Sometimes something you see on TV does come as a surprise no matter what the motivation behind it. The Factor highlights Goldberg with a Weekdays With Bernie segment so that FOX can bang the drum on librul bias. Bernie Goldberg has made a living out of trying to uncover and expose all the dirty hippie liberal bias in the media, but as BillO was playing the usual conservative victim card that FOX News lives on, Bernie stunned the loofah man. Oh Bernie, said BillO. Why oh why are we attacked so much? We're the only network that is fair and balanced and ... sniff...sniff ... we pay such a heavy price for it.

Bernie begins by sticking up for Roger Ailes and his right wing propaganda network, but then Bernie took a U-turn into reality. He praised FOX for breaking stories that the MSM won't and they are sooo jealous that they throw spitballs at the battles ship ... BUT ....

Goldberg:...this is what the so called mainstream media do. They get angry at FOX. This is wrong. This is the spitballs at the battleship argument, but sometimes Bill -- and whether you acknowledge it or not I'm going to state it -- sometimes FOX brings on the criticism itself. There are some programs on FOX that are not only NOT fair and balanced, they're commentary shows. They don't have to be, but they brag about how fair and balanced they are. They don't cover rallies and tea parties, they cheerlead rallies and tea parties, and as a journalist I am totally against that.

O'Reilly: All right ...

Goldberg: And to that extent the criticism is legitimate. By and large it's not...

O'Reilly: The problem there though is that all editorial pages cheerlead for their crew so if you read any newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, any newspaper in the country, they'll be cheerleading for the country global warming and they'll be saying, hey get out on Earth Day...

Goldberg: Right.

O'Reilly: Do this, do that, OK, fine and I don't have any problem with that. Wait Bernie. I don't have any problem with get out on Earth Day and be environmentally correct. No problem, they all do it. But if you then take a commentary, clearly label this and then they say, hey you tea party people, go on out there and show them that you don't like this big government intrusion. What's the difference?

Goldberg: the difference...I don't want to get too inside baseball with you.

O'Reilly: Come on, Bernie. What's the difference?

Goldberg: Here's a good answer. Don't pretend that you're being objective. Don't go on the air ... I don't mean you, I mean others on this network. Don't go on the air and say these tea parties are a cross section of America, they are not a cross section of America. Don't pretend to be a journalist if you're not a journalist. If you want to be a commentator and comment then be ...

BillO:...well let's get Glenn Beck do, Glenn beck comes on and he basically says I'm every man, I'm not a journalist, he says he's not a journalist, "I'm every man and I'm worried about the country and this is why I'm worried," and he has the blackboard and he has this and this is who I like, tea party guys and this is who I don't like, whoever Beck doesn't like...I don't see any subterfuge there, Sean Hannity comes on right after the Factor and Hannity says look, I'm a Reagan Republican, that's who I am, Sean Hannity. He's not trying to fool anybody, not trying to say anything like that. he says, "I'm a Reagan Republican so this is how I see the world. I mean, come on Bernie, these are legitimate stances, every man, Reagan Republican. What's the beef.

Goldberg: The commentary part of it is totally legitimate, but to give false information to because you're a commentator is unacceptable.

O'Reilly: If it's false information I agree, but I haven't seen a lot of that.

Goldberg: Wait a minute, are you telling me that you think those people at the tea parties were a cross section of America. There are as many liberal democrats as conservatives, there are as many people who support Obama

O'Reilly:I didn't hear any person say there were as many liberal democrats...

Goldberg: Oh, I did..I did, you want a few names?

O'Reilly: No!

Goldberg: You want a few names? Yea I know you don't...
Those people pretend that they're journalists at the same time I'm not a journalist. Well, if you're not a journalist don't pretend to be one ...

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Goldberg: They go on the air and give their opinions, which is fine with me. They then state as facts things..

O'Reilly: Facts?

Goldberg:Facts, things that aren't facts at all.

