Speaking of The O’Reilly Factor for Kids, Powell’s has a great review.
Well, duh.
If this had been the first time I had experienced Bill O’Reilly I would have thought he is a pretty cool guy. Solid, unbiased speaker, with humour.
Luckily, I know better.
I’m certainly no fan of O’Reilly, but that’s really not what I got from what he said. What I got was that Kerry won’t admit that there are any drawbacks to raising taxes on the rich, such as disincentives for investment and entrepreneurship. That’s not at all far-fetched. After all, if you had the choice between being productive and making less or being miserly and making more, isn’t there a chance you’d tighten up the reins just a bit?
Ever look at the Pit? Seems like pretty common behavior.
You must not have heard him being interviewed by Terry Gross. If you’re in a hurry, advance to about 35 minutes in and start from there.
But we actually have to pay to do that in the Pit, while he gets paid a stupendous wad o’cash to do so on Basic Cable.
I remember that show well. For those who don’t have the patience to listen to all of the program:
O’Reilly got into a snit and left the interview.
I abandoned all hope at that point.
Matt Lauer on Today interviewed him about his new book for kids and commented that it’s just common sense stuff. The things that were mentioned would make my grandkids roll their eyes. Since this book is advice for kids on how to conduct themselves, Matt tried to get O’Reilly to promise not to tell people to “shut up” anymore. No promise was forth coming.
I just get the impression that O’Reilly is very emotionally immature.
Bingo. I think he’s a very bright man. He has a lot of facts at his command, he (usually) articulates his points well, but he is the school yard bully. Actually, I suspect he was beat up a lot as a kid.
I could easily buy that, given his challenge to Franken and other things that he (Franken) mentioned in his book.
On both The Daily Show and Late Night with David Letterman this week, O’Reilly was funny, personable, and non-partisan.
And this is my opnion even though I hate O’Reilly.
And O’Reilly admit he’s wrong? That’s what Franken got him on: his bullheaded stubborn attachment to wrong facts which he refuses to acknowledge as wrong. Just because he admits to being wrong on a few things doesn’t mean he owns up to all wrongs.
And yet, we saw the compassionate conservative come out this week.
If I were prone to cynical pessimism (and I am), I’d say that that O’Reilly is sensing a seeking ship in Bush, and is fleeing with the rats. (“I’ve always been critical of Bush!”)
Peace.
No, Lib - that’s a purely partisan issue. Democrats believe that fiscal responsibility and tax incentives for the middle class are good for the economy. “Trickle-down” republicans like Bush believe that giving tax breaks to the extremely wealthy is good for the economy. It’s pretty hard to prove one way or the other, because one can always say that there were other factors involved. And you have it backwards: O’Reilly implied that it’s far-fetched (as you call it) for Kerry to believe that rolling back Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy could be good for the economy. But it’s rather disingenuous to say that someone “won’t admit he’s wrong” just because he disagrees with you on a purely partisan issue.
It would be like me saying that Libertarians “won’t admit they’re wrong” in believing in less government regulation. That’s silly; it’s just a difference of opinion. It depends on your point of view.
Yes, and I love the “non-partisan” Daily Show having a crowd that booed O’Reilly when he dared to point out that we have not been attacked in the U.S. since 9/11, even after he also admitted that Bush has made mistakes.
Ah yes, liberal and open minds; nod in icy silence when your opponent makes points for your side, boo him when he dares to suggest that the other side is not all evil monster.
Again, that’s not what I heard. Whether or not you believe that a tax cut for the “wealthy” is or is not “good for the economy” overall, it is ridiculous to hold the view that it is all good or all bad in terms of practically efficacy. I mean, it might be right or wrong in principle, according to your views, but it has both benefits and drawbacks when practiced. If Kerry is saying that nothing good for the economy whatsoever can possibly come from a tax cut for the rich, then he’s being stubborn (because he knows better).
Actually, I believe in more regulation of some things. For libertarians, it is not so much a matter of how much regulation, but of exactly what is regulated. Take, for example, the ads on TV that have those 14-line blurry disclaimers that flash by in two seconds. Those ads should be illegal. They are deceptive in that they effectively hide their disclaimers from being read.
Well, I let out a little “harumph” at that myself. I don’t think they were booing the lack of attacks, but were rather reacting to a flawed, disingenuous argument that the absence of attacks means anything at all.
Terrorist attacks come few and far between. Prior to 9/11 we had only two terrorist attacks on our soil since Pearl Harbor - the World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing, and I’m not sure if you can really count Oklahoma City.
We really have no benchmarks to tell if we are doing well or not. For all we know, after sacrificing 20 of his best “soldiers”, bin Laden would not have been able to mount another attack even if we had done nothing.
So my problem with O’Reilly’s comment, and I assume the problem the audience had with it is that it is poorly thought out.
I could have bought that, if: 1. it they hadn’t actually “booed”; 2. if they had responded to anything else he said. It was the icy silence (normally the audience is arking like happy little seals to anything that the Michael Moore types throw out) for anything he said, broken only by the boos for anything remotely pro-Bush, that caused my reaction.
The problem with all that, as far as I’m concerned, is that if, say, Hillary were on the show and pointed out that there were no terrorist attacks during her husband’s administration, they would have cheered. Stewart was right to embarrass the booer by pointing him out.
A few people booed him, not the entire crowd.
I think that it is the factor of O’Reilly being dishonest and disingenuous in his shift and behaving as if what he said on the Daily Show was how he always had presented himself and his views.
He, like many others in our society, don’t realize that the revise and extend allowed in the Congressional Record to have the record reflect what the Congressperson or Representative wanted to say doesn’t work on the public after they’ve seen you have a seven course meal dining on your own foot.
Please.
As if this country isn’t so polarized and partisan that there wouldn’t be at least a couple of Republicans that would boo Hillary for breathing.
:rolleyes: