For fans of Bill O’Reilly it’s hard to understand what it is about him that bothers the rest of us. I was having a dialog with my father about him when I tripped over a classic example of the problem.
The transcript is here:
From Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly site.
Let me get to the key points of just one piece of this video:
“…. Williams takes his orders…..” (as if Brian Williams is a puppet and has no say in anything he does)
“…. from NBC President Jeffrey Zucker, a committed liberal…” (WHAT?!? and this is a crime because????)
“…. who has completely RUINED the news operation…” (Really? More staw-man in a long list and it’s not true. It’s his opinion. NBC News is at the top of the heap drawing 10 million viewers nightly. Fox can’t even get anywhere near that number. Interesting metric there Bill.)
“…. turning it into the most far-left outfit in the HISTORY of broadcasting…” (Does this man realize the network he’s broadcasting from? This sort of pot calling the kettle black commentary doesn’t work on me. I have a pulse.)
“…. Zucker has also destroyed NBC’s prime-time entertainment line-up…” (another staw-man comment designed to bring more haze to the issue. It has NOTHING to do with the point here. NOTHING. Why is this mentioned at all?)
“…. Now, if you saw the hate MSNBC spewed last night…..” (Classic. Now MSNBC is a culprit by-proxy if ANY of the people they interview says anything wrong… Hmm, do you not see a HUMONGOUS double-standard here? Fox has this going on all day. O’Reilly calls Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer” but bears no responsibility for anything.)
“…. there can be no question that NBC news is now totally out of control….” (Huh? So they have a guest on who says something Bill doesn’t like and now they’re out of control? No Bill, it doesn’t work that way. TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL?????)
“…. Remember, NBC has never, ever said a negative word about Tiller’s activities….” (RIGHT! Because they’re REPORTING the news, not MAKING the news. I don’t give a damn what Brian William’s opinions are. I want the news. O’Reilly not knowing what reporting is doesn’t surprise me.)
“…. Tiller became a millionaire doing this…..” (He became a millionaire providing a LEGAL service to LEGAL citizens looking for a LEGAL procedure that is their own personal choice and private decision. Why is this mentioned? Is this more unbiased “reporting”?)
“…. gaining the disdain of millions…..” (What does this have to do with anything? Howard Stern earned millions while being hated by millions. So? This is America is it not? Conservatives are capitalists aren’t they?)
“…. but you’ll never hear any of that on NBC News….” (Another lie. Just go to MSNBC and type Late Term Abortion. I did. Funny how easy it was to find just what he said you wouldn’t find. It just sounds good to tell the choir this because they won’t check it. An entire news network never mentions the contentious situation that is late term abortion? Give me a break…..)
“…. the blame once again falls on General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt… (So now the blame for something that isn’t true falls on the CEO of GE for NOT saying something but O’Reilly bares NO BLAME when he does say something?)
“…. But what Mr. Immelt may not know is that Federal authorizies have developed information about General Electric doing business with Iran…” (What in the HOLY HELL has this got to do with what he said? Again, obfuscate and change the subject off him. That’s all this is.)
That’s one single segment of 1:44 seconds and that’s 13 highly-questionable quotes from it. That’s the problem. I watch him and have this sort of experience all the time.
Bill O’Reilly is a liar. It’s just the way he is. He says whatever he thinks he can get away with not realizing that in today’s digital age it’s a simple matter to check or not caring because he knows 99.9% of his viewership will never bother to do so or listen to the rest of us that take the time.
Take another quick example. I’ve been told that Bill is very balanced and, as an example of his sincerity and balance I was pointed to the fact that he “apologized” for one of his most recent lies about CNN. He had claimed that, with the exception of Anderson Cooper, no one on CNN had reported the death of a Private at a recruiting office.
Here’s a link to both the “apology” and the story that triggered it:
From PolitiFact.com
Here’s the text of the “apology”:
“…. we have a correction…. a RARE correction on The Factor…. Earlier this week I said that only Anderson Cooper on CNN covered the murder of Private Long in Arkansas. Well today a snide and surly guy on CNN pointed out that the story was covered more extensively by that network and that is true. I was wrong. My apologies to CNN. I was talking about prime time but I did not say that, so I was wrong. As they say in third grade, my bad. Now on Monday we’ll have more on how CNN handled the uh, Private Long and Tiller story to make a comparison, so don’t miss that.”
Only blind supporters would see this as a valid apology. If anyone apologized to you like this for anything they did none of you would accept it as sincere. How anyone can point to an apology that includes the phrase “snide and surly guy” and then a defense (“I was talking about prime time”) and finally, and to the point, a commercial for a segment that will attempt to again make the point for the thing he lied about, is a mystery to me.
I’m supposed to view this as evidence of his balanced, fair style? Color me lost. Oh, and even more to the point, there’s ANOTHER LIE within this apology. He said, specifically, that he was talking about PRIME TIME. Bull. Here’s the original quote:
“…. so all day long it wasn’t news to cover an army recruiter getting gunned down in Arkansas….”
