note how Wood was allowed to sum up O'Reilly's position to conclude the segment.