Bernie called them liars. Wow, and he got hot and bothered with BillO in this segment -- and when he challenged Bill, The O Dog backed down. Why wasn't Beck worried about the country for eight years under Bush when this country was almost demolished by the conservative movement? Because a Republican was in office -- so his everyman act is a lie, but we know that. The folks here at C&L understand that. Hannity and Beck aren't the only two people making a mockery out of the FOX News brand. I wish Bernie would have gotten mad enough to drop a few names to BillO's audience. He may have gotten fired over it.

It's the whole network that cheers on the tea parties, that attacks almost every position President Obama was elected to legislate and that make up facts to conform to their opinions.

No doubt Goldberg is thinking of scenes like this one from Sean Hannity's show, featuring "reporter" Griff Jenkins positively cheerleading the Tea Party Express crowds.

BillO uses false equivalencies to justify FOX's behavior, which is wrong. FOX bills itself as the only fair and balanced network and even runs ads denouncing other cable news networks ... for their failures to cover the tea parties the way they did.

Chuck Todd seems to think that torture is A-OK and not something that is fundamentally disgusting, and opposing it just a crazy left-wing position. Digby explains:

Did Chuck Todd recently attend a Mark Halperin seminar on how to be an insufferably obtuse purveyor of stale and useless insider conventional wisdom? (Or does he just have a natural talent for it?) Check this out:

Competence And Ideology: One reason why intelligence has become such a tough nut for Obama to crack: There's a lot of Democratic rhetoric on intel from the presidential campaign, and it's something that Obama is allowing the intellectual left to have veto power over. Obama finds himself caught in this first intra-party vise between his instinct to pick competence over ideology. His first rumored choices for CIA were competent picks -- but both would have been eviscerated by the intellectual left because of their anger at Bush over interrogation practices. He's allowing ideology to trump competence for the first time in one of his major appointments. Now, the pick of Dennis Blair to be DNI is a tip toward competence, while the Obama folks hoped Panetta was a compromise between competence and ideology (Panetta was praised as a smart manager during the Clinton White House years). But it looks like it ain't being received that way...

Apparently being against torture is now a crazed left-wing ideological position built on "anger" at George Bush. And it's incompetent, to boot. I don't know how many times people have to make this point, but when it comes to torture it is not a matter of being mad at bush or even simple human decency. It is a matter of competence as well. Not only does torture not work as an intelligence tool, the sincere and public repudiation of torture is essential to the success of Obama's foreign policy. If he were to choose someone who was implicated in or associated with Bush's torture regime, his credibility around the world would be damaged before he even begins. It would be dramatically incompetent for him not to make a clear distinction both to the intelligence community and the rest of the world between his policies and the Bush administration's...read on

In the mind of a Villager, torture is a civilized practice that is both just and competent. That was very frightening to read. Bill O'Reilly would be proud.

  Paul Begala goes to town on GOP media consultant Alex Castellanos for peddling blatant falsehoods about Sarah Palin's "reformer" record, specifically her phantom opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere," which she not only supported, but for which hired a Abramoff crony to secure the earmark.

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ALEX CASTELLANOS: The amazing thing about Sarah Palin is when she became governor she actually stood up and said no.

BEGALA: That's not true.

CASTELLANOS: She took a strong stand. That is rare and that never happened.

BEGALA: That's just not true. You know, John, the facts matter. There's lots of things that are debatable who is more qualified or less experienced or more this or more passionate, whatever. It is a fact that she campaigned and supported that bridge to nowhere. It is a fact that she hired lobbyists to get earmarks. It is a fact that as governor she lobbies for earmarks. Her state is essentially a welfare state taking money from the federal government... This is the problem. We have this false debate when we ought to have at least agreed upon facts.

Begala couldn't be more spot on here: Facts are facts. Opinions can be debated, but facts are concrete and can't simply be spun away. It seems to me that this is the crux of the McCain strategy: take an unknown hockey mom from Alaska, tell everyone she's a reformer, lie about her record in order to convince people of it, then keep her sequestered from the press when they start asking questions. Are the American people really dumb enough to fall for it?

Full transcript below the fold:

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