O'Reilly: The Left is attacking Fox News to draw attention from the economy

[Amerigo Vespucci]

September 23, 2010 04:00 PM

Waaaah! O'Reilly whines that mean liberals are blaming poor, innocent Fox News for warping people's perceptions

By David Neiwert

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/waaaah-oreilly-whines-mean-liberals-

Bill O'Reilly was whining all night long on his show last night about Fox News being blamed for the warped nature of American discourse these days (something, of course, that John and I tackle front and center in our book Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane). His opening "Talking Points Memo" set the tone for the rest of the night's whine:

A few weeks ago, the president went after Congressman John Boehner. That didn't go anywhere. So now some lefties are bringing Fox News back into the war zone.

If you visit the left-wing websites, the rhetoric is pretty much all the same: Fox News lies; Fox News is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party; Fox News doesn't give President Obama a chance.

And in the past few days, we've seen that internet rhetoric expand to TV.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALAN GRAYSON, D-FLA.: One of the fundamental problems is Fox, OK? Fox has turned into Monty Python's lying circus. All day long they spew lies out time after time, day after day. And they have created this bubble of irreality around the people who listen to them, and it's a threat to this country.

FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Things have gone downhill, I think, in the last few years with the polarization of our country, with the evolution of a new kind of politics, with the birth of Fox News that now distorts everything rather than tells the truth.

RICK SANCHEZ, HOST, CNN's "RICK'S LIST": And then there is Fox News, which is essentially the voice of the Republican Party, whose job it is to make this man look bad no matter what he does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

This man, of course, is the president.

Since the war on Fox News failed the last time around, it is a bit perplexing that it would be resurrected. Americans can decide for themselves whether FNC is a propaganda mill. They don't need dishonest commentators to tell them that. We're here 24-7. You can see for yourself.

And the American people have. The CNN commentator you just heard gets beaten by "The Factor" about 7 to 1 in the ratings.

So blaming Fox News for the woes of the Democratic Party is another losing proposition. And like trying to demonize the Tea Party, it will backfire.

The troubling reality is that the USA is suffering economically and President Obama's leadership is being questioned. That's what's in play, and all the partisan bloviating in the world won't change that.

The problem is that Fox won't bring on anyone -- anyone -- who will demonstrate that Fox does indeed lie, and distort, and race-bait, and propagandize, all on a 24/7 basis. It's very easy to do -- but anyone who attempts to do so is immediately shut down. And anyone prepared to do so is never invited on. Indeed, we have considerable evidence that anyone prepared to criticize Fox is blackballed from their broadcasts.

O'Reilly claims his show has on Democrats all the time -- but it never has on critics of Fox. If O'Reilly really were to live up to his claim, he would invite John and me onto his show. But he knows we have the goods (just read Over the Cliff), he knows we'd make him look bad, and he'll never do it. Besides, he considers us to be too penny-ante -- which is pretty funny, considering he loves to present himself as a working-class guy who champions "the folks" all the time.

Moreover, Fox never invites on anyone (besides Alan Colmes) who will give a full-throated defense of what the Foxheads like to call "the left" -- not just President Obama, but the progressive agenda generally. Which is a large part of why the discourse that emanates from Fox is so distorted.

Let's use O'Reilly's centerpiece as our example here: the economy. It's true that Obama's economic recovery has not been as robust as any of us would have liked, and no doubt we can blame a large share of this on his conservative, Establishment-oriented economic team and his personal timidity.

But at the end of the day, his ability to be bold was constrained by the political realities created by Fox -- particularly its open advocacy and relentless promotion of an opposition movement (the Tea Parties) and its endless propagandizing on behalf of congressional Republicans who were rewarded for engaging in politics designed to make his programs fail.

Moreover, in spite of this, Obama has in fact done a reasonable job in turning things around -- a reality that you will never, ever hear expressed on Fox News.

To wit, here is a chart you will NEVER see shown on Fox:



That's a chart showing job growth in the USA. So much for "cutting taxes for the rich" as an effective job stimulus, eh?

O'Reilly may whine endlessly that Fox is being demonized as unfair to Democrats -- but it's simply a readily demonstrable reality.

[Radical Activist]

1. Fox brings up shit like the Times Square mosque to distract from the issues.

Those right wingers are always projecting their slimy tactics onto others.