WATB of the Week: Bill O'Reilly claims, 'There was no cheerleading of President Bush on this network'
By David Neiwert Tuesday Oct 13, 2009 2:00pm
Bill O'Reilly was helping lead the chorus of whining that erupted on Fox News yesterday in response to Anita Dunn speaking the truth about their right-wing propaganda operation.
He opened with a Talking Points Memo segment attacking Dunn and the White House. He wrapped it up with a series of claims that could only have been uttered by someone who's pathologically delusional:
Finally, Ms. Dunn is seeing the world through the prism of the other media, like NBC News and CNN. By all accounts, those networks favored Barack Obama over John McCain, and NBC actually promoted the president's candidacy and continues to give him excellent coverage.
So by that measure, Fox News is indeed troublesome to the White House. But our hard news coverage is fair and balanced. Again, if somebody doesn't believe that, let's see the evidence because bloviating walks.
Oy. Where to begin. Over the years, there's been a mountain of evidence amassed -- both here at C&L as well as such sites as Media Matters and ThinkProgress -- demonstrating Fox News' extraordinary right-wing bias, and its utter lack of anything approaching fairness or balance. Indeed, Fox's adoption of the phrase "fair and balanced" has transformed it into a popular reference to up-is-down Newspeak.
The fact that O'Reilly blithely dismisses this mountain as the product of a "far left bias" by those groups is itself clear evidence of his own bias: It's clear he a priori dismisses any facts produced by such groups, regardless of their actual validity.
O'Reilly wants evidence of an utter lack of "fairness and balance"? OK, let's try a single sample out of that mountain: Griff Jenkins' reportage from the "Tea Party Express" in which he not only blatantly led the teabaggers in their anti-Obama chants, but where a Fox producer was caught exhorting the crowds to cheer.
Of course, O'Reilly will never accept such evidence simply because it disproves his claim. Yeh, that's the Fox brand of "fair and balanced."
But O'Reilly really severed any tie with reality in the following part of the segment, where he talked over the White House meanies with fellow Foxite Brit Hume. Reaching his apotheosis when the subject of Fox's treatment of George W. Bush came up, O'Reilly claimed:
O'Reilly: And I have to say that when President Bush was in trouble in Iraq, this network and this program, and your program as well, routinely, routinely hammered President Bush. On Iraq.
Hume: Well, we certainly -- we, we were very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq for a very long period of time. The criticisms that were made of him were reported and discussed at length on Fox News. Um, now, he had his defenders, the war had its defenders, there was commentary on Fox --
O'Reilly: But there was no cheerleading -- There was no cheerleading of President Bush on this network when his administration ran into trouble. There was no cheerleading, you know -- it was skeptical coverage, Iraq's going south, when the economy started to wobble last September, we were right on that.
OK, done with that long belly laugh? Good. Because we all remember how Fox not only fawned over every move made by the Bush administration, but how it viciously attacked anyone who dared criticize Bush or Dick Cheney or their incompetent gang of cronies.
Recall how it attacked war critics as the situation worsened in Iraq? (It also transformed proponents of the war into "critics" when it became convenient to do so.) How it openly cheerled for Gen. Petraeus?
Remember how O'Reilly routinely attacked anyone who criticized the Bush torture regime?
Then there was the way O'Reilly consistently dismissed the Abu Ghraib scandal as unimportant.
Remember how it routinely attacked Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, and sturdily defended Scooter Libby?
And those are just a few examples of how Fox didn't merely cheerlead for the Bush administration, but also acted as its propaganda arm by viciously attacking its critics. And there's no shortage of evidence of that reality at all.
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In Bill's world, he would be wearing a skirt and shaking his loofah-poms if he was really "cheerleading" for Bush.
"Would be?" I think we can safely say "is".
That aside...there no doubt in my mind this man is a sick individual. To blantant lie about something so obvious is a sign of a true sociopath. He truely believes he can get away with anything by just denying it.
..in Faux-world, just saying it DOES make it so. That's how they've managed to whittle their audience down to the 20% who believe what they hear all of the time.
I was just going to say that BillO (referred to as "it" from not on) is just preaching to the choir of unthinking fools. It will play the victim and cry and moan, and the fools will support it and the evil for which it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnwyQFe3wRA
Has anyone seen the Fox "Fair and Balanced" commercial aired during Rachel and/or Keith's shows? That alone aggravates me to no end. I realize MSNBC is in this for the money but to air that crap during your two most liberal shows is russian roulette. Anyway, in the clip O'Reilly says "unlike other networks, we're not rooting for anyone". Their viewers actually think that's true. They are shameless for sure!
