{"id":11590,"date":"2007-07-25T16:35:05","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T20:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11590.html"},"modified":"2007-07-25T16:35:05","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T20:35:05","slug":"if-oreilly-wants-to-nutpick-there-is-plenty-of-nutpicking-to-go-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-oreilly-wants-to-nutpick-there-is-plenty-of-nutpicking-to-go-around\/","title":{"rendered":"If O’Reilly wants to nutpick, there is plenty of nutpicking to go around"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nutpicking<\/b>: (verb<\/i>) 1. the practice of trawling through open comment threads<\/a> in order to find a few wackjobs who can be held up as evidence that liberals are nuts.<\/p>\n

About a week ago, Bill O’Reilly launched<\/a> what might be the most high-profile nutpicking fight of all time, launching a massive offensive against JetBlue for its sponsorship of the YearlyKos conference. The Fox News blowhard picked a handful of obscure, intemperate comments from DailyKos threads to argue it’s a “hate site” along the lines of the KKK. The bullying worked; JetBlue backed out of its sponsorship agreement.<\/p>\n

Last night, Howard Wolfson, Hillary’s Clinton’s Director of Communications, appeared on O’Reilly’s show to tell the host<\/a>, “[W]ith all due respect for you, the days where you can dictate where Senator Clinton and other Democrats go, who we talk to, are over.” Wolfson added that O’Reilly had “cherry picked” some objectionable comments in order to “smear an entire community, hundreds of thousands of people … who participate vigorously in our democracy.”<\/p>\n

There was also this exchange:<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Bill, even your website has things on it that you would find objectionable.<\/p>\n

O’REILLY: That’s bull. Look, we know what you’re going to say because the Kos planted someone in there. But when we see objectionable things, we take it off immediately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it turns out, that’s not quite right<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

Yesterday, ThinkProgress perused the O’Reilly messageboard (available only to paid subscribers) to examine the contents of the comments posted there. We found Bill Clinton referred to as “cow manure,” Hillary as “the she devil,” Obama as “the anti-Christ,” and other derogatory remarks. Contrary to O’Reilly’s claim that “objectionable things” are taken off immediately, these comments are still on the site this morning:<\/p>\n

I thought that Bill Clinton was a piece of cow manure, but he still was the President of the United States. [posted by vvatc, 7\/23\/07, 8:23 PM PT]<\/p>\n

Yeppers, the she devil is the smart one. A turn towards the right does that for people. She’s crafty! [posted by Martha Wells, 7\/24\/07, 3:11 AM PT]<\/p>\n

Obama may well be the anti-Christ for the way the media builds him up as the savior for all of the ills in the country. [posted by Mike Piche, 7\/19\/07, 5:56 PM PT]<\/p>\n

RE: Illegal immigrants worth fighting for??? they breed likes rats 100 make 1000 in 9 months [posted by bullpen, 7\/16\/07, 11:16 AM PT]<\/p>\n

My daughters looking through it the other day, sees Chertoff, says, “is that the guy in charge of our homeland? He looks like a Nazi mom.” I concur. [posted by Debra Sanders, 7\/15\/07, 9:48 AM PT]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aravosis found<\/a> a contributor to O’Reilly’s site who even went so far as to threaten Sen. Clinton directly. There are a variety of similar comments here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, last week, during the JetBlue offensive, O’Reilly dismissed the notion that over-the-top rhetoric was user-submitted, arguing that people can dictate what does and doesn’t appear on their own websites. Should one assume, therefore, that O’Reilly personally approves of the above comments?<\/p>\n

Frankly, I’d much prefer that O’Reilly be judged on what he says and writes, just as DailyKos can be judged on the content of its front-page posts. That said, if O’Reilly wants to nutpick, there is plenty of nutpicking to go around<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nutpicking: (verb) 1. the practice of trawling through open comment threads in order to find a few wackjobs who can be held up as evidence that liberals are nuts. About a week ago, Bill O’Reilly launched what might be the most high-profile nutpicking fight of all time, launching a massive offensive against JetBlue for its […]<\/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-11590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11590","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=11590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}