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There may be nothing more ironic than watching Bill O'Reilly huddle up with Bernard Goldberg to natter on about NPR's current bucket of hot water, and how they deny liberal bias. The best line is at the end, where Goldberg says that if liberals think Fox News is biased, it's perfectly natural for conservatives to think NPR is biased.

It drives me crazy that NPR is just rolling over and refusing to defend themselves over this even after Glenn Beck's site, of all places, proved the tape was edited to distort the context of what was said. But their passivity notwithstanding, the logic in their little discussion here is non-existent.

Ira Glass addressed this in this "On the Media" segment this weekend. He flatly states (and I agree) that NPR isn't left-wing news, but also has serious frustration about NPR not fighting back.

He's right. There's nothing liberal or liberally biased about NPR, unless you count the fact that they actually bother to cover books and entertainment that aren't just banal nonsense. In fact, I've had WTF moments with their reporting where I've wondered who paid for that broadcast from the corporate world.

But this is all noise anyway, because like it or not, Ron Schiller wasn't remotely involved with reporting or editorial content. He was a fundraiser. It was his job to go court wealthy people and get donations because the government doesn't fund NPR, and it's a struggle to keep those small rural radio stations on the air (and competing with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, I might add). As for Vivian Schiller, the only reason she should have resigned was because she apologized for Ron Schiller instead of standing up for the integrity of her reporters and news operation.

And in what may be the supreme example of conservative bias, Bill O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg natter and gabble about NPRs "bias" as if that twerp O'Keefe actually did something worth talking about. It wasn't anything more than yet another dishonest, edited effort to bolster the right-wing agenda of killing all things public in favor of private concerns. No, O'Reilly and Goldberg just blather on without any regard for what really took place on those tapes, and what a non-story this whole thing should be.

Note to NPR: Quit apologizing for this. If someone lies and elicits statements that they then edit to make sound worse than it is, it hardly deserves you pulling out the sword and falling on it, over and over and over again. Knock it off. Step up and push back.

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Bill O'Reilly is still all worked up about the White House's "war" on Fox -- which, actually, he says he hopes end soon. Yeah, I'll bet he does. I'll bet a lot of people at Fox are not happy that we are having this national conversation right now and kicking over all kinds of rocks.

You never know what turns up when you start looking at Fox's record, do you?

What angered O'Reilly was Joe Klein's recent column in Time, which really was a classic piece of Village excrement (a la Sally Quinn) about how silly the Obama White House is to stand up to Fox. Along the way, of course, he offends O'Reilly by writing this:

Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.

But I don't understand why the White House would give such poisonous helium balloons as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity the opportunity for still greater spasms of self-inflation by declaring war on Fox.

If the problem is that stories bloated far beyond their actual importance--ACORN's corruption, Van Jones's radical past--are in danger of leaching out of the Fox hothouse into the general media, then perhaps the Administration should be a bit more diligent about whom it hires and whom it funds.

If the problem is broader--that Fox News spreads seditious lies to its demographic sliver of an audience--the Administration should probably be stoic: the wingnuts will always be with us. The best antidote to their garbage is elegant, intelligent governance. The next-best antidote is occasional engagement: I thought Obama came away from his O'Reilly and Chris Wallace interviews much the better for it. (Though you don't want to sit down with a thug like Hannity or a weirdo like Beck.)

Now, understand: The Fox-bashing here is simply classic Villager ass-covering, so that Joe Klein can go back later and say, "See? Both sides are mad at me. I must be right!"

Nonetheless, it outrages O'Reilly, who not only devotes a whole Talking Points Memo to "refuting" the Klein column with an even larger dose of flatulence, but then brings on Bernard Goldberg to chew it over some more:

Goldberg: But when you start throwing words around like sedition. I mean, who exactly at Fox News is inciting a rebellion against the government?

Not that we're much interested in defending Joe Klein, but this was too silly not to take note. So we've provided Bernie with some handy reminders just who at Fox News has indeed been inciting rebellion against the government -- some of it by outright, straight-on incitement (see the tea parties for more of this), and some by fear-mongering. Enjoy.