And the bear doesn't shit in the woods.
If O'Reilly wants to claim that there was no cheerleading for Bush on Fox, he might want to check with Fox's top "news" man, Brit Hume. On Obama's inauguration day Hume (and his pal Chris Wallace) felt compelled to praise Bush:
It was all about how Bush kept American safe - except for that one little incident on 9/11. And the thousands of dead American soldiers, and their familes, probably don't feel so safe. Not to mention the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians and other non-combatant casualties.
The right wing is suffering from...
OBAMA TRAUMA
Obama Psychotics.
I think Billo is directly responding to an old Media Matters post regarding Hume.
Analysis as cheerleading: a day in the life of the "FOX All-Stars"
Thanks for this item, C&L.
There is something here that is alarming, however, and Fox looks to be ramping up to use it. They are claiming that MSNBC somehow 'gives the Pres better coverage', and I assume that is a setup to bash other networks (MSNBC in particular) as somehow 'giving the Pres special time'.
I suspect that there is an underlying TECHNICAL layer here that Fox is either misunderstanding, **ore else distorting.**
MS + NBC stands for 'Microsoft' NBC, if memory serves me correctly. Back in the late 90s, Microsoft bought up NBC at a time when 'cable' and 'fiber optic' were being laid in preparation for what we have today: streaming online media.
CBS never had the resources, plus no big software firm bought it and it didn't have a cable infrastructure.
Only CNN and NBC had the available **cable** infrastructure to use in order to leverage their way onto the new, high-speed highway. As I recall, people were salivating just dreaming of future 'revenue streams' to pay-per-view online.
Then along came flat-rate plans, like Netflix.
And PBS, streaming free content.
Then it turned out that any newspaper that could figure out a digital camera and some server space could deliver video online, morphing news media and formats.
Fox got left in the dust due to its lack of infrastructure.
In terms of media formats, it is heavily AM radio, heavily teevee, but it doesn't have the cable delivery capacity of CNN or MSNBC.
Microsoft divested itself of NBC, but that move from over a decade ago still left the cable arm (MSNBC) more competitive b/c of its infrastructure.
Dave Niewart, if I'm incorrect please offer accurate info.
But for Fox to blame MSNBC's emergence on 'favorable coverage to the Pres' is a crock. MSNBC is in it for the money, just like everyone else. What MSNBC has -- and Fox doesn't -- is the online delivery capacity.
I happen to view that as poetic justice, but Fox seems to want to think it is being victimized by some kind of liberal conspiracy. That's whiny stupidity.
It's losing because its business model peaked in about 2005.
In the past 3 years, MSNBC has taken over because it's made some smart business moves to take advantage of good delivery infrastructure.
about the fucking lies they spread all over.
Well not in the Andover cum wannabe cowboi way . .
Pass the loofa!
And not just O'Reilly....the whole Fox machine....
what you said!
Truly psychotic this babble that Faux Noise doesn't cheerlead for republican(t)s or didn't cheerlead for Bush. I know we can't ask Billo the Clown to get with it; he's got his head so far up Murdoch's tush he can't see nothin'!
The only reason billo,hannity,hume, and a lot of other fox people even have a job is murdoc! He has bought their loyalty. All of these people were washed up at other places. Out of the main stream of thinking, had no other prospects, none that would pay these poor fools what they manage to get now. I am telling you that kind of money buys real loyalty. As long as the money lasts.
But maybe they have a good retirement plan.
republicanism is a mental illness!
Loofahs are felafels.
lol
Aw bullshit!
yet you demand people believe you over their lying eyes.
That's why these wingnuts are evil, that's why these terrorists are sooo dangerous. Born Again Bigot O'Lielly and his ilk are so delusional that they can continue to LIE in front of thousands of viewers without the blink of an eye.
Rupert Murdoch was asked if his global media enterprise has shaped the perception of the war. Murdoch replied, “No, I don’t think so. I mean we tried.” Tried in what way? “We basically supported… I will say supported the bush policy.”
http://foxnewsboycott.com/rupert-murdoch/rupe...