Since when is “all day long” prime time???? Talk about balls. Bill O’Reilly is a liar, period.
7 Comments
O’Reilly sucks because he thinks and blathers about morays according to his parents and how he was brought up, as if that were perfection, and everyone used to be like that. He acts like he is the first one to think of his cogent solutions. O’Reilly comments on sex, as if he were the conscience of the man/woman-on the-street. He is not critically thoughtful, only versed. He doesn’t read (I will bet you a million dollars).
O’Reilly sucks because he is a well-coached phony. He pretends a familial connection to the Catholic Church, yet removes himself from the dogma he is, supposedly, bound to. He is as elitist and self-perfected as those he names as immoral. I will bet a billion dollars, that he is not a reader. His opinions carry neither weight, nor depth. Forget about him. He has no influence, other than his ability to be duped on national television.
I worry about him simply because millions of people in this country revere him and believe he speaks with unquestionable integrity even though that claim is as paper-thin as they come. It’s the same phenomenon with Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. These people rile the converted in ways their own commentary decries in the opposition.
As a radical republican I can often see both sides of the story without getting too excited by all these smoke and mirrors. People want to get so bent out of shape by what the other side is saying about them. I am in favor of abortion, and have no problems with how Dr,. Tiller made his millions. So my 1ST point is this: NOT EVERYONE WHO WATCHES FOX NEWS BELIEVES EVERYTHING THAT FALLS OUT OF O’REILLY’S MOUTH IS HOLY GOSPEL. However I do regularly listen to Rush during drive time, and he usually backs up his claims with audio clips and reports. My 2nd point is this: WHEN PEOPLE ABSORB THEIR DAILY NEWS MEDIA, THEY SOMETIMES FORGET THAT THERE IS A CONTEXT TO EVERY STORY. If you remove the context of the story, like this guy did with his blog, (for example all the quoted text was from O’Reilly defending himself). What this blog doesn’t tell you is that O’Reilly was simply trying to defend himself against his critics who claimed that he incited Dr. Tiller’s murderer. His defense was to point the finger back at NBC (I believe this was a mistake). O’Reilly claims that NBC has “relentless labeled this country a ‘torture country’, and ‘a country run by human rights violators'” – and therefore, using liberal logic; if he is guilty for inciting the murder of Dr. Tiller, than NBC should be guilty for inciting Abdulhakim Muhammad to kill american soldier recruits. My final point is this: PEOPLE ON TV GET PAID LOTS OF MONEY. THE MORE PEOPLE WATCH, THE MORE MONEY THE NETWORK MAKES, AND THUS THE MORE THE PERSON ON TV MAKES. PEOPLE ON TV ARE GOING TO SAY THINGS TO GET RATINGS. PERIOD. If you hang on every word a political analyst says about your political affiliate, eventually you are going to hear something you don’t like. And that is the beauty of our country: if you don’t like how the media unfairly portrays all of the political parties – then CHANGE THE FUCKING CHANNEL.
Phillip, thanks for the detailed and non-anonymous comment. This particular post is one of many on Bill O’Reilly. I find the man to be passionate but often a jerk and, more to the point, an outright liar. The quotes in question are all anyone needs to see to get the full context of a situation. You don’t need a doctoral thesis to understand what O’Reilly was saying here. He absolutely positively called Dr. Tiller a baby killer and then denied ever having done so. The only quotes necessary towards the context here are the ones provided showing him a) saying it and b) denying having said it. Anything else is superfluous.
I agree entirely with your perspective that these talking heads say almost anything to simply get ratings. O’Reilly just recently was quoted as saying he used to try to cover real news but found people simply couldn’t follow it so he went the simpler route.
For me this is part of the problem. My main issue with the pundits on Fox News is that their rhetoric goes beyond the norm and often is inciting outright hostility and violence. What I do most often with Fox News and conservative radio (most especially with Rush) is, as you so eloquently put it, change the f’ing channel.
My main problem with Mr. O’Reilly is that he continues to try to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt. This obviously is his PC side coming out. He occasionally will criticize a guest for making an assertion such as Dick Morris saying that Barak Obama will get the black vote. O’reilly chided Morris saying that the black vote was not monolithic and then less than a month later made the same statement himself. I like his show much better than I like him. Though some have suggested that he is hateful it is not true but he is painfully naive. I have watched MSNBC a lot lately. Watch them if you want to see hatefulness. They positively drip it.
Said like a complete conservative… On one hand you say the President shouldn’t be given any slack and then you rail against MSNBC for spewing hate. If all you do is rail against the President (as you seem to suggest wanting) then isn’t that pretty much bordering on hate speech?
As an Independent I watch all the various networks and what I see is a mirror image on MSNBC and Fox. Both look virtually identical to me (and I find my other Independent friends feel the same). I find my conservative friends are blind to the hate on Fox and my liberal friends are blind to the hate on MSNBC. Isn’t that curious?