The Defense Of Bill O'Reilly Enters THE THUGGISH PHASE

[Segami]

I predicted last week that David Corn's questioning of Bill O'Reilly's claim that he experienced "combat" in Buenos Aires during the Falklands War won't do the slightest bit of harm to O'Reilly's career; I anticipated that the response would eventually turn vicious and thuggish, and would eventually involve ad hominem attacks on O'Reilly's critics.

Well, here's a moment of thuggishness from O'Reilly himself, as reported in The New York Times:

Mr. O’Reilly’s efforts to refute the claims by Mother Jones and some former CBS News colleagues occurred both on the air and off on Monday. During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter’s coverage was inappropriate. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “You can take it as a threat.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/business/media/bill-oreilly-and-fox-news-redouble-defense-of-his-falklands-reporting.html?_r=0

In a better media world, this would offend every journalist who wasn't an ideological ally of O'Reilly's. This would get the rest of the press's back up. But it won't, because the nerdy members of the Journalism Club see O'Reilly and the rest of the people at Fox as BMOCs who sit at the cool table in the media's high school cafeteria. They fear Fox. So most of them won't wade into the fight. Meanwhile ,David Corn went on right-wing apparatchik Hugh Hewitt's radio show yesterday. Expecting to be asked about the O'Reilly story, Corn was subjected to attacks on his own character for most of an hour, eventually terminating the phone call with Hewitt. Real Clear Politics has posted the audio, deceptively headlining the clip "David Corn Hangs Up On Hugh Hewitt After 45-Minute Grilling on Bill O'Reilly." It wasn't a "45-minute grilling on Bill O'Reilly." Most of it wasn't "on Bill O'Reilly" at all. It was an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink attempted character assassination of Corn, built on irrelevancies twisted into something sinister.


The transcript is here. The effort to impugn Corn started early:

HH: All right. Let me go to Understanding Our Generation. Now I want to go to you. You graduated from Brown in what, 1982?

DC: Yeah.

HH: And you were Phi Beta Kappa there?

DC: Yes, I was.

HH: Did you go to Columbia as well? I saw that in one of the bios.

DC: Yeah, I went to Columbia for a semester, had credits transferred to Brown.

HH: Now standards vary for Phi Beta Kappa. What was the rule at Brown? Did they count the Columbia courses?

DC: I don’t know.

HH: So you have no idea, what was the standard at Brown for Phi Beta Kappa?

DC: I can’t tell you what the standard was 30 years ago, Hugh. Someone, you know, one of my teachers proposed me and I got it. I don’t think you had to apply for it.

HH: You don’t recall how you got it?

DC: I recall, you know, this is crap. What do you care?

HH: I’ll, it’ll come forward. It’s about credibility. It happened 30 years ago, right?

DC: Yeah, it happened 30 years ago.

HH: And you can’t remember how you got it?


cont'

http://www.hughhewitt.com/mother-jones-david-corn-on-his-bill-oreilly-reporting-and-himself/

You see where this is going -- Corn questioned O'Reilly's memories of thirty years ago ... and what was Corn doing decades ago? Becoming a member of Phi Beta Kappa! Did he deserve it? Does he now know why that happened? Is his memory of becoming a member of PBK accurate? Hunh? Hunh?




cont'


http://crooksandliars.com/2015/02/defense-bill-oreilly-enters-thuggish-phase

[daleanime]

1. This is a better world....

and anyone in the MSM who keeps quiet about this is an ally of O'Liey.

[Fred Sanders]

3. The MSM is so ashamed of itself they have no desire to point out the shame of all of Fox.

On the other hand Bilbo is now turning this into a victimization of not only him but an attack on all of Fox.....which it should be.
This is scandal is not over by a long shot, Bilbo's lies are legion and infinite...the silence of Fox executives tells me they have no clue what to do about their number 1 fake show going down for the count...will the Bilbo Virus spread to all the other lying fake hosts and all of Fox?

Ailes and Murdoch must be apoleptic about all the exposure that is growing, not fading one bit.

About time and sweet Justice if it was Biblo that finally brought down Fox.

Fox should just officially admit it does not care about truth and rescue Bilbo.

[daleanime]

4. Which makes them allies.....

I don't care why.

[chervilant]

2. I think this brouhaha has legs.

Bloviating Billo is squirming like a worm on a fishing hook.

[UTUSN]

5. R#9 & K for, I'm proud to do an ad hominem job on him: What a p.o.s. Here are gleanings from Wiki

" ... a conservative ... a Catholic (when conservative/Catholic are joined) ... comments on what he regards as media bias ... ghostwriter for (Tricky Dick) ... worked in the (RAYGUN) administration ... oversaw the (Tricky Dick) Library .... proposed screening (out) researchers deemed unfriendly ... has been columnist for The Weekly Standard ... criticized by Andrew SULLIVAN ..."