UPDATE: I remembered this morning that, while not on Fox, Rush Limbaugh has touted the idea of a military coup against Obama.

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I've posted a lot of clips with Jane Hall on The O'Reilly Factor. She often was paired up with the uber-right winger Bernard Goldberg and usually BillO would wind up yelling at her because she didn't agree with his point of view. Her demeanor has always been gentle so I always found it upsetting that BillO would scold her. I mean, he even cut off her microphone once, which was odd for such a mild mannered speaker. She left FOX recently and I did wonder why.

Howard Kurtz tackled the "Should have the Obama administration called FOX News the opposition?" question in his Sunday "Reliable Sources" segment on CNN, and although Hall thought it wasn't a smart move by the administration, she let it out that she quit FOX because they stopped debating the issues. She cited Glenn Beck's "scary" presence as a reason why she left. It kinds of makes the arguments moot at this point by the mainstreamers who are sticking up for FOX. Can't they handle the truth?

Another big problem I have is the way cable TV uses pundits, and it's not just FOX. They constantly will pair up a right-wing opinionator with a journalist who they just assume is a liberal. The journalist usually will go on TV, but isn't in love with this because it puts their "neutrality" at issue. Hall also expressed her displeasure on that front.

KURTZ: Did you feel like you were being used to give Fox a certain degree of legitimacy, coming on as a media professor?

HALL: No, I didn't. The reason I left was in part because they've had less debates than they used to. Is it a fair point to say how much debate is there on MSNBC? How many Republican strategists? We have a bifurcation of the media.

KURTZ: Wait a second. The reason you left is because you feel they have less debate than they used to. In other words, it used to be "Hannity and Colmes," now it's just Hannity. It used to be Bernie and Jane. Now it's just Bernie.

HALL: I think there's less debate than there was. And I'm also, frankly, uncomfortable with Beck, who I think should be called out as somebody whose language is way over the top. And it's scary.

KURTZ: Was that a factor in your decision to leave Fox?

HALL: Yes, it was.

You can see that she didn't go on gunning to attack FOX; Kurtz simply caught a remark and seized on it. Then, as usual, Howie had to defend FOX News, but in so doing, he admitted that Lou Dobbs is an offensive right-winger, just like Beck, in his own commentary about the dispute.

KURTZ: Let me give you my two cents here. This is also polarizing. You either have to take the position that Fox is a courageous news organization or a threat to western civilization. I have criticized things that O'Reilly has said, that Hannity has said. Certainly, on this program, I told Glenn Beck that he was being offensive with words that he had for a Muslim member of Congress. At the same time, I don't think an entire organization should be judged by a few commentaries, any more than I think it is fair to judge CNN by the things that Lou Dobbs says. Look at some of the people at Fox.

I wrote down some names here. Major Garrett used to work at CNN. Bill Hemmer used to work at CNN. Greta Van Susteren used to work at CNN. Chris Wallace used to work at ABC and NBC. Did they all drink the Kool-Aid when they went there? Sometimes, Fox's reflexive opposition to Obama bleeds into its news coverage, as you were saying, Nico. But I don't think it's fair to tar everyone with the same brush. You want to take that on?

Look, Howie, Ailes sets the agenda. Even if certain people working on Fox haven't been drinking the "Kool-aid" (*cough*Shep*cough*Smith*cough) the cable network is a propaganda arm. If you don't like Obama saying so, fine, but the truth is the truth.

PITNEY: I think you paint it a little too moderately. Take their flagship news program "Special Report With Brett Baier." George Mason did a study, 80 percent of the coverage is negative.

KURTZ: Toward Obama?

PITNEY: Toward Obama.

KURTZ: Is that on the opinion round table?

PITNEY: No. Just the first 30 minutes.

Says it all.

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Everyone (except Shep Smith) at Fox News, including various reporters, spent the day yesterday whining about how mean the White House was being to them, telling everyone that they're a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Guess the truth hurts. (More on that in a bit.)

It's funny they should say that. Because that same day, every single one of Fox's prime-time "opinion show" anchors devoted time and energy to running down President Obama -- and the Nobel committee -- for his just-announced Peace Prize.

