Bill O'Reilly was in prime left-baiting form last night, accusing the "nutty left" of driving the local Seattle P-I newspaper into the ground, and then claiming that this was all the more reason for Barack Obama to pay them no mind:
The far left in America is on a rampage emboldened by the Democratic victory. They're attacking on all fronts, demanding gay marriage, a ban on harsh anti-terror tactics, and many other very liberal policies. But most Americans reject the left-wing extremists.
For example, the nutty-left Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper has announced it's going out of business unless someone buys the concern over the next few weeks. Not likely to happen.
Now, we've been harshly critical of that paper. Critical mass was reached when its publisher, Roger Oglesby, refused to cooperate with the FBI when agents trying to locate two men deemed acting suspiciously on a ferry.
"Factor" producer Jesse Watters confronted Oglesby over his and the paper's outlandish left-wing zealotry, and now it's clear that even in liberal Seattle, the folks want no part of the operation.
However, what O'Reilly doesn't mention is that those 'terror suspects' in fact turned out to just be ordinary tourists, and the wingnuts' fearmongering was publicly exposed as simply yet another example of how the right needlessly and heedlessly trades in making people fearful.
In other words, Oglesby was right not to indulge the fearmongering and give up a normative right of the free press under pressure from the loudmouths of the right. He was right, O'Reilly was wrong, and no one in Seattle (except O'Reilly's tiny pustule of fans) has really ever thought otherwise.
As for the reasons the P-I's long-predicted demise has finally come to pass, well, the reasons are many and complex, but the notion that it cam because the paper was "nutty left" is plain, well, nutty.
But O'Reilly has a bigger point to make: Don't listen to those dirty stinking hippies, Barack.
The huge mistake the far left continues to make is that they believe Americans elected Barack Obama for ideological reasons. That's false. Obama won the contest because the economy collapsed and John McCain seemed clueless about it. Obama himself seems to understand that and is reacting to the far-left agenda crying the Bush administration should be charged with criminal wrongdoing.
[O'Reilly then plays the clip from Obama's interview with George Stephanopoulos in which he backs away from saying he'll pursue charges against Bush-administration torturers and wiretappers.]
OK. But Mr. Obama is smart not to fall into the left-wing trap, because most Americans reject that kind of madness. It will be interesting to see if President Obama fully understands that.
Right now he's moving away from the Bush anti-terror policies that have kept the nation safe at home, and that's a big gamble, as "Talking Points" has stated. To keep America safe and return us to prosperity, President Obama must walk away from zealotry, even if it comes from his own supporters. He will fail in office if he does not.
One can only hope that Obama is smart enough to recognize that Bill O'Reilly actually provides a very handy and rather precise reverse barometer of where he needs to take the country.
