Bill O’Reilly just can’t seem to stop thinking about Sandra Fluke. Last night, he mentioned her numerous times on one show – and even led off the show’s opening with her. I counted five segments where he discussed abortion and/or Fluke. Including one where the Factor’s ambush producer, Jesse Watters, mentioned off-hand that he had tried to "stake out" Fluke. And yet, O’Reilly lectured President Obama for not focusing enough on the bad economy “rather than ginning up phony controversies.”
Although O’Reilly is supposed to be “looking out for you,” he was downright deceptive in his narrative about the Democratic convention. First, he said in his Talking Points segment (the first video below) that Planned Parenthood wants abortion “without limits with taxpayers’ funding.” Planned Parenthood’s speaker, Cecile Richards, said nothing even remotely of the sort.
O’Reilly continued by sneering, “and just to make sure we didn’t miss that point, Sandra Fluke was given a high profile speaking slot to put forth her vision of the country.”
Viewers saw a clip of Fluke saying, “An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds that we don’t want and our doctors say that we don’t need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it.”
O’Reilly added, “Now, Ms. Fluke came across as smug and immature in my opinion.”
Well, Bill, that’s how you come across with your mean-spirited, misogynistic attacks on her that don’t even tell the truth. Fluke was not giving her vision of the country, as you falsely described, but giving her vision of Mitt Romney’s America. If you had the maturity and integrity to play the clip in context, your viewers would have known that the beginning of Fluke’s statement was:
During this campaign, we’ve heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women—and how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past.
One can’t help but wonder why O’Reilly deliberately distorted Fluke’s and Richards’ words to an audience that tunes in looking for a “no spin zone.”
Whatever the reason, O’Reilly was not finished with his attacks on Fluke and pro-choice women. He gleefully cited a Peggy Noonan piece which, O’Reilly said, had described Fluke as a “ninny, a narcissist and a fool.”
Then, after a swipe at Caroline Kennedy for speaking out publicly as a Catholic on behalf of choice and a swipe at Democrats over the “God” in the party platform kerfuffle, O’Reilly said – without a trace of irony:
T-Points believes the economy’s bad and the Democratic Party should spend the bulk of its time trying to fix that rather than ginning up phony controversies and promoting divisive class warfare.
Apparently, O’Reilly believes Obama should do as O’Reilly says he should do, not how O’Reilly says and does.
Oh, and if O’Reilly’s next comment wasn’t needlessly divisive, I don’t know what is:
I simply cannot figure out why President Obama has handed his party over to extremists.
Later, after a debate with Juan Williams, in which O’Reilly hostilely insisted that Fluke is “an extremist,” he hosted Factor producer and ambush guy, Jesse Watters. He and O’Reilly chatted about their experiences at the DNC and Watters showed video of some “man on the street” type interviews he had done at the convention. Then Watters relayed this anecdote as he rolled some video:
We were trying to stake out Sandra Fluke. So I said, ‘There she is.’ So we chased her down. My camera guy thought that Eva Longoria’s assistant was Sandra Fluke. So all of a sudden, he elbows Eva Longoria out of the way and turns the camera on her assistant. So that’s why it looked a little hectic out there.
But O’Reilly wasn’t done with the subject of abortion. He veered off from a discussion with Bernard Goldberg about 60 Minutes’ interview with Navy SEAL author “Mark Owen” in order to discuss Cokie Roberts’ criticism that there had been too much focus on that issue at the DNC.
Despite his stated concern for the bad economy, O’Reilly said not a word about the economic speeches at the convention. There was lots of talk about the economy in President Obama’s speech. Also in President Clinton’s and Vice President Biden’s. Why didn’t O’Reilly want to discuss any of them, if he believes the economy is so paramount?
Oh. You mean he was found guilty by a jury of his peers? Gee. Golly. What will Obama do next, I wonder?
A neat example of how they twist words at FNC
The Spokesperson for Obama says “… we are starting to pull outselves out of a hole…”
Doocy asks “have we really pulled outselves out of a hole?”
If Doocy did not intend to mis-represent what was said, he gets an “F” in English.
@mlp !: The only person out of sync with the general trend this morning has so far been Juan Williams on Bill O’Reilly’s show (I caught a rerun just before F&F First). It’s been 2.5 hours since then and nary a sign of anybody out of tune with the chorus.
I remember a few years ago when Bill’s crew (I don’t know it was Watters) went after Bill Moyers of PBS, and Mr. Moyers was able to turn it around and even invited Bill to come on his show for a debate. Bill never showed this on his show.
The problem I have with these man on the streets interviews is if you’re only looking for those will come across as weak and foolish, odds are you’ll find a few, and ignore airing those who do not.
They’ve spent nearly 12 years making this bed…..it’s a joy watching them try to sleep in it!
Remember the staffer who sued him for sexual harassment and the Loofah.
Bill’s a bully and Juan Williams is my choice as top dog of the day.
Well, Bill, we’ve been asking the same question of the republicans for a few years now. That makes us even, I guess (?)
Off-topic with reference to: [Bill O’Reilly] veered off from a discussion with Bernard Goldberg about 60 Minutesâ interview with Navy SEAL author âMark Owenâ.
I find it ironic (and infuriating) to watch now everybody on FNC is studiously ignoring the fact that it was FNC and only FNC (how does one get to do bold on this) who revealed Owen’s real name with home address and phone number. Great scoop, wow, that’s great journalism, folks! (snark warning)
They’re trying to bury that wee little fact by showing rerun after rerun of an interview of the parents of a SEAL who had felt endangered after President Obama praised the SEALs for having taken out Osama Bin Laden. (FNC prefers to insinuate that the President suggested he’d done that all by himself.)
It doesn’t appear that their son was actually on the team but he was a member of the SEAL contingent and simply mentioning “the SEALs” had worried him to the point of paranoia. He was killed by a roadside bomb shortly thereafter. I share the parents’ grief for their loss and hope they’re being well paid for helping in this shameful attempt by FNC to divert attention from its own actions.
To my mind, FNC may have placed the lives of both families (Owen’s and the parents of that SEAL) in serious danger.