Sean Hannity was so worked up, he devoted two whole segments to the subject, featuring the gnome who lives under the bridge Dick Morris and Mark Steyn. (You'll love Hannity's definition of "peace.") Bernie Goldberg ran through their comparable records of non-accomplishment and announced that he would win the prize next year. But the real corker, of course, came from Glenn Beck, who was able to figure out just what Obama's Nobel Peace Prize really meant:

It may be more revealing on how Europe and the rest of the world views Obama. He [Obama] is dismantling the United States one piece at a time.

And doing so, evidently, at the behest of his European masters. (But wait! I thought he was born in Kenya!)

This really is getting unseemly. A little carping could be expected, but for God's sake, can't any of these people get some perspective? The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the world's great honors, and it's an honor for it to go to an American.

Hannity, for instance, harps on the fact that Obama's nomination came only 12 days after he was inaugurated. But the committee keeps reviewing nominees -- including their current activities -- up until the final vote, which took place not long ago. So Hannity's point is a nonsequitur.

What never seems to occur to any of them is the obvious, simple and clear reason that Obama won the Nobel: He won the Presidency of the United States -- and in so doing, ended conservative-movement rule in America.

The entire world could see that the Bush administration, enabled by a Republican Congress, and fueled by an increasingly bellicose and irrational talk-show was the greatest threat to global peace since the fall of the Berlin Wall -- outpacing even the terrorist disturbances of Al Qaeda, particularly in lives lost. Nor would conservatives give up their hold on power readily; defeating them was no mean feat.

Entertaining such thoughts, though, would paralyze any well-trained right-winger in a fit of cognitive dissonance, so it never comes up on places like Fox.

Michael Moore may have put it best:

The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man -- a man who opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning -- offered to end the insanity. The world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson light the fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped off the nations on this planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn't attack us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.

And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.

So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.

It's also worth noting that the Peace Prize historically has gone to those -- like Martin Luther King -- who have produced important transformative steps in the furtherance of civil rights and the healing of the racial divide, which has produced so much misery and inflicted so much violence in America alone. Obama's election as the first African-American president represents just such a moment, and he deserves recognition for that alone as well.

The Fox folks need to get a grip. And if they wonder why the White House sees them as reflexively opposed to everything and anything Obama does, they should just play the above video as a reminder.

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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 ...

---

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.

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A glimpse of reality managed to peek out between the lines of B.S. that largely constituted Bill O'Reilly's weekly conversation with Bernard Goldberg on Tuesday.

Goldberg: I think the guys at the White House, the political guys at the White House, say, 'You know, you have a couple of people here on this network who if their lips are moving, if their lips are moving, they're bashing the president.' And then the entertainment network, as Juan Williams said, the run the 'So You Think You Can Dance' instead of the president's speech to Congress. And I think these guys are saying, 'You want to play like that? You want to play like that, Fox? We can play like that too.' And, and, and --

O'Reilly: Yeah, but that's immature. It hurts them.

Goldberg: I agree. I agree. I agree.

It's nice of O'Reilly to finally acknowledge that the treatment of President Obama by his network is immature. That's probably the kindest description -- after "absurdly biased," "hateful," and "a journalistic travesty" -- one is likely to apply here, but it'll do. Fox's coverage of Obama has been worthy of a network run by eight-year-olds who like to stick out their tongues. (See the latest Time cover for more of that.)

And so perhaps for the White House to respond in kind is equally immature. But O'Reilly's glass palace isn't such a great place from which to throw these particular stones.

And the whining and kvetching. Oy! What a bunch of crybabies these people are.

O'Reilly then lists the Fox anchors who don't bash Obama with every breath (he calls it "giving Obama a fair shot"). It's a short list. Then he asks: "How many fair shots do you need?"

Which sort of begs the question, "Why not all of them?"

Really: Why should anyone have to absorb the barrage of cheap shots that's part and parcel of the Fox treatment for Democrats? Good on Obama for just saying No, at least this time around.