Anyone who has been paying attention to the propaganda coming out of Faux Noise the past 10 years knows this scumbag is lying through his teeth.
Fox viewers are simply stupid fuckers.
then it must be....
"according to the Paris Business Review".
When you play Fox's name-calling game, you get 5 minutes a pop, and they have a network who plops out one wingnut after another with the same agenda. It's useless to play that game.
What you do is to isolate them by calling them out for being elitist, racist, imperialist, anti-union, anti-worker, anti-progress...., and be specific. Fox is king of laying out amorphous, ad naseum attacks on progressives.
Let's play it our way.
All I ask, for the love of Dog, please don't post the Malkin-as-Cheerleader video.
Please?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mPkOberRCo
Now for more analysis, let's turn to former Bush Administration man Karl Rove.
...Except that his car ran off a road into a deep, fast-flowing, torrential river with him in it, and neither it nor he has been found.
Anything else is completely irrelevant.
I much prefer a prioress, thankee very much:
http://static.thefrisky.com/images/uploads/se...
(a Billo Bob?), but I'm coming down with something right now, and I'm afraid Billo's latest whoppers will literally make me sick if I give them the condescencion they deserve... :S
That said though, I agree with someone further up who says he really he has to be a sociopath if he can lie this blatantly.
Baghdad Bob today:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/21813/the-simpsons-...
Although I'm sure he'd be right at home on Fox Snooze! :P
Remember how he threatened the Coit Tower because some university there didn't want military recruiters on their campus, recruiting for the Iraq war natch.
These wingnuts still can't realize that what they say is captured on tape. They lie and are proven wrong over and over and over. They were and still are in the tank for the Bush Crime Family. They have the chief propaganda officer, KKK, on the payroll still.
I'm speechless. Drinking my Schlitz beer (hey, we're in a recession) and pondering whether to post this link on my Facebook page, thereby making my few conservative friends' heads explode, just like that movie Scanners. What do you think? Is it worth it?
It will indeed blow their minds to discover that Billo is a liar, and most of what he says can be shown to be lies pulled from the files of the BBB (Bureau of Billo's Butt). ;)
for you, I will :)
:)
You're full of Schlitz?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyHiGHKReRg
Schlitz - $12/case. Delicious.
In my day, $12 would buy you four joints
And I ain't talkin' mutton.
and lying comes second nature to him.
Didn't Fox News do an hour long special hosted by Bret Baier that talked about what a great man Bush is and how much like Lincoln he is? Didn't they also sell this special as a DVD to their sheeple?
Meanwhile BillO kept giving Bush chance after chance by moving out the goalposts with regards to Bush's plan for the Iraq war, first 18 months then 12 months then 6 months. BillO was nothing more than an apologist for Bush.
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200701250014
Newshounds.us also has mounds of evidence proving that Fox and BillO is not fair and balanced.
After enough Schlitz or Lone Star no one remains in balance.
It was not cheerleading. It was more like deification.
Cheerleading would be putting too mildly. Guess that's why Bush and Cheney would ONLY due exclusive interviews with their pals at Fauz News.
Well there you have it. Case closed I guess! Bill's dishonest comment trumps the rest of our own eyes and ears. Bill challenges people to show that Fox is biased then he comes back with "Nuh uh, you're stoopid, Nyaaahh!"
doesn't mean climax. It means the moment at which he becomes a god. Please don't ever use this word in a sentence about Bill O'Reilly again.
Stung?Critque?Skeptical? Hammered bush on Iraq? Enormous piles of horse shit. Like I said these people could not find work that would pay them to make such fools of themselves any place else! Fox the clown network. center right bullshit!
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness! These people are out of their fucking minds!
Billo and all his racist Faux Noise lunatics and even the Lard-Ass Limp-Dick always wore their knee pads for Dumbya.
Fox News is an embarrassment to all legitimate journalists...and there are precious few of those left. Fox is a 24-hour-a-day ad for all things right-wing. According to the talking heads at Fox, the current financial woes faced by Americans are not the result of deregulation...starting with Ronald Reagan and continued through both Bush administrations. Thousands of American deaths in two undeclared wars are not the fault of the same crew. Offering healthcare to all Americans is a "socialist" plot. And the "Christian" right is right there, cheering this kind of BS on. God Bless America, indeed!
Thank God we have an intelligent person in the White House. Now if we could only eliminate the neanderthalls in Congress and the Senate...
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