O’Reilly: Concern for homeless troops is ‘class warfare’

January 18, 2008

Following up on an item from yesterday, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly this week said John Edwards was wrong to assert that there are 200,000 homeless U.S. military veterans. He told his viewers “there’s not many of them out there,” and said he would personally intervene to help veterans sleeping under bridges.

On the facts, Edwards is right and O’Reilly is wrong. Naturally, then, O’Reilly blasted Edwards on the air last night, insisting that he apologize. Here’s his “Talking Points” segment from last night’s episode (transcript via Nexis, so no link):

“[F]irst, let’s look at our pal John Edwards, who’s running for president. Edwards contends there are two Americas, one for the rich and the other for everybody else. And that everybody else is getting hosed. The fix is in, the economy’s rigged.

“‘Talking Points’ doesn’t believe that. Of course the rich do have advantages, but I am living proof that you can start with very little and prosper economically if you work hard and keep it honest. To hype up this class warfare, Edwards is now bringing in homeless veterans.”

Got that? Edwards has expressed concern from the 200,000 veterans who are homeless, which must be part of a “class warfare” campaign. Presumably, we’re not supposed to express concern?

“Now I’ve said on this program that we will pay for homeless veterans to be taken to the Edwards mansion in North Carolina for shelter.”

Actually, just this week, O’Reilly said he would personally “make sure” veterans aren’t sleeping under bridges. Edwards’ house wasn’t mentioned. Is O’Reilly’s offer still on the table?

“So if the poor are not destitute in America, and they obviously are not, why are so many veterans sleeping under bridges, John Edwards?”

I have no idea what this means.

“Edwards is a charlatan, a man either too uninformed or too dishonest to be elected to anything. I am tired of hearing this nonsense from him and other callow politicians. We deal with facts here on ‘The Factor,’ not fiction. John Edwards owes us an apology.”

Yes, Edwards said there are 200,000 homeless vets, O’Reilly said there aren’t. O’Reilly got it wrong, so Edwards is “uninformed” and “owes us an apology.”

Only on Fox News could one see such madness on a daily basis.

On a related note, Brave New Films spoke to some actual homeless vets, who weren’t particularly impressed with the Fox News blowhard.

ThinkProgress and C&L have more.

“I am living proof that you can start with very little and prosper economically if you work hard and keep it honest. (Insert laugh track here)”

Keeping it honest. For some this level of shameless lying comes across as bravado. I put a measure of blame on Fox, among other media outlets, who continue to give bully pulpits to liars and make it seem acceptable to blatantly lie in public and get away with it. Our youth today will either grow up to be pathologic liars or will not trust anything said by anyone after being fed a steady diet of O’Reilly’s crap. These are the vermin that chew away the moral fiber of a nation and culture.

  • First he said they wern’t out there…then it was there aren’t that many of them…and to call him and he would make sure they wouldn’t be there …and now it’s we will march them over to Edward’s house and Edward’s is using homeless vets in a class warfare. Can O’Reiley be anymore of a bigot or loudmouth clown? He is such a liar. Soldiers wouldn’t let him ‘march’ them anywhere. The only factor on the O ho show is that Bill O’Reiley is one of the biggest assholes that ever opened his mouth on TV. He sold out to Moonie RW corps long ago but acts like ‘people’ support him and made him wealthy. We have to tolerate him as a human and endure his public crap in the hope that nothing lasts forever. But Bill would make a maggot throw up from the recognition of eating their own kind.

  • “‘Talking Points’ doesn’t believe that. Of course the rich do have advantages, but I am living proof that you can start with very little and prosper economically if you work hard and keep it honest. To hype up this class warfare, Edwards is now bringing in homeless veterans.”

    Alright, let’s take this apart: Bill O’Reilly- one guy- claims that because (he says) he worked hard and he was honest, nothing Edwards says about some aspects of the laws or the economy being immoral or unfair is true. Edwards points to some homeless veterans to boslter his argument, and to respond to Edwards’ 195,000 homeless veterans, O’Reilly’s response is “I worked hard and was honest” and “Talking Points [O”Reilly and his writers, presumably] doesn’t believe Edwards.”

    Who’s being dishonest here? Who’s trying to convince who with nothing but their own say-so? It’s an easy pick!

  • I’ve been following this on the Ed Schulz show via Air America. Yesterday, Ed fielded a call from a homeless vet who has no job and recently lost his wife and daughter to a car accident, and who is living on the streets alongside many other Vets. Ed said that he would help the caller. And help he did–he got his information, and soonafter a person involved with ‘Marine Moms’ contacted and met with the vet. Everything the Vet said about his personal situation was verified.

    On today’s show, Ed had John Edwards on, and conferenced in the Vet that called yesterday who was aided by the Marine Moms rep. The three talked, and discussed O’Reilly and how callous and indifferent he is to this issue. Schulz said that a ‘Katrina-like wave’ of support via phone call and emails flooded his office, many of whom related their own tales of Vets’ woes.

    Needless to say, O’Reilly and his ilk have a vested interest in naysaying the truism of homeless Vets. And this episode spotlights the truism of ‘two Americas.’ O’Reilly owes the Vets an apology, and a lot more. They of the ‘pull up your own bootstraps’ crowd have no idea how ‘the other half’ lives, and routinely misrepresent conditions and situations that would tend to show them as the hypocritical horse’s asses that they are.

