I used to watch B.O. occasionally but never understood how he could get away with saying (with a straight face) that his was a no-spin zone. I stopped watching him when he had on the father of Polly Klass during the kidnapping investigation (or right after) of Danielle van Dam. B.O., in all his self-righteous glory, said something to the effect of “Nobody would ever get into my house and take my child.” His tone suggested to me that only a bad parent would let something like that happen to their child (although I’m sure B.O. would take offense to that; I’m only going with the moment). Just the fact that he said this bothered me. But to say this in conversation with a man whose daughter was abducted and killed was the end for me. I won’t watch him or have him on my TV. Ever. And, yes, he did tend to badger his guests the few times I watched him, making it seem that if he yelled louder, interrupted more, and put words into their mouths (“so, what you are saying is…” when it was clear that this was not what they were saying) that he was proving his point and they were wrong. He was not really asking questions for the sake of eliciting information.
From this site: http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/t103.htm
No opinion, just thought the definition would bbe helpfull…
Thank you Sgt. J
Iran was, at the time, a sworn enemy of the United States. That satisfies the enemy part. ON gave them weapons. That satifies the “aid and comfort” part. He confessed to this before congress. That satisfies the confession requirement.
The reason he was not prosecuted is that he was offered immunity to testify before congress. He actually was CONVICTED of lying to congress, but as I said before, that conviction was overturned on a technicality.
To get back to the OP, BO is very selective about who he goes after or does not go after.
Sgt. J, I believe that you are a Marine. Does it bother you that American weapons were used against US Marines?
Damn straight North is a traitor. Don’t even get me started on that self-righteous prick.
Hmmm.
I think O’Reilly is sometimes a self-righteous windbag, and I certainly don’t agree with everything he says. However, I don’t think he’s quite the horror that some of you paint him out to be.
He is a “journalist/news commentator”. Many times (many, many) I have heard people gripe to him that he’s supposed to be “objective” because he’s a journalist, and he always answers back that this is a news commentary show that he is doing. I mean, how can it not be? His “Talking Points” segment at the beginning of each program is full of his opinion. He says that he tries to balance the show with guests that present the other point of view (and he does) but he makes no secret of which side he’s on on each particular issue.
And while I don’t think he’s exactly “No-Spin”, he does interview people that he is dramatically opposed to, and sometimes, he actually lets them get a word in. He doesn’t let them ramble on and give him a prepared speech that skirts around his pointed questions (sometimes the questions are questions I that think need to be asked) and that, to me, is “no spin”. Not to say that O’Reilly does this all the time, but sometimes, he does this, and does it sucessfully.
Also, more than a few times I’ve found myself siding with the person he’s disagreeing with. I definitely give credit to O’Reilly because he gave me enough time to listen to the opposing point of view. He offered air time to people who he disagrees with, and allowed them enough time to convince me that they were more correct than O’Reilly. And, at the end of every interview, he says (sometimes grumbles), “I thank you for your opinion, and as always, we respect your point of view.” And (get this) I’ve even seen him change his mind on-air about an issue that he had obviously already formed an opinon about. After listening to a guest for a while, he ended up being convinced that they made some good points. It’s an amazing thing to see, but I’ve seen it. I give him credit for that too.
The VH1 thing is getting so hot because (and O’Reilly emphasizes this over and over) a double murderer (killed two kids) is the guitarist or drummer or whatever in this band. I suspect (though don’t know for sure) that if the convicts were the more non-violent type, O’Reilly wouldn’t be harping so loudly. He keeps on repeating “Killed two kids! Killed two kids!” And yeah, I have to say that I think the parents of those two dead kids are probably none too pleased to learn that their children’s murderer is getting such positive attention from VH1.
And then there’s the Rosie O’Donnell interview. While he’ll never be the spokesman for gay rights, I think he did a fair interview with her, and presented her in a good light. I believe he did a Good Thing, because undoubtedly many of his viewers are not that sympathetic to gay rights generally. Perhaps after seeing that interview, some of them had their minds (and hearts) opened a little bit.
The few times I have watched O’Reilly, I have observed that he has this knack of saying something that is true on face value, but is loaded in meaning, and clearly looks like baiting. Once he said that (and I paraphrase) blacks in this country should feel lucky they are here than rotting over in Africa. Hard to argue with but where is he going with this? IIRC, he rambled on as to how they should be patriotic Americans etc etc. Even if you exclude the latter part, which IMHO, amounts to an insult, the statement in itself is a loaded statement with little relevance to anything. The other time he said that Islam is the religion of those who want to kill us. Again true, but it is rather obvious and again, he went nowhere with it. These sentences are so carefully worded I can’t help thinking they are prepared to bait. Then, he gets all these mails calling him racist etc, he brings those who accused him on the show yadda yadda yadda. What is he really doing? Entertaining? To some, sure. News Analysis? Puh-leeze. His grasp of history is weak and most things he discusses are just common-sense and obvious to most. But then again, almost all of these “news analysis shows” are the same quality.
KISS never wrote a song called Move B**** which is currently at #19 on the Hot 100 and which peaked at #10.
O’Reilly has had Gene Simmons on as a guest several times, in fact the Demon was on just a few weeks back.
What pissed me off about O’Reilly was soon after 9/11 he was doing his “Talking Points” and he said that any American who hadn’t invested in the stock market after the events of 9/11 was un-American.