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Bernie Goldberg has a theory about why there's been a significant controversy over Lou Dobbs' promotion of the "Birther" conspiracy theory: It's all an evil plot by the Obama White House to string the story along indefinitely so as to make his right-wing opposition look like a nuttier bunch than a PayDay bar.

Goldberg: Well, let's get the easy part out of the way first. CNN should not, repeat, not fire Lou Dobbs for talking about this. Lou Dobbs didn't say Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, he said just the opposite! He said he was born in the United States. But then he said he should produce his birth certificate.

Now let's think about this for a second. Why wouldn't President Obama release his birth certificate? He was born in Hawaii, Hawaii last I checked is in the United States, and -- why in the world wouldn't he release his birth certificate?

O'Reilly: Can I answer that question?

Goldberg: Well, let me answer it first. OK? Let me just answer my own question first.

O'Reilly: OK, you answer it, and then I'll have the correct answer.

Goldberg: I have a theory. And the theory is this: That the Chicago Mafia inside the White House want to keep this crazy controversy going. Because the longer it goes, the better the chance that they will conflate the crazy right-wing fringe with regular conservatives and regular Republicans.

O'Reilly: That's not a bad theory. But from dealing with the Obama White House, now, for almost, more than a year, I will tell you they are, uh, as every White House I've ever experienced, they're arrogant, they're arrogant. And they're saying to themselves, 'We're not gonna let Lou Dobbs tell us what to do. We're not gonna let these cranks on talk radio tell us what to do. They want the birth certificate released? Tough. We're not going to do it, because we have the power, and we don't like that.' That's what it's all about -- it's a 'Ha ha, we're not gonna do what you say.'

Interesting theories, gentlemen. Unfortunately, they both tend to run aground on a simple fact: Obama actually released his birth certificate in June 2008. It reads, "Certification of Live Birth."

Now, as FactCheck.org's definitive piece on the certificate issue explains, this is in fact the "short form" of Obama's birth certificate, not its long form, which is filled out by the hospital and kept in its records. So why doesn't Obama release the long form? Because Hawaiian law doesn't give him that option:

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

Now, if Goldberg and O'Reilly are so concerned that the public might conclude that mainstream conservatives are prone to far-right conspiracy theories and various other forms of wingnuttery, they might look in the mirror. It's the virtual definition of wingnuttery to even be asking why Obama won't release his birth certificate when he has in fact done so.

There's no Obama conspiracy keeping this garbage alive and tying it around the necks of mainstream conservatives. They're doing a very fine job of that themselves.

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We knew that Bill O'Reilly had done a nasty segment on Rick Perlstein -- including running his picture -- tonight on Fox News because Perlstein called me shortly afterward and asked:

"Hey, did Bill O'Reilly or someone on Fox do something with me in it tonight?"

"I dunno. I'm recording but not watching. Why?"

"My inbox just started getting deluged with hate mail a little bit ago."

"What time did it start?"

"About 7:30 [Chicago time]."

"Yep, that would be O'Reilly."

"I think they ran my picture. A lot of the mail is about how ugly I am."

I pulled my recording and yep, sure enough, there was a segment attacking Perlstein for his Newsweek op-ed column this week. He invited on his frequent guest, Bernard Goldberg, to talk about it.

As you can see, what set O'Reilly off was Perlstein's characterization of O'Reilly's audience as working-class whites whose more unstable elements sometimes act out violently:

O'Reilly: The most recent Newsweek contains a nasty piece on Sarah Palin that implies she is an intellectual moron supported by poorly educated conservative idiots.

[Hmmmm. Read the piece for yourself. As you can see, it certainly does not use language like that, and in fact discusses to working-class whites in largely respectful tones -- but points out that they don't get much respect among Republican elites. O'Reilly's caricature of the column is actually rather self-revealing.]

O'Reilly: The article goes on to say that these stupid conservatives are influenced by extremist commentators. Quote:

Now [William F.] Buckley is gone, and the most prominent spokesmen -- the Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Becks—can be heard mouthing attitudes once confined to the violent fringe. ... Fox heavily promoted anti-administration "tea party" events this past Fourth of July -- rallies in praise of secession ...

Well, obviously, that paragraph is pure propaganda.

