Fox News Boston Marathon Bombings Politicization: Barney Frank Edition. A few days ago, I posted about Megyn Kelly’s politicization of the Boston Marathon bombings by harping on the insensitivity/politicization from Democrats. Her opprobrium then was aimed at Democratic Congressmen Steny Hoyer and Xavier Becerra. Last night, “high-minded” Bill O’Reilly’s tender sensibilities were so offended by comments from Barney Frank that he spent not one, not two, but three segments discussing him. In round three, O’Reilly told “sensitive” Dennis Miller that they should go to Frank’s house, gather a crowd, do their “Bolder, Fresher” road show on his block and then “drag him out” and “uh, we can’t do physical violence to him… but we’ll scorn him.”
In typical Fox “fairness and balance,” nobody talked much, if at all, about the substance of Frank’s remarks. In fact, I had to Google him to find out. It turns out that what he spoke about was the bombings made the case for a robust government, as the Huffington Post noted.
"In this terrible situation, let's be very grateful that we had a well-funded, functioning government. It is very fashionable in America ... to criticize government, to belittle public employees, talk about their pensions, talk about what people think is their excessive health care, here we saw government in two ways perform very well," Frank said on CNN's "Starting Point," noting the cooperation between state, local and federal authorities.
"No tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover," he said. "This is very expensive."
Of course, criticism of President Obama doesn’t count. Miller whined that President Obama had not said the bombings were “terrorism” on “Day One” and for saying we’d find out why it was done. That was superfluous, claimed Miller. Then he attacked Axelrod for being too politically correct.
Do you think O’Reilly minded that politicization? He responded approvingly: “Excellent.” Then just to show how sensitive he is to Bostonians he added:
I’m gonna book a Bolder Fresher show in Barney Frank’s block, right in front of his house. Alright? And we’ll get the crowd and they can watch us. And then after the show, you and I are gonna go to Barney’s house, drag him out and – uh, we can’t do physical violence to him, that wouldn’t be good, he’s an old man – but we’ll scorn him, you and I…
Miller piled on:
Listen, here’s the thing about Barney Frank. Sometimes I find that liberals, in lieu of actual empathetic gestures, heartfelt empathy, they turned it into an affair of their mind. They intellectually empathize with you. Barney Frank will tell you everything he does is for the disenfranchised. The people underfoot. And you just want to say, ‘You start your empathy by just not being a jerk to the people you come across in your day-to-day life.’ Can you take a moment and not be so arrogant about your voice that you bring it out immediately in the wake of a tragedy like this and tell us what you feel. Be heartfelt empathetic. ”
O’Reilly ended by saying, “That was one of your best segments, Miller.”
The discussion about Frank starts at about 4:00 in the video below.
Now there’s a resume for ya!
Anti-evolution, anti-semite, anti-gay, anti-Islamic, anti-Acorn, anti-gay and, of course, anti-terror! And that’s just the books!
Well, Chuck, I honestly can’t say that I find anything in your pitiful selection that I really want to know more about. We’ve heard all before from so many that we can surmise just about EVERYTHING you may have to offer.
But, nice try, Chucky. Why don’t you try a few places where the denizens are not quite so discerning? Oh, wait…..your resume shows that you already have! Can I suggest Fox Nation??
NHP
Give me an effin’ break – this was all about them finding anything they could use to go after a man whom they both despise (especially BOR, a petty bully who thinks it’s appropriate to use 3 segments of his show to attack Frank). The substance of what Frank said was true and not offensive (except, perhaps, to wealthy people who want their taxes cut?) but, hey, why bother discussing what Frank actually said when there’s 7th grade mocking to be done?
Btw, Miller, liberals don’t have heartfelt empathy? Over-generalize much, asshole? How about you and your bloviating buddy there take your own advice and rein in your own arrogant voices. You’ve both politicized your opinions on the Boston bombings and, frankly, your double standard on the matter shows you both to be hypocritical fools who have no business bitching about others until you clean up your own acts.
God, he makes me sick anymore.
Bill O’Reilly is angry that somebody made a political statement concerning the Boston bombing. (He actually went on and on about this, not only regarding Barney Frank but also about any left wing commentators he could find making comments.) And Barney Frank’s statement is a reasonable one, in which he notes that the hard right approach of cutting all services and having a government you could “drown in the bathtub” would have meant that the people of Boston would not have been able to get the help they needed. That’s actually not so much political as it is a simple dose of reality. The libertarian approach of “I got mine, heck with you” means that those people who can afford to take care of themselves will be okay, and everyone else, well, you’ll just have to deal with it. So Frank is correct on this.
But let’s allow that and just stay with O’Reilly not liking the left wing political statements he was hearing. And I’d agree with him that anyone stating that they hoped that the bomber turned out to be caucasian was saying something fairly distasteful.
However, O’Reilly must also be condemning the political comments being made from the right – such as Rush Limbaugh repeatedly screaming that he’d heard that Boston had arrested a man with “brown skin” and crowing about it for hours. O’Reilly must also be preparing an on-air confrontation with not only Limbaugh but Greg Gutfield to deal with their comments about banning pressure cookers, since both guys thought it would be funny to compare that with the gun legislation they were trying to ridicule. And O’Reilly must be preparing a Talking Points memo in which he apologizes to his viewers for his own politicizaton of the matter on the very night of the bombings, when he shoehorned the failed Benghazi smear into the discussion.
I’ll be waiting to see if O’Reilly can actually walk the walk on this – he says he’s equally hard on the right doesn’t he? (We’ll try not to shine too hard a light on that “We need to hold the House and take the Senate” line…) Or does O’Reilly only care about this stuff if the political language he hears is coming from the left?
Lynch-mob talk is not democracy.
off-topic: the vote on gun regulation has definitively placed the USA among the barbarians in the minds of civilised nations. I’m totally disgusted at the feckless idiots who should have voted for this but didn’t.
