August 19, 2009

Bill O'Reilly's promos promised all day yesterday that he would "expose" what "really happened" at the Netroots Nation gathering in Pittsburgh last week.

But the best he could do was produce some clips of moderately fiery rhetoric from a few speakers (actually, everything he features is in fact pretty reasonable, not to mention factually accurate) and then launch into one of his patented rants about how the "far-left" (why the hyphen, dude?) is actually all about "redistributing wealth," which is why we want "government-run health care."

Of course, he can produce no evidence to support this. Progressives at Netroots Nation, in reality, favor the compromise known as the "public option" instead of full-fledged government-run health care, perhaps better known as "single payer." And no one I heard said a word about "redistributing wealth." Maybe we harbor such sentiments secretly, but if O'Reilly wants to make that characterization, he ought to offer some evidence to support it.

If you want to read a fairly objective and dispassionate report on NN, check out Christopher Beam's report in Slate.

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