Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The "Axis of Libel"

O'Reilly: "We will expose those media which pass along the vicious personal attacks" of "far-left smear sites" [Media Matters]

If you're unfamilar with all this, here's the deal. Every year, a growing War for Christmas is being conducted by Fox News. This is because it plays well to Fox News' base. Some Christians feel threatened by a retail store clerk saying "Happy Holidays" to them. It's as if they've been thrown to the lions for their belief. The rest of us (including a great number of Christians) would like to tell these modern martyrs to suck it up and get over themselves. Yet Fox News knows how to sell ad space, and they've got the faithful watching. So the ever present "War on Christmas" continues to be reported.

Nice, isn't it, how they can report on the War on Terrorism and the War on Christmas at the same time? It's like Bush using every pre-war speech possible to put Saddam and al-Qaeda into the same sentence. It gives a level of plausible deniability ("Hey! We didn't say that Saddam and al-Qaeda had links", though they did.), and the idea gets across. The vast majority of American believed that Saddam had given some kind of assistance to the 9/11 attack. That was pure hokum, perpetrated by the weaselly words of PR, and it's that very same technique being used now by Fox, dang their hides. Bill is calling for a "coalition of the willing" to fight this secular movement.

During the November 28 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly decried what he described as the abandonment of the phrase "Merry Christmas" and called for "a coalition of the willing to fight against this secular movement." He accused financiers George Soros and Peter Lewis of being "the money men behind the secular curtain," because they "have financed a number of websites which routinely attack those with whom they disagree in the most vile ways." O'Reilly then threatened to "expose those media which pass along the vicious personal attacks." He predicted that "[t]he defamation pipeline that has been cleverly devised will collapse," and then stated, "This is what the culture war is all about."

O'Reilly made a similar threat in the wake of Media Matters for America's exposure of his remarks regarding the city of San Francisco. In discussing a resolution San Francisco voters passed on November 8 to discourage military recruitment on campuses of public schools and colleges, O'Reilly said: "[I]f Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." In response to the firestorm of protest against these comments, O'Reilly blamed "far-left smear websites" and "Internet guttersnipes" for reporting his statements. He stated: "[H]ere's what I'm going to do, ladies and gentlemen, every minion that does that, every one is going to be exposed on The Radio Factor, the television Factor, and on our website, BillOReilly.com. Every one who carries their water, I'm going to put their face up there, their name up there, and tell you exactly what they're doing. So you know in your town who's doing it."

Following up on his threat, O'Reilly has posted on his website a list of "media operations [that] have regularly helped distribute defamation and false information supplied by far left websites."


Could he be any more transparent? Sites like Media Matters have been a thorn in his side, precisely because they report the things that he says (always referenced to the transcript or the video tape - because transcripts sometimes get the memory hole treatment) and call him on it. Well, Bill O'Reilly has had enough of that. So in the name of protecting Christmas, Bill's going to get back at the people who are trying so desperately to keep him and other Fox correspondants honest.

His list is here, and it's small. As of this moment, there's only the New York Daily News, The St. Petersburg Times, and MSNBC on it. Only three "media operations [that] have regularly helped distribute defamation and false information supplied by far left websites"? Surely these are the most egregious of the three, an "Axis of Libel", if you will.

I'm worried, though. "Regularly distribute defamation and false information"? "Dishonest and not worth your time"? Sounds like somebody's asking for a lawsuit. But Bill's filed lawsuits before, and it hasn't gone well for him. He discovered at the hands of Al Franken that it's so much better to be the defendant in the lawsuit, particularly when he's just trying to defend the honor of Christmas. Being able to slander the people who record your every word and bust you on your outright spin and deception is strictly icing on the cake.

Bill O'Reilly: what a piece of work.

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