Bill O’Reilly donned his Media Police Chief hat last night and spent several minutes going over a chart showing how much other news outlets covered Benghazi, down to the second. After his review, he trotted out Media Police Deputy Bernard Goldberg to help adjudge the usual suspects guilty. But Goldberg wasn’t quite the Fox News lackey one might have expected. In the middle of his “liberal media” complaints, he fingered Mike Huckabee for saying that Benghazi would prevent President Obama from completing his second term. “This is wishful thinking masquerading as political analysis,” Goldberg charged. Even though he hinted that he shared the same wishful thinking.
I don’t know why a single other news network falls for Fox’s harangues designed to browbeat them into coughing up the same coverage as Fox. It's such a paper-thin cover up of Fox's own political agenda that I can't understand how anyone with any journalistic smarts could miss it. I mean, what product worth its name brand attacks its competitors for not being more like itself? But I digress.
Goldberg said he understands that Fox cares about Benghazi but average Americans don't. “(B)y and large, Benghazi comes in third (after the Jodi Arias verdict and the Cleveland, Ohio kidnappings) because there are millions and millions and millions of Americans who are like babies who like to follow shiny objects.” If Goldberg really thinks Fox would cover Benghazi if the network didn’t see a political gain in it, then he ought to explain why there has been so little coverage of the Texas fertilizer plant explosion and avoidance of regulation, for example? Or Fox’s ridiculously respectful coverage of Donald Trump’s birther accusations – and its continued presentation of the discredited Trump as a credible pundit?
Instead, Goldberg went off on Mike Huckabee, albeit in context of bashing American media consumers:
On (Huckabee’s) radio show, he said recently that Barack Obama would not survive Benghazi, that he wouldn’t be able to serve out his second term because of Benghazi. This is wishful thinking masquerading as political analysis. Barack Obama is going nowhere because by and large the American people don’t care about Benghazi. It’s not interesting, it’s not sexy, doesn’t involve a woman who committed murder, doesn’t involve any of the things that millions of Americans care about. I’m totally depressed over this whole thing.
Was Huckabee's comment all that different from Bill O'Reilly's suggestion that President Obama may bomb Syria to distract from Benghazi? Or Sean Hannity's ridiculous attempt to use "Sestak-gate" to bring down Obama in his first term? I don't think so.
And how about the fact that despite Fox’s endless, breathless coverage, there’s still no there there? Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, Chairman of the committee that seems determined to spend as much time as possible making impeachment-sized mountains out of Benghazi molehills, told Greta Van Susteren that his big takeaway from the “whistleblowers” hearing this week was, “This was a terrorist attack.”
“You’re not fooling anyone Bill with this I’m an independent, no spin act. "
AMEN TO THAT! Especially given these IRREFUTABLE FACTS:
1. Bully O’Lielly grew up in Westbury, NY, a VERY TONY suburb on Long Island (NOT Levittown as O’Lielly constantly claims). I should know — I’m originally from Long Island myself (Seaford, NY which is represented by Republican Peter T. King, i.e. the SAME Peter King who chewed out fellow Republican Marc Rubio of Florida for holding up federal aid for homeowners who were HAMMERED BIG TIME by Hurricane Sandy).
2. Bully O’Lielly attended VERY PRICEY, PRIVATE SCHOOLS: St. Brigid’s in Westbury, NY, Chaminade High School in nearby Mineola, Marist College in upstate Poughkeepsie, NY, and Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Remember: these schools all have VERY HIGH admission requirements (unless, of course, you have BIG TIME CONNECTIONS like O’Lielly did — for starters, back in 1963 his father, a HIGHLY PAID oil company accountant knew one of the guidance counselors at Chaminade) and the tuition at all of these elite schools (especially Harvard) is VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE!
peace
Benghazi is no 9/11, or Iraq War, or Katrina. The right wants so badly to have Obama make Bush-sized mistakes, its almost a reverse jealousy: Why can’t there guy be as bad as ours was?
Just think back when Bin Laden was killed, for the next two days Fox spent most of its time trying to convince its viewers that some or most of the credit should be given to W, then they spent practically their entire programming on their outrage that the rapper Common was going to recite poetry at the White House.
You’re not fooling anyone Bill with this I’m an independent, no spin act.
