You know how Bill O'Reilly says he is on a jihad against "gibberish" about "deadly terrorism?" How he's so concerned about truth telling and calling out BS that he ignores what people think of him? Well, he'd better be out there condemning Glenn Beck's heinous exploitation of the shooting death in Houston's Bush International Airport yesterday the same way O'Reilly condemned the "out-of-control" "far left" May Day protesters. Otherwise, he will have exposed himself conclusively as in bed with Beck's inciteful rhetoric and a fraudulent concern troll when it comes to the left.
As Right Wing Watch noted (and recorded), Beck had his own, special - and self-serving in a particularly hateful way - take on the shooting. Here's how Fox News reported what happened at Bush International Airport:
A man who fired shots near a ticket counter at Houston's largest airport on Thursday was killed after being confronted by a law enforcement official, a Houston police spokesman said.It's unclear if the man fatally shot himself or was killed by a Homeland Security agent who had confronted him, said Houston police spokesman Kese Smith. The man's name was not released by police, but they said he was about 30-years-old.
...The agent, who was in his office, came out and confronted the man, telling him to drop his weapon, but the man refused, police said.
"The suspect then turned toward the special agent. The special agent, fearing for his safety and all the passengers in the terminal, discharged his weapon at the same time it appears the suspect may have shot himself," Smith said.
But here's how Beck framed the events on his television program, live from Houston, where he is to speak to the NRA tomorrow, as reported by Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch:
Despite the fact that he literally had no evidence whatsoever, Beck was pretty certain that this was some sort of false flag operation because "the idea that this is a coincidence ... is too much to believe."
"If I were an honest journalist," Beck said, "I would find out where these guns came from; were they purchased or were they illegal. Oh, if they're illegal, I could guarantee you this is a set-up. Someone knows history. I do. At least I know enough history to know about the burning of the Reichstag"
As is well known by now, Beck's incendiary hate mongering got him pushed out of Fox News after advertisers fled him. But that has not stopped O'Reilly from presenting Beck as a credible pundit ever since. O'Reilly needs to either acknowledge Beck's intolerable extremism or else explain why he continues to condone it.
Video below via RWW.
And it’s interesting to me that Beckel would say such things about O’Reilly who tries to come across more even-handed on the air, but not about Hannity. One has to wonder what Hannity is like off the air – is he really that angry and hateful toward anyone not on the far right, or is this just a pose for the viewers and listeners?
But after watching the Imus segment, I’m wondering if there isn’t some big mutiny going on against him at Fox. If so, it would not surprise me. O’Reilly has been losing it on the air (Colmes, the Denver Post editor, Laura Ingraham, e.g.). It seems quite likely he’s even worse off the air.
Last night, there was a very strange interview between O’Reilly and James Carville, in which O’Reilly laughably insisted that he was disliked just as much by the far right as he is by the left. He went on to make discredited statements about Alisa LaPolt Snow and others, and then went on to describe MSNBC as “far left”. It’s a good thing I wasn’t taking a drink at that moment or I might have seen it come out my nose.
O’Reilly isn’t hated by the far right, unless you’re talking about the way-over-the-top birthers/truthers/etc. And that’s a pretty small fringe group. I suppose O’Reilly could say he’s disliked by the Ron Paul crowd, but most of that group are genuinely uninformed. That’s the group that loves Alex Jones and keeps getting suckered into buying his books and tapes. I suppose O’Reilly could say that hard right viewers didn’t like him talking about thumping the bible in the discussion of gay rights. But the thing there was that it was a semantic discussion. O’Reilly wasn’t disagreeing with their position, and he made that clear – he was just telling them to frame their argument in a different manner so they could win.
When it comes to the left, I truly wonder if O’Reilly has really dealt with them. If he thinks that Lawrence O’Donnell is a real lefty because he mentioned socialism on his show, then this may explain why O’Reilly has so rarely interviewed anyone from the actual left in this country. I’m not talking about liberal Democrats like, say, Jerry Brown or the late Teddy Kennedy or even Barney Frank or Bernie Sanders. I’m talking about the left wing. When was the last time Bill O’Reilly interviewed Amy Goodman of Democracy Now? When was the last time Bill O’Reilly discussed media issues with Jeff Cohen or Norman Solomon? When was the last time Bill O’Reilly discussed the economy with Dean Baker or Doug Henwood? When was the last time Bill O’Reilly discussed national security with Peter Kornbluh or Robert Parry? When was the last time Bill O’Reilly discussed history and politics with people like Larry Bensky and Roger Morris? I believe that the answer to all of those questions is never. Bill O’Reilly dismisses the left, but he does so without ever having really talked to them.
A) O’Reilly will condemn hate speech from the right.
B) He could condemn anything like he condemns leftist protestors.
C) He could even show enough integrity to try.
If he does condemn this, it’ll be because Ailes told him to support the network on the feud with Beck. He won’t even condemn Hannity on his own, and it’s no secret he’d love to leave Seannie Boy begging in the street.