Actually, let's read the whole passage, and you can judge for yourselves. Again, what O'Reilly omits is telling:

Continue reading »

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Be warned, FOX News stupidity Alert!

Bill O'Reilly never has liberals fill in for him when he takes a vacation, so I was surprised to see Juan Williams in the anchor chair Wednesday night. And then I asked myself: Self, why am I surprised? Williams is BillO's chief apologist night in and night out and he would make a good little conservative talk show host in a pickle. And he did. Well, there were none of the Talking Points Memo segment that opens up The Factor every night because they probably didn't trust Juan to deliver them with the proper hateful spin, but he easily tried to do a BillO imitation the rest of the show.

It was quite hilarious listening to him stiffly yell about taxes being raised by the evil Obamanites. And then came Bernie Goldberg. They were both so appalled that CBS' Scott Pelley wouldn't invite any global warming deniers on his Global Warming special. Juan said: Not a single one. The horror, I say. And then Bernie went off on his new affirmative action plan.

Goldberg: I came up with a plan and it's a brilliant plan. Every white person in America who thinks that affirmative action is a good thing and it makes America a better place, voluntarily gives up his and her jobs immediately, right now on one and only one condition. That they be replaced by somebody who isn't white. That way, by tomorrow or the next day we'd have a lot more Blacks, a lot more Hispanics, a lot more other minorities in very important positions....

Juan: Bernie, hold on. Aren't you mocking the seriousness of this because to my mind look,....but the fact is doors have been closed, Bernie.

Listen, we have an ugly racial history...at least my plan is addressing liberal, white liberal hypocrisy because when I put this plan.(blah, blah, blah) White liberals don't want to pay a price. They only want to dole out their racial goodies.

Can Goldberg tell us the number of white liberals who have or have not got a job in part because of affirmative action? Of course not. Conservatives were the only people targeted. Oy.

Bernie, your stupidity knows no bounds. I won't waste any time writing about how offensive his statements are because there are so many other implications to the rest of his rant. You can do that in the comments. And Williams couldn't even muster much of a response to Bernie's nonsensical whim other than, doors have been closed...because he was waist deep in being a conservative commentator. Go, Juan, go!

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Is there any major figure in the mainstream media more obdurately un-self-aware -- and resultingly, hilariously hypocritical -- than Bill O'Reilly?

O'Reilly: Robust debate is vital to America. It can put complicated issues in focus, sometimes expose the charlatans. Stating your case with strength and dignity is the sign of a patriot. But in today's political landscape, ridicule is on the rise. And both the left and the right are using it.

O'Reilly then plays a series of clips of derisive rhetoric from David Shuster, Michael Savage, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter, James Carville, and Michael Musto. Now, you'll notice that this list equally of right-wing and non-right-wing (which to wingnuts equals "liberal") figures. But then O'Reilly launches into a tirade about how this is largely a problem for the "liberal" media, particularly NBC -- which he says began "peddling the politics of hate a couple of years ago."

Because, of course, Fox has never stooped to such a thing. Ann Coulter appears on Fox so rarely, particularly not O'Reilly's show. And ridiculing and smearing others? Why, such a thing is unheard of at Fox.

In any event, O'Reilly blames all this on Saul Alinsky. Who, one must gather, is admired by the likes of Ann Coulter and Michael Savage. Things you never knew before!

Then he brings on Bernard Goldberg to commiserate about the horrible state of American discourse:

Goldberg: There is a slow poison running through the veins of this country. And our country can't stay great if that kind of poison continues to flow through the culture, it just can't.

Quoth the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America -- the book that inspired Jim David Adkisson to mow down churchgoers in Knoxville last year.

O'Reilly, of course, caps it off by finishing his show, as he does every night, with a name-calling "Pinheads and Patriots" segment. Last night there were several pinheads, including Code Pink, but he saved his special vial of ridicule for Janeane Garofalo, who he named the "Ultimate Pinhead." (And remember the night before, when he made it doubly personal, after having one of those Fox ambush crews stalk her?)

Bill O'Reilly: Le ridicule, c'est vous.