Excuse me??!!
He has less then no credibility with me for the following reasons:
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He constantly lies about his upbringing and about how poor his father was.
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He was the anchor of Inside Edition, which was a step above Hard Copy, but not much of a step.
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He claims that Inside Edition won a Peabody Award while he was anchor.
No. The show won a broadcast award, but it most certainly wasn’t a Peabody.
- He constantly screechs and bleats about how NPR won’t interview/profile him, and implies that he deserves to be interviewed/profiled, because he has had 2 “best-selling” books. Someone at NPR pointed out that Stephen King has had a few bestsellers and they’ve never interviewed him.
WSLer: good points.
It also infuriates me that anyone who doesn’t want to come on his show is called a “coward,” as if his little cable show is some sort of high court, with himself as the supreme arbiter. He seems to believe that the fact that Hillary Clinton or Jesse Jackson refused to go on his show is somehow “evidence” of guilt. Hey Bill, you’re not that important, Ok.
Check it out. About a million people watch THE O’REILLY FACTOR on a good night. There are over 250 million people in the U.S. Therefore, only about 1/2 of 1% of the American people ever watch his show. O’Reilly seems to have a greatly inflated view of his own importance.
WSLer: I can’t speak about the NPR thing too much (other than it does make him sound whiny and arrogant to complain about not being interviewed by them). And I don’t know anything about the awards Inside Edition got. But, anyone who knew anything about that show knows exactly what kind of show it was. A lot of people rise above schlocky beginnings, I guess he could too.
But about the claims that he “constantly lies” about how poor his father was—I’d like some substantive and impartial cites to back this up. For one thing, how poor do you have to be to consider yourself “poor”? I don’t recall him claiming they lived out of a cardboard box, I just recall him saying that for most of his youth, his dad had a not-really-great paying job as an accountant, (I think). I always got the impression that he lived a middle class life, lower middle class, maybe. I also recall hearing that the dad started making decent money after Bill moved out as a young adult, though I could be mistaken about that.
It’s a hard thing to determine what is “poor”, IMO. I don’t personally have a problem believing that he grew up in a not-well-off family. I didn’t grow up in a rich family, and I often say that I grew up “poor”. But, because of my dad was able to scrimp and save (and sometimes work several jobs) we had a wonderful used concert grand paino for my mom, we went on great family vacations, and my dad even managed to save up to go to Europe twice to see some long-lost family there. And yet I still consider my family “poor”, because all these great things we got and did were only because my parents worked and saved and did without things that other people in our neighborhood allowed themselves to have.
So, would you call me a liar if I said I grew up poor? I mean, you weren’t there, I was, I knew how we lived. I knew what we ate, I knew how we dressed (home sewn clothes, etc.) and I knew what we gave up. But to an outsider, the great family vacations, the grand piano and my dad’s trips to Europe might have made it look like we had more money than we did.
I tend to give O’Reilly the benefit of the doubt on this one, because it’s sometimes hard for an outsider (especially in retrospect) to really know how “poor” someone was when they grew up.
BTW, I’ve never seen the guy-what does he look like, so if I stumble across his show?
somewhat constipated but all dressed up.
I’ve always thought he looks kind of like Jon-Benet Ramsey’s dad.
As much as I dislike Oliver North, I won’t accuse him of treason. The Constitutional requirements were not met, no matter what you think of “sworn enemy” status of Iran. AFAIK, the United States is not at war with Iran now and was not at war with Iran at the time North did what he did.
Oh, that’s spooky. Good call, Diogenes.
You make the call, separated at birth?
Bill O’Reilly and John Ramsey (uh, on the right)
Thanks for the pics, cowboy. it IS spooky isn’t it?
I regard Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter and all those loudmouths pretty much the same way as I do Eminem–they WANT you to be angered by their crazy antics. If you ignore them, they’ll go away. Remember Marilyn Manson?
I take issue with this. It’s his show! He automatically has the advantage in any debate. He can interrupt other people’s “prepared speeches” with his own well-rehearsed diatribes. That’s not an objective debate where people can see both sides of an issue, that’s playing at his house, with his rules, where his viewpoint trumps everything else. If you already agree with him you can find encouragement for your viewpoint and if you disagree you can work yourself into a lather, but I don’t see any objective analysis going on. If people say their opinions have been changed by the way different points of view have been presented on that show, fine, but I have a hard time imagining that it’s a common occurance.
Yeah, to reiterate what Cua said, you can’t be both a participant in a debate AND be the moderator. Imagine if during the next presidential debate (lets say Bush/Gore II) it was decided that the president would be able to decide what the questions would be, ask them, and be entitled to interrupt whenever he felt like it ((a privilege which would not be shared by the challenger).Furthermore, the president was also afforded the opportunity invite people to the podium who agreed with his views and who could help him gang up on the challenger. The president would also be given the first word and the last word of the debate. Then imagine if the president called the challenger a “coward” for refusing to acceed to these terms.
It’s not really much of a “debate” is it?
Theres a wonderful, obscure book called Bad Dates, which asks certain famous people about their worst dates.
Bill is in it, though he sure wasn’t famous much back then.
You should try and find it, he’s got long hair!
Well, longer than it is now…
I remember that he had longer hair when he was on one of those tabloid tv shows. (Current Affair, maybe?) He was basically going through celebrity garbage cans back then.