Bill O'Reilly decided to take off after his liberal critics yesterday, devoting his Talking Points Memo to the "far left smear machine" -- ostensibly headed up by MoveOn.org and George Soros, underneath whom is David ("a guttersnipe") Brock's Media Matters. On the next tier are the evil liberal blogs, MSNBC, and the liberal media.
Hoo boy. It must be nice, on Planet Wingnuttia, to be able to throw a bunch of people who have no connection to each other up on a chart and say that's proof they're conspiring.
My favorite part of the rant came when (stealing from Patterico without crediting him) he trotted out a poll from August 2006 (conducted by Fox News, natch) suggesting Democrats did not want George W. Bush to succeed then.
Um, guys? In August 2006, George W. Bush had been in office the better part of six years -- by which time he had already made a complete bollox of things, his approval ratings were in sharp decline, and his further success might mean electoral success for a Republican in 2008.
It's now only March of 2009 -- less than two months into Obama's tenure. And Republicans are already openly announcing his desire for him to fail. Opposition is natural and to be expected, but the Right will not even give Barack Obama a chance out of the gate.
In any event, O'Reilly then brought on Bernard Goldberg, who proceeded to list the five top components of the "far left smear machine":
They are, in order:
5. "The Hollywood Glitzocracy"
4. Bill Moyers
3. Daily Kos
2. The New York Times
1. MSNBC
About Kos, there was this:
Goldberg: They have one of, if not the biggest, left-wing political websites. They are rabidly anti-conservative, yet its founder, Markos Moulitsas, has so much clout that not only does he get on the most mainstream of shows, Meet the Press, to talk politics, but the Democrats who are running for president of the United States went there and made speeches to the Daily Kos convention, that's how afraid they are of offending the Daily Kos.
O'Reilly: And it's about as hateful as you possibly -- you can't get a more hateful website than them.
Um, guys? The 2007 YearlyKos convention to which Goldberg refers was connected to Kos only in name; it was run by an independent organization now called Netroots Nation. It was in fact the national gathering of liberal bloggers, not merely those from Kos, and those candidates came to try to garner support from bloggers, not out of fear of Kos.
As for Kos being a "hateful" site -- one of O'Reilly's oldest and most specious charges -- he evidently wiped right out of his memory cells the recent revelation that there are indeed many sites significantly more hateful than Kos -- and they're right-wing sites.
Indeed, don't be surprised if one of the hard cases from Stormfront winds up reading Bernie's latest list and drawing from it the same kind of inspiration as David Adkisson did.
