Bill O’Reilly began his Talking Points segment last night by saying that the presidential campaign has “spent a lot of time on things that don’t really matter.” O’Reilly cited contraception and President Obama’s religion as examples. But then he got to the “very important and, I think, a dangerous situation.” So what is that most important and dangerous situation? Welfare slackers. Or, as O’Reilly put it, “millions of Americans who want free stuff from the government.” He counted reproductive rights activist Sandra Fluke in that group and made another effort to smear her as a slut.
For the second night in a row, O’Reilly harped on the Alexandra Pelosi video interviewing a slew of welfare kings. We saw, maybe, six slackers interviewed – the same guy or guys O’Reilly thought should be jailed the night before. But that handful was all O’Reilly needed to “prove” that kicking people off welfare is the number one national priority.
O’Reilly continued by saying that 22% of Americans are “currently receiving some kind of government entitlement.”
“The truth is, we can’t afford it,” O’Reilly said. “We don’t have the money for everybody’s birth control or dating life.” It was not just a reference to Fluke but a way of linking her to the welfare recipients in the video, one of whom talked about wanting to date, not get a job. I hope Fox News’ Kirsten Powers caught that.
One thing that O’Reilly never seems to notice – that almost one third of Americans (and in some states more than 40%) are working poor. That is, they’re not welfare slackers but unable to live above the poverty line on their wages. Why is it that O'Reilly never looks out for those folks?
Instead, O’Reilly moved on to throwing Obama in with the welfare crowd. First, O’Reilly played a clip of Mitt Romney saying, “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy.” Praising Romney for “(doing) the country a favor” in making that remark, O’Reilly added a distinctly more inflammatory cast by adding, “President Obama has created a scenario that actually encourages an entitlement society.”
How so? Because Obama has said the rich are not paying their fair share. According to O’Reilly that leads “some Americans” to think they “deserve free stuff because the rich guys are getting things they shouldn’t be getting.” Of course, that’s O’Reilly’s theorizing about how “some Americans” react to a tax hike for the rich. Why bother to prove it? O'Reilly played a clip of SEIU’s Stephen Lerner on Democracy Now talking about this being a good time to redistribute wealth, with the suggestion that was proof. But Lerner was referring to the Occupy movement’s influence not Obama’s.
O’Reilly wrapped up with some fear mongering: “If the progressive forces prevail, we will become a quasi-socialistic nation and our debt will continue at record levels. In my opinion, that’s dangerous as all get out.”
I wonder for how long? There was a time when the “most important” campaign issue was national defense {2004} . . . then it was the recession {2008} . . . then it was an intrusive federal government {2010} . . .
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This country loses more money in a year by enabling the CORPORATE WELFARE system than is “lost” through a decade of welfare for the poor and disadvantaged. (And NONE of that money that goes to the corporate fatcats gets down to the workers. No, it winds up being funneled back into various PACS designed to put MORE “corporate-friendly” politicians in office so they can enact more laws to create even more corporate welfare. And NONE of the GOP leaders or their mouthpieces at FoxNoise seem the least bit interested in discussing that “inconvenient truth.” No, you get the likes of Palin and Bachmann decrying “crony capitalism.” I suppose what they describe as “crony capitalism” really means “companies that won’t give us millions of dollars in bribes—I mean, campaign contributions.”)
Somehow I doubt he bothered to discuss that video’s CONTENT. If he discussed anything about it, he likely went after the “unfairness” of the video. Both Pelosi and Bill Maher pointed out that the interview subjects were absolutely representative of all the people whose interviews wound up on the cutting room floor. (The subjects had been deliberately chosen to represent the people who were most likely to go vote in the then-upcoming GOP primary. The main focus of the piece was to determine why so many POOR people vote for GOPers whose policies adversely affect them. Obviously, the reason is sheer utter stupidity.)
