{"id":11492,"date":"2007-07-17T15:45:08","date_gmt":"2007-07-17T19:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11492.html"},"modified":"2007-07-17T15:45:08","modified_gmt":"2007-07-17T19:45:08","slug":"oreilly-smears-yearlykos-jetblue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/oreilly-smears-yearlykos-jetblue\/","title":{"rendered":"O’Reilly smears YearlyKos, JetBlue"},"content":{"rendered":"

JetBlue is helping sponsor the YearlyKos conference this year, which apparently was enough to send Bill O’Reilly over the edge. If you haven’t seen the clip<\/a>, it’s certainly worth watching, if only as a textbook example of modern “journalism” at its most pernicious. Here’s some of the transcript:<\/p>\n

“What do you think of someone who says the following: ‘the world would be better off without him.’ That after Tony Snow announced his cancer had returned. ‘The pope is a primate.’ Evangelicals are ‘nut cases.’ ‘Better luck next time’ after an assassination plot against Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan. And some attacks against coalition forces in Iraq are ‘legitimate.’<\/p>\n

“All of those thoughts were posted on a vicious far-left website called the DailyKos, one of the worst examples of hatred America has to offer. This summer, that website is having a convention in Chicago. And only one major corporation has stepped up as a sponsor. That company is Jet Blue, the airline that melted down last winter.<\/p>\n

‘As is our policy, we contacted Jet Blue last week to ask why. Why would it sponsor a hateful website? It had no answer. So we sent ‘Factor’ producer Jesse Watters out to see Jet Blue CEO David Barger.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When O’Reilly says “see” David Barger, what he means is, he sent a flunkie to New York in order to ambush Barger on the sidewalk outside his home.<\/p>\n

But if even we put that aside for a moment, O’Reilly’s smear is, well, kind of silly. DailyKos, which the FNC personality went on to describe as “hate mongers,” is hardly vitriolic. What O’Reilly did was pick a handful of unrepresentative remarks from Kos diaries and comments sections — a clear violation of Drum’s Law<\/a> — and pass them off as what DailyKos is all about.
\n
\nHe went on to discuss the “controversy” with Business Week’s Diane Brady, who tried to be almost reasonable.<\/p>\n

BRADY: You know, there’s no question DailyKos is clearly on the left. And one thing that comes up, especially with those open forums is you get a lot of lunatics come up. And I’m sure – I look at their site.<\/p>\n

O’REILLY: You know, you – look, I have my own website. We don’t — open forum is bull. All right? You can regulate what’s on your website.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except, as TP noted<\/a>, “O’Reilly doesn’t mention, however, that his website doesn’t have a public forum and the message boards are available only for a $50 annual membership fee.”<\/p>\n

From what I hear, O’Reilly continued his tirade again this afternoon on his radio show, ranting nonsense about DailyKos being financed by O’Reilly’s #1 boogeyman: George Soros.<\/p>\n

Poor Bill really needs a hobby. Kos is not the enemy, and JetBlue chipping in a few tickets as part of a sponsorship deal is not scandalous. Besides, if anyone deserves to be labeled as “one of the worst examples of hatred America has to offer,” it has to be the guy who encouraged terrorists<\/a> to kill Americans on U.S. soil, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JetBlue is helping sponsor the YearlyKos conference this year, which apparently was enough to send Bill O’Reilly over the edge. If you haven’t seen the clip, it’s certainly worth watching, if only as a textbook example of modern “journalism” at its most pernicious. Here’s some of the transcript: “What do you think of someone who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}