O'Reilly And Goldberg Sneer About MSNBC Departure Of He Who Shall Not Be Named (Keith Olbermann)
Reported by Ellen - January 25, 2011 -
If you thought Bill O’Reilly might be gracious in the wake of Keith Olbermann’s sudden departure from MSNBC last Friday, you were wrong. Monday night (1/24/11), O’Reilly claimed lack of interest, made a big deal out of the fact that Fox News’ ratings are so much higher than MSNBC’s, asserted that nobody really cared about Olbermann leaving such an insignificant network, and accused that part of the media that thought it an important story of doing “anything they can to save” the liberal, dying print media. How doing that would save the print media, O’Reilly never explained. But he did spend an entire segment on this, all the while refusing to refer to Olbermann by name. Yeah, I’m convinced O’Reilly found it a non-story, how about you?
O’Reilly described Olbermann’s exit by saying there had been a “big shake up at MSNBC” and that the network was “replacing a hateful commentator.”
Guest Bernard Goldberg joked that he had been tied up all weekend and missed the news. “Did somebody leave MSNBC?” he quipped.
O’Reilly apparently fell for it. He said, “They took one of their guys out and then they’re moving everybody else around. It doesn’t really matter who the guy is or why they took him out.”
“So you don’t want to tell me who it was,” Goldberg said.
“No, no, I don’t want to get involved with any of that personal stuff,” O’Reilly said.
But while avoiding “that personal stuff,” O’Reilly was very interested in getting involved in attacking the so-called liberal, dishonest media for making it a story (you know, just like he was, but with a different viewpoint). According to O’Reilly, the other coverage was nothing more than a plot to somehow shore up the left-wing print media.
Why should anybody care (about Olbermann leaving MSNBC)? And they really don’t care. The folks don’t care. But when you have a press in America as blatantly dishonest as you have today? In almost everything? They love MSNBC, they being the left-wing print media. And now it’s tottering and they’re gonna do anything they can to save it.
Goldberg complained, “This anchorman who’s no longer there… shouted into the camera to George W. Bush ‘Shut the hell up?’” Also, according to Goldberg, Olbermann-who-shall-not-be-named once asked on the air whether Bush is a pathological liar or an idiot in chief. “Could you imagine if you said any of those things?” Goldberg asked.
Well, it’s not quite O’Reilly’s style to refer to a president that way. It's more the style of his boss, Roger Ailes, who called President Obama a socialist. But Olbermann's comments, had they been about Obama, would have been almost benign by Fox News standards, compared to the commentary of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or regulars such as Michael Scheuer. No, O’Reilly just jokes about beating up and beheading Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and calls an abortion provider, “Tiller the baby killer.” Well, O’Reilly used to call him that. Until Dr. Tiller was murdered.
O’Reilly said to Goldberg about Olbermann “getting away” with such rhetoric, “Look, we know the double standard.”
And so do we, Bill.
