NewsHounds
We watch Fox so you don't have to!
  • Home
  • About
  • Archives
  • Forum
  • Blogroll
  • Donate
  • Shop
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
Home →

Bill O’Reilly Laughably Insists “We Never Threatened Anyone” With A Boycott

Posted by Ellen -7859.80pc on March 16, 2012 · Flag

Bill O’Reilly led off his show last night with “an American witch hunt focusing on the media” as the topic of both his Talking Points and opening debate. He began by criticizing the conservative Media Research Center’s call for firings on MSNBC. But it was pretty clear that O'Reilly was at least as concerned about the boycotts of Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, as you probably know, ignited a firestorm of criticism with his misogynistic attacks on student Sandra Fluke – comments that O’Reilly echoed in less inflammatory language. O’Reilly has mostly refrained from discussing Limbaugh. Last night, O’Reilly spoke out against media boycotts in general, insisting he had “never threatened anyone.” I guess that depends on your definition of “threaten.”

O’Reilly announced last night that in a dispute with Pepsi over an endorsement deal with Ludacris, “I simply said I would not buy Pepsi.” Well, not quite. Here’s what O’Reilly actually said in August, 2002:

"I'm calling for all Americans to say, Hey, Pepsi, I'm not drinking your stuff. You want to hang around with Ludacris, you do that, I'm not hanging around with you." On The O'Reilly Factor the very next day, O'Reilly took credit for Pepsi's decision to cancel the Ludacris ad campaign, saying, "But because of pressure by Factor viewers, Pepsi-Cola late today capitulated. Ludacris has been fired."

Media Matters points out that in 2006, O’Reilly came up with a list of organizations he thought were “helping the enemy” and said to his radio show listeners, "[I]t's up to you guys to take action against them in a sense of boycotting their products, letting them know that this is unacceptable." The groups included the ACLU, the International Red Cross, the BBC, Air America Radio and The New York Times.

O’Reilly has also made a thinly-veiled threat against the State of Vermont if they didn’t impeach or reassign a judge he disliked. O’Reilly told a Vermont State Representative, “The state of Vermont's never gonna recover from this- ever! - unless Cashman is removed. People will not go there. They will not buy your products. They will turn their back (sic) and your state will be - have a stigma for-ever.”

He also encouraged protests outside the house of a Missouri judge. I'll bet the judge and his family construed that as a threat!

Last night, O’Reilly went on to praise MRC, call the Limbaugh boycotts “un-American” and said MRC was making a mistake. “We want free speech all over the place,” O’Reilly said. When free speech gets “irresponsible,” the “marketplace should dictate, not pressure groups armed with threats.”

Apparently, O’Reilly thinks of himself as a “marketplace.” If he suggests his audience do something, that's the marketplace at work. If people who don't have the ability to utter a few casual words and reach thousands of people organize for the same purpose - that's a pressue group "armed with threats."

I applaud O’Reilly’s attempt at even-handedness and I’m one who was for boycotts before I was against them. But O’Reilly ought to be able to face his viewers and tell them the truth about his record. Maybe he needs to tell himself the truth first.

Follow @NewsHounds

Follow @NewsHoundEllen


Do you like this post?
Tweet

Showing 7 reactions



    Review the site rules
mlp ! commented 2012-03-16 20:58:08 -0400 · Flag
Just what are these people going to do after Obama wins? Are we seeing the last painful gasps of the far right?
Kevin Koster commented 2012-03-16 17:55:52 -0400 · Flag
O’Reilly admitted in his rant that he did in fact call for a boycott of France at that time. (Of course, he painted the story as though France was siding with Hussein, rather than just taking the reasonable position that WMDs had not been proven to even be in Iraq.)

Worse in the show was O’Reilly’s inability to recognize that Brent Bozell has actually been a very negative presence in the media, and that he not only runs the MRC, he also is responsible for the behavior of the PTC, which was humiliated over 10 years ago, after they slandered the World Wrestling Federation, saying that WWF encouraged violence in children.
Gooch X commented 2012-03-16 15:54:55 -0400 · Flag
Remember when Bill used to be more interested in the issues and less interested in making himself seem like a noble hero fueled only by integrity? Yeah….me neither.
Joseph West commented 2012-03-16 15:24:26 -0400 · Flag
What I think some people are forgetting is that Billy-boy gets away with saying such insane crap because he knows his audience have such bad attention spans they can’t remember what they were told an hour ago (which may be why the FoxNoise crew have to keep repeating their claims so frequently), much less a month, a year or a decade ago.
Aria Prescott commented 2012-03-16 15:10:24 -0400 · Flag
O’Reilly’s show has been a complete joke lately- even by Fox News standards. His talking points memo about how everyone in the media lies, except for Fox News? That was almost hilarious- until you saw that he was dead serious.

I wonder how he kept his face that straight through that.
Antoinette commented 2012-03-16 14:40:50 -0400 · Flag
Billy went after advertisers of a Fox Entertainment program. If anyone remembers it, post the video.

NOTE TO BILLY

Tell the masses Dr. James David Manning is boycotting your show. What? You won’t? You must be afraid of him. He is saying all sorts of nasty things about you.
Anne-claire Souza commented 2012-03-16 13:55:30 -0400 · Flag
zaglossus,yes that would be the one.This blowheart doesn’t know from day to day what he is talking about.Just shoots off his big mouth into nowhere land.he is a liar and ego driven pos and noone should pay attention to hids lying rants and ravings.








or sign in with Facebook or email.
Follow @NewsHounds on Twitter
Subscribe with RSS


We’ve updated our Privacy Policy
Sign in with Facebook, Twitter or email.
Created with NationBuilder