Friday, July 27, 2007

O'Reilly attacks Daily Kos for content but forget about the objectionable comments on his own site

O'Reilly continued to attack Daily Kos while ignoring objectionable comments on his own site Summary: During the July 25 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, discussing the Democratic presidential candidates' decision to attend the YearlyKos convention, host Bill O'Reilly again railed against the purportedly "objectionable" material on the Daily Kos blog, and former comedian now GOP shrill Dennis Miller agreed, saying: "There's some mean stuff on that site. ... [T]hat's a pretty fetid little orchard over there." But neither O'Reilly nor Miller discussed the content of comments on O'Reilly's own site, including one from July 13 that was flagged in a July 26 Americablog post, in which a user mused: "Maybe it's time to burn down the capitol building like Hitler did with the Reichstag building? Anyone comparing Bush to Hitler has no idea of what the real Nazis were like in the '30s. Ellison is an idiot." The poster was apparently commenting on a remark by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) comparing the Bush administration's response to the September 11 attacks with the fire at the Reichstag building orchestrated by the Nazi party. On the July 24 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, in response to the suggestion that his website also contained offensive comments, O'Reilly accused Daily Kos of having "planted someone" on his website. However, according to screenshots of the comments in question (posted by Americablog here and here), this purported "plant[]" would have to have posted thousands of comments to O'Reilly's website, under different aliases. The commenter posting under the name Jack Kincade, who suggested following Hitler's example and burning down the U.S. Capitol, has more than 4,100 posts on BillOReilly.com. On the July 24 edition of the program, O'Reilly also offered examples of "what Daily Kos posts about Hillary Clinton," calling them "brutal personal attacks." In response, Americablog highlighted several violent statements about Clinton posted in the comments section of BillOReilly.com (here, here, and here). One such comment on O'Reilly's website -- in which a user wrote with regard to Clinton, "If you could read my thoughts, I would be on the SS [Secret Service] watch list" -- caused Huffington Post blogger Lane Hudson to notify the Secret Service, calling the comment "a threat to her life." On the July 25 edition of the program, O'Reilly noted that someone had notified the Secret Service about content on his website, saying to Miller: "I mean, they lie all the time. They -- I don't know whether you know this or not, but they contacted the Secret Service saying that there was somebody on BillOReilly.com threatening Senator Clinton. I mean, this is how insane these people are." He did not acknowledge that the post reportedly prompting the call to the Secret Service was real. Additionally, O'Reilly again compared the Daily Kos to white supremacist David Duke, stating: "Is [former New York City Mayor Rudy] Giuliani [R] going down to the David Duke convention? I don't think so!" As Media Matters for America has documented (here, here and here), O'Reilly has repeatedly compared the Daily Kos to the Nazi party, the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke. From the July 25 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor: O'REILLY: All right. Last night you saw Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's main man, adviser, come on The Factor, and I had to read him some pretty nasty stuff that was posted on the Daily Kos about Senator Clinton. Yet they're still going to the convention to hoo-hoo with them. What do you think? MILLER: Well, I think if it's possible for a shark to jump the shark, Hillary might be doing it by lemming after these people. There's some mean stuff on that site. They accuse you of cherry-picking, but that's a pretty fetid little orchard over there. And you know something? At some point when they're slagging you -- like the stuff you read to Wolfson was beautiful. Because Wolfson is -- to me I don't quite get Wolfson. He's the same guy who flinched in the [Sen.] Barack Obama [D-IL] thing and said that Barack was guilty of carpet bombing. Come on, Howard, the Clintons invented carpet bombing. They have napalm-scented AirWicks in their apartment, for God sakes. These are the people who invented it. But the thing that I love is that you jump into the fray, and strife is your metier. You love -- you're like the little kid in the swimming pool who everybody is running with the current, and you're the one to take it on the chest. But give the kid who runs the Daily Kos a little credit. That little guy who looks like Sal Mineo before he had water. He did come out and say that he thought some of the diarists were getting a little too profane. O'REILLY: Well, OK, but before you -- before you're too kind to the guy who runs it, I want to put a picture up that we took off there today. All right. Put that picture up. And the picture is of the president of the United States with a cow doing an illegal act. All right. Now this is on the website today. All right. Is that a cow or a sheep? It's some kind of barnyard animal. So they can say whatever they want to say on this website. And they do. I mean, they lie all the time. They -- I don't know whether you know this or not, but they contacted the Secret Service saying that there was somebody on BillOReilly.com threatening Senator Clinton. MILLER: This is - O'REILLY: I mean, this is how insane these people are. But if -- the picture that we show, as objectionable as it is, is on there today. And I'm saying to myself, how can anybody who wants to be president of the United States, you know, go to a convention sponsored by these people? How? MILLER: Well, all I can assume is Bush is going full bore for the bovine vote there. So -- O'REILLY: Do you get my point, Miller, or not? MILLER: I get your point, probably not as much as the cow, but I do get the point. O'REILLY: Oh, man. You know, all I'm saying is we'd like a little decorum here in the presidential election. Maybe some judgment calls. Is that too much to ask, Miller? Is it too much to ask? MILLER: Mooooo! O'REILLY: Is Giuliani going down to the David Duke convention? I don't think so! Sidebar commentary: I might be in the minority about feeling sorry for Bill-O he start this war against the Daily Kos out of fake outrage and once again he gets tripped up by his own hypocrisy. And the part I love about this story is that Bill is claiming someone from the Kos is some how masking as a crazy conservative poster making these wild comments to make his site look bad. Ok I play along on this one maybe two or four post but not 4,100 comments.. To this "fight" Daily Kos 3 and no one from the secret service investigation the content of the site to Bill O'Reilly 0 and secret service investigating someone on his site for threatening the life of Hillary Clinton and burning down the Capitol Building.

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