  • What is it with these people who condemn Edwards for having a huge estate? When he practiced law he beat the insurance companies in multimillion dollar lawsuits because those corporations had been screwing their clients right and left. He had every right to a return on those presumably unwinable victories. If he wants to spend some of his acquired wealth on a nice estate, so what? The Bush Crime Family bought a 200 acre estate in Paraguay for Christ sake. No one criticized Dumbya for that (though his motives for having an escape estate might be suspect).

    So far as I know Edwards never took a vow of poverty. He lists his religion as Methodist, which is derived from Calvinism which, according to Max Weber, values (honestly accumulated) wealth as a sign of possible eternal reward. Does O’Reilly expect Edwards to become a mendicant monk before he can recite the facts of homelessness?

  • One can only hope that O’Lielly comes across some of those veterans who have been adequately informed of his comments on some dark night. . .

  • O’Lielly is a shameless hack. That said, here’s what he said, with a bit of context. Figures don’t lie, but O’Lielly sure does figure…

    …If you earn less than $10,000, you are poor. If a family of four earns less than $21,000, they are poor. Yet according to the government census, poor households in America have lots of stuff.

    Ninety-seven percent have a color TV, 78 percent a DVD player, 80 percent an air conditioner, 73 percent a car or truck, 63 percent cable or satellite TV, and 43 percent of poor households in the USA own the home they are living in.

    So if the poor are not destitute in America, and they obviously are not, why are so many veterans sleeping under bridges, John Edwards? The answer again is they’re mostly addicted or mentally ill. It has nothing to do with the economy…

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,323747,00.html

    You can see the problem. It’s important to understand that to the right wing, mental health issues are viewed as “personal problems” which are only the fault of the victim and cannot be solved by anyone other than the victim, so ignoring them is the “reasonable” thing to do. And if you have a color TV or some other luxury item, you can’t be poor.

    Obviously O’Lielly wants us to think that the homeless vets can’t be helped, and I’m sure he’s right about some small percentage of them, but that’s how their minds work: Find one example that backs up your preconcieved attitude, then project everything from there. Ignore everything else.

    Maybe we should buy color TVs for 3% of the poor people and thereby eliminate poverty.

  • It’s a fool’s errand to try to find any logic or understanding in anything O’Leilly says, including “a” “an” and “the.”

    Of course what he says about veterans is ridiculous on its face. That’s what he gets paid for!

  • O’Reilly is a charlatan, a man either too uninformed or too dishonest to be to do anything. I am tired of hearing this nonsense from him and other callow politiciansbimbo, bottle-blond bobble-heads on tv. We deal with facts here,not fiction. O’Reilly owes us an apology.”

    I’d actually give up my remaining eye-tooth to reach down O’Reilly’s throat and rip, if they can be found, its balls out. Everything… that is wrong with this “country”.

  • I suspect Faux News’ phones lit up with people who were not amused by BillDo’s latest schtick. Now he’s in panic mode and is trying to distract everyone from the fact he’s a 24k fuck. “Hey, look over there! A democrat! No, don’t look at me, look over there!!”

  • So if some people can win money from a rigged roulette wheel, then everything’s kosher with O’Reilly? I swear that man’s going to take off his mask one of these days and admit it was all a big joke.

  • Why anyone with common sense listens to Fox News (let alone O Reilly) is beyond me. I quit listening to Fox many,many years ago because I got tired of the blatant lying. The ignorant hard core neo-con is to be pitied .

  • The Edwards campaign cited a November study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. A spokeswoman for the alliance said it got the information from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the year 1996.

    The VA report said “about one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services.

    Clinton had done a lot of cutting from the VA and Military, so those 1996 numbers may have been correct 11 years ago…

  • I was listening to the Ed Schultz show on Air America yesterday and he had a called phone in who was living out of his car in Colorado. Anyways the topic had shifted to O’Reilly’s tasteless comment in regards to “homeless vets”. To make a long story short, Shultz ended up talking to the vet for about 15 minutes, and the conversation was both interesting and quite depressing. I am going to look around Air America’s website and see if there are any links to recent Ed Schultz programs. If I do in fact come across the conversation at hand I will definitely get you guys the link.

  • When you see two kids whaling away at each other, it’s a fight.

    When you see one kid whaling away at another who’s just taking it, it’s a beating.

    (thanks to Christopher Stasheff for noting the difference)

    When the middle and and lower class strive for economic fairness in this country it’s Class Warfare.

    When the Rich get richer and members of the Middle Class are always in danger of falling into poverty, most often from a health care crisis, then it’s Class Oppression.

    So when some wingnut decries an incitement to Class Warfare, just say we’re only fighting back.

  • Here’s my apology to Bill O’Blarney: I’m so sorry I didn’t take the shot when I had the chance.

  • John Edwards is a classic anti-success, anti-corporate panderer. Like so many advocates, his facts and figures are exponentially distorted. And before you idiots start yelling, I give to charity, I want to help those that are truly in need and in harm’s way. But Edwards is a guy that uses class warfare tactics simply to get what he wants, power. And he panders to all of you that think that taking money away from the rich is the answer to your problems. Weak, people, weak… If you can’t see through this guy, you’re f’in hopeless…..

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