Bill O’Reilly gets called on his disgusting slander
From Angry Chad:
Ok let’s just settle this once and for all. Fox News lies, alot, and Bill O’Reilly is an ignorant jackass. One Good Move has a clip of Keith Olbermann calling out Bill O’Reilly for blatantly lying about the tradgedy at Malmedy, twice, and Fox News for covering it up. Disgusting.
Thanks for the link, Steph.
Reading the comments below the article, I couldn’t help but think, “What has happened to us as a people?” I mean, have we always been this gullible/stupid/easily distracted?
Has the media always been this biased? This irresponsible?
Part of me wants to think that perhaps the reason why people have started turning to mouthpieces like O’Reilly is simply because they can’t parse all the information (or misinformation, depending on how you look at it) found in the news, so they turn to someone they can trust to tell them what it means. Perhaps at some point, the world just got too big and confusing for people to comprehend, so they just gave up in trying.
It’s disheartening, really.
I think people turn to people like O’Reilly because he appeals to their base, stupid sides, and makes them feel ok for indulging in morally vacant positions. I mean, what’s the point of the whole Malmady reference, anyway? As he sees it, Americans killed German troops who’d surrendered, right? So, is the point that since that sort of thing happened in (his mind) the past, that it *justifies* something like what was thought to have happened at Haditha?
Basically, he’s saying, “It’s ok if American troops massacred Iraqis – this sort of thing is inevitable.” Which makes people feel ok about the moral quandary they’d find themselves in if they actually say, thought murder was *wrong*.
Someone like O’Reilly really makes their living pandering to the stupid and thoughtless, and making them feel like their positions are well considered, thought out, and defensible. Which makes them feel superior to the ‘stupid liberals’ who’ve clearly got it all wrong.
Devil’s Advocate:
Aren’t liberals “turning to mouthpieces” by watching Daily Show and Colbert Report? Don’t those those shows appeal to progressives because they reinforce the opinions they already hold instead of questioning them? Because they take the comfortable potshots instead of asking the hard questions?
I definitely wouldn’t disagree with those questions and think that we should constantly be asking ourselves those things. At the same time, I think that there is an honest critical difference in the viewer perception because they are comedy-centric shows with political commentary, rather than being a jounalistic organization though. It would be different if we were discussing other shows that avow to be serious news or news-related commentary. It is just our “luck” *cough* that there is so much ridiculousness in the current political sphere that it is positively rich in absurdist humor. Sad. 🙁
I think it’s important to constantly be questioning our own behaviors and compaing and contrasting our actions with those of those we find to be worthy of criticism.
On that note, I always find honest, fact-based debate to be useful. I think if we find that there are falsehoods among those we consider our own “ranks” then it is important to shed light on them as well, otherwise we just become a nation of pretenders, tied to sides rather than ideals and goals.
In this case, I can say that whatever the reason people watch Bill O’s show, the show itself is horribly flawed by a lack of adherence to a standard of fact-based reality, when in fact it is touted as exactly that.
Don’t those those shows appeal to progressives because they reinforce the opinions they already hold instead of questioning them?
Generalizing this question to other shows and print/online news, I recall that there were studies where liberal and conservative media outlets were analyzed for giving “balanced” viewpoints, and the “liberal” media were generally found to give more voice (via contributing editors, staff, and/or published letters to the editor) to the minority voice, i.e. conservative if the outlet is liberal, liberal if the outlet is conservative.
However, I would feel much better about stating this if I could remember specific references of this!
I don’t bring this up to just rah-rah and say, “Liberals are better!” but to try to vocalize the general feeling I have that giving a voice to the minority opinion is (or should be?) a built-in tenet of being a liberal, along with progressivism.
Thanks. Wow. I’m speechless.