There’s more to it than that. Thanks to El Gui, I now realize that O’Reilly was claiming that Inside Edition wasn’t a tabloid show because if finally won an award for work the show produced after O’Reilly left the show.
I think I can give an exact analogy. Pretend I walk up to Tony Dungy and say, “hey, Tony, how do you feel about it when people said the Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t have what it takes to win the big one?”
“That’s bullshit,” says Dungy. “We won the Stanley Cup, didn’t we?”
And now I’ll ruin the joke by explaining it for those who are not Americans, or American football fans: Tony Dungy was dismissed at the end of the 2000 season. After Dungy left, John Gruden took over as head coach and led the Buccaneers to victory in the Super Bowl, not the Stanley Cup, which is a hockey championship.
Would you call Tony Dungy “mistaken” for making that claim? “Deceptive”?
Funny enough while I waited for our much beloved but very slow message board to download I was in reading another site dedicated to obscure words the definition of a word that I will now remember forever thanks to Mr. O’ Riley: Ultracrepidarian
I fear sticking my nose into a political thread, but what about Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show? Yeah, he’s a comedian, and he’s never stopped protesting that his show is fake, but he’s immensely popular and has a decidedly liberal bent, though he’s far more fair about it than O’Reilly.
I admit I haven’t done much research into it, but his interviews with guests don’t strike me as scripted; while there are topics Jon obviously wants to talk about, it strikes me as an actual unscripted conversation. Perhaps he’s just a far better actor than I’ve come to expect, but he’s always struck me as genuinely interested in his guests, and he’s often very polite about it.
I suppose that last disqualifies him for being a liberal equivalent to O’Reilly, though.
What I meant by a liberal quivalent to O’Reilly was someone who made a show out of screaming at conservatives and calling them names.
From what I understand of celeb talk shows like Stewarts, there is a pre-interview with the guests who goes over what he/she wants to talk about with a producer (typically, the new movie/book/album/tv show that they are promoting, followed by a pre-selected “anecdote” and maybe some flirting if the guest is a hot chick) and they develop a set of questions for the host based on that. It’s not literally scripted as such, but it’s fairly well planned. There are no surprise questions or answers.
Well, I was more or less just thinking of it in terms of a highly popular <insert political leanings here> television host who doesn’t script his interviews, ignoring politeness. I certainly wouldn’t intend to insult Jon Stewart by comparing him directly to O’Reilly.
I don’t think that it’s clear that he was speaking as a journalist. Was he saying “hey, I’ve looked really hard for an instance of Clinton saying something like this, I haven’t found anything” or did he simply mean “gee, if Clinton said something, I didn’t hear it”. If John Madden were to say “I’ve never seen so-and-so throw an interception”, and he did in fact throw an interception, would we call Madden dishonest because “he should know about it”? It’s not merely “technically” true, it is true. And isn’t it inteteresting how you went from “it’s theoretically possible he was being deceptive” to “being deceptive is not much of an endoresement”? Now who’s being deceptive?
Well, it’s a little hard to figure out what the interviewee is getting at, what with him being interrrupted all the time, but if he’s trying to say that the US provided Bin Laden et al with training and weapons back in the day when the Evil Communists[sup]TM[/sup] were occupying Afghanistan, then I’d say he has a point.
Not that it is even relevant - the interviewee could be the most despicable person on the planet, for all I care. O’Reilly still invited him, aparently with the express intent to shut him up, and interrupt him. That’s what stinks here.
Not speaking as a journalist? It’s not like he’s on The Real World and the cameras just happened to catch him bullshitting with some friends. He was arguing, on his news show, that Clinton did not support standards for education as evidenced by the fact that he, a supposedly informed news analyst, “never heard him once say” anything publicly in favor of education standards. Most people would interpret that as Bill O’Reilly claiming that Bill Clinton did not support education standards, rather than an off-hand observation that he, Bill O’Reilly, doesn’t watch the news much.
If a sports commentator says “I’ve never seen the San Francisco 49ers win a game that they earned through consistently solid offensive plays,” most normal people would interpret that as a statement of the 49ers’ past gameplay, not a statement that the sports commentator doesn’t actually watch much football. Know why? Because we tend to ascribe certain qualifications to high-profile news people, such as knowing what the hell they’re talking about. It’s crazy, I know.**
It is interesting! Very interesting! Well, except for the fact that I never said the first part, and I spelled “endorsement” right. Otherwise, I was in fact being very deceptive. My credibility as some random dipshit on a message board will almost certainly suffer as a result of your cutting expose. Bravo.
Sorry about that, Giraffe. Lord knows your reputation is taking enough of a buffeting from The Ryan’s insightful accusations without me misquoting you.
No worries, carrot. Since your (first) quote was technically accurate, it should be right up The Ryan’s alley. Sure, it changed the meaning completely, but technically it was true. That’s all that matters.
You are arguing on the basis of allegations not presented in the quote. I am not claiming that there is no argument to be made against O’Reilly, only that the quote does not provide much of one.
I didn’t say you said it, I said you “went from” it. Your response to my post implied that I think that being technically true, even if deceptive, is just fine, when I never said any such thing. That is what prompted my reference to deception.
I see. I foolishly assumed that your use of quotation marks around both phrases indicated that you considered both of them to be quotes, not just one quote and some stuff you made up that sounded like something I was implying.
I’m still a little confused how I “went from” one to the other, when my three posts preceding your remark consisted of:
a joke about Bill O’Reilly not telling the truth
a recommendation to read Al Franken’s book
the comment you quoted about how being deceptive isn’t much of an endorsement for a so-called journalist.
**
Yeah, I’m really a jerk about falsely attributing things to people they never actually said. I don’t know what to say – obviously, I have a problem. I appreciate your pointing it out, though.
So, The Ryan, are you denying the US provided weapons, funding and/or training to Bin Laden when he fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 70’s?
Or are you just gearing up for another of your stupid semantics games?
