When Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, I made my sister, Laura, a deal. The deal was that if she agreed to see the film with me, I would watch a week of Bill O'Reilly. She watched the film with tear-filled eyes and came out of it slightly shocked. I know it moved her.
For my part of the deal, I tried, I really tried. After watching the first 10 minutes of O'Reilly, my fiance said that I better turn it off before I smash the TV in.
Now here we are a couple years later, and my sister is still a huge fan of his show. She keeps telling me that I have to give him another chance - that he really does give both sides.
So, after hearing that Ed Schultz was going to be on his show, (which he wasn't) I decided to give in. While I do agree with O'Reilly on border security and partially on Jessica's law, the rest of the show was maddening.
When you have a guest like Dick Morris saying things like, "I love Karl Rove, he's a great man, he got Bush elected" and then not challenging that statement, O'Reilly's fair & balanced crap goes out the window.
Or, how about the author of a book called "The War on Christmas" who argues "The ACLU keeps saying to Christians to 'shut up,' and this is another attempt to say you can't even have a secular symbol like the tree or Santa in public" (like schools, for instance) Um, yeah, duh...ever hear of the separation of Church & State?
Bill's response: "It's the far left, the loony left, the secular progressive ACLU America-haters. That's who's doing this."
No spin zone, my ass. Sorry Laura.
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7 comments:
Sometimes, I watch O'reilly just to see what he is saying.
He is maddening. I almost gag when he starts acting macho.
I do agree with him on the two issues you mentioned. The Dems have to put together a coherent illegal alien policy. For many people this has become the one issue that determines who they'll vote for.
Liz,
The original deal was to watch him for about a week. You watched 2 segments. At least watch his talking points memo nightly. Those are his opinions and I do not agree with everything. However, he is very angry with the Bush administration regarding conservation (no plan), the Borders (no plan), gouging gas prices, Jessica's law etc. Give him some more time. You won't agree with everything, but you'll see another side to some of your views.
Laura
Ok, I'll give him one more chance. You are wearing me down!
When I'm in the car I put on Rush for no more than five minutes. It's useful to know your enemies!
O'Reilly hates Rush. Limbaugh is just a pawn and cheerleader for the Republican Party (which O'Reilly has stated). His radio show directly goes up against Limbaugh which hopefully is hurting Rush. He does lean more to the right, I'll give you guys that. However, on many issues he agrees with the democrats and you'd all be very surprised if you watched for a week or so...
I was surprised a couple of years ago to hear O'Reilly say he believed in the existence of global warming, and that it caused him concern. I would agree with him we need some better border controls. That's about where my agreements with him end. He may not be a cheerleader for the White House, or for Rush, or for the GOP, but he is a cheerleader for conservate politics in general. He likes to say he can't be branded a conservative because he has an occasional departure from the goose-steppers here and there.
But that's like saying I can't be called a liberal because I support reasonable gun ownership, or because I hate seeing mills getting shut down. My weblog would suggest to just about all who view it that I'm a liberal.
Bill is a conservative, and I find his "blowhardiness" to be fairly intolerable. Often times he won't let people answer the questions he asks, and that puts him right down there among the bottom feeders like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage as far as I'm concerned.
FAIR has a great book out called "The Oh Really? Factor" that exposes bunches of Bill's lies. Their one on Limbaugh, "The Way Things Aren't" is also quite readable. If you're of the liberal persuasion... and even if you aren't!
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