Tag: TV

On his show last week, Bill O’Reilly emitted a heinous smear against U.S. forces who served and died in World War II:

On “The O’Reilly Factor” on May 30, O’Reilly floated the argument that the alleged murder by U.S. Marines of 24 unarmed men, women and children in the Iraqi town of Haditha in November 2005 was just par for the course in wartime.

“In Iwo Jima, in the Battle of the Bulge, Malmedy, all these things,” O’Reilly lectured his guest, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark. “You’re a military historian. You know these happened. It happened in every war. It’s happened in every army. …”

When Clark protested – “you’ll have to show me and prove to me that there were ever any American soldiers in Belgium and Normandy or in Iwo Jima who murdered civilians” – O’Reilly countered with a smirk and a shake of the head.

“In Malmedy, as you know, U.S. forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down,” O’Reilly said referring to the Belgian town of Malmedy, which was fought over during the Battle of the Bulge. “You know that. That’s on the record, been documented. In Iwo Jima, the same thing occurred. Japanese attempted to surrender, and they were burned in their caves.”

But O’Reilly’s historical certainty was astonishingly misplaced. First, at Malmedy, the atrocity on Dec. 17, 1944, was the other way around: about 86 surrendering U.S. soldiers were massacred by German SS panzer forces in one of the most notorious war crimes on the Western Front.

Imagine the reaction if a Democrat had made these false statements. We’d be hearing about liberals who hate America and hate our troops and all the rest of it.

I am overwhelmed by outrage fatigue.

Surf’s up: Pat Robertson has made another dire weather prediction. This time he says God has told him that He will soon smite godless liberal Oregonians with a tsunami:

The Rev. Pat Robertson says God has told him that storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America’s coastline this year. The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network has told viewers of “The 700 Club” that the revelations came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January.

“If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms,” Robertson said May 8. He added specifics in Wednesday’s show. “There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest,” he said.

But if Robertson’s track record as a divine weathercaster holds true, Oregonians may have less to fear than do the citizens in the Tidewater Virginia area that is headquarters to Robertson’s rightwing political and religious enclave. In 1998, Robertson predicted all sorts of disasters would smite central Florida:

After Orlando … city officials voted in 1998 to fly rainbow flags from city lampposts during the annual Gay Days event at Disney World, Robertson issued the city a warning: “I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you. … [A] condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”

Instead, God smote Robertson by hurling Hurricane Bonnie directly at Virginia Beach that August:

Overnight, Bonnie drifted out into the Atlantic southeast of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina … Rough surf pounded the Atlantic coastline as far north as New England, while 12- to 15-foot swells were reported along the Virginia coast. Winds as high as 90 mph snapped ship mooring ropes and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity on Friday in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk area.

On Meet the Press yesterday, GOP former House Speaker Newt Gingrich emitted one of the Republicans’ mustiest lies about the war in Iraq:

NEWT GINGRICH: It was, it was a war of choice in the sense that we believed that sooner or later he was going to hit us, and therefore I would argue that the only question was timing. But I believe it’s much harder to make the case that the United States would be safer today with Saddam Hussein in power.

MR. RUSSERT: Because…

MR. GINGRICH: But, by the way, remember Saddam was paying $25,000 dollars to the family of every suicide bomber. Saddam had a direct relationship with al-Qaeda, and if you read the recent joint forces command report, which is declassified and has been published, which goes through all the information we’ve learned from the Iraqi generals, it’s very compelling that this was a dangerous dictatorship and that we had a very good reason to be worried about it.

And what was moderator Tim Russert’s response to this blatant falsehood?

MR. RUSSERT: Has our involvement and presence in Iraq and the difficulties in that war, and the costs of that war, limited our options with Iran?

Los Angeles Times:

Nielsen Media Research reported that Fox News’ overall prime-time lineup dropped 17 percent last month compared with a year ago (MSNBC grew 16 percent during the same period, while CNN plummeted by 38 percent).

Late last week, a reliable television industry website, TVNewser.com, reported that in April, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly had his worst month in nearly five years among viewers age 25 to 54, the most coveted audience in TV news.

Although the network still churns out ratings light-years ahead of competitors’ and O’Reilly remains cable news’ No. 1 host, Fox News’ explosive growth appears to be, like the president’s 90 percent approval rating in the days following Sept. 11, a relic from the first Bush term.

That’s the elephant in the room, of course — the broadly assumed, and occasionally documented, affinity between Fox News and the current administration (Vice President Dick Cheney’s office prepared a hotel checklist, recently posted on TheSmokingGun.com, that ordered “all televisions tuned to Fox News” during Cheney visits). Could it be mere coincidence that O’Reilly, populist scourge of both Clintons and countless left-wing causes, is seeing his still-formidable nightly audience of 2.1 million or so start to shrink in tandem with the Bush/GOP’s rapidly fading grip on the electorate?

O’Reilly’s thoroughly delighted rivals think not.

“When the stock market was through the roof in the ’90s, people used to sit around and watch CNBC and slap high fives and say, ‘I made another hundred bucks today!’ ” said MSNBC host and O’Reilly foe Keith Olbermann, adding that CNBC’s ratings quickly went south when the tech bubble burst.

“I think the same psychology applies to Fox. They’ll always have their hard-core audience that wants to hear, ‘Everything’s great! [Bush is] doing a great job.’ ” But less-partisan viewers are drifting away, Olbermann argued.

Satiricaliness: Stephen Colbert, whose loopy character on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” is known for his “truthiness,” delivered a major dose of it to a displeased President and Mrs. Bush Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Dinner, according to Editor & Publisher:

A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk-show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

‘I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.’

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2,700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk-show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face — “and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, “I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”
[…]

Harry Shearer has a video clip of Chris Matthews talking with Tom DeLay just seconds before they went on the air on “Hardball” earlier this week.

Watch DeLay’s body language. In contrast to his smiling mug shot and high-fivin’ public demeanor, he is clearly a doomed and defeated man.

I typed up a rough transcript:

MATTHEWS: Thank you for calling me.

DELAY: Well…

MATTHEWS: It was a good thing for me.

DELAY: Was it?

MATTHEWS: Oh, of course it was. We got it on the air as fast as we could.

DELAY: Yeah, well…

(Cross talk.)

MATTHEWS: If Shannon had told me there was an embargo, I would have honored it, but I didn’t

DELAY: Well, she’s mad at me now because I told you. I didn’t tell you that.

(Indistinct female voice off-camera.)

MATTHEWS: I didn’t.. I didn’t get an embargo. But ah… You just said to me, if you’re on the morning news tomorrow morning, this is something you can use, which is fine. But she called me and said, “Don’t worry. He’s not calling to complain.” (Laughter.)

[Tape is edited. Continues…]

MATTHEWS: Have you seen this new, ah, new focus group stuff on the {Democratic] candidates?

DELAY: No, I haven’t.

MATTHEWS: (Indistinct.)

DELAY: Really?

MATTHEWS: I’ll send it to ya. It’s great… It’s great stuff.

DELAY: Really?

MATTHEWS: Hillary, John Kerry… all these guys. All Democrats. How they do…

VOICE off camera: Thirty seconds, everybody.

MATTHEWS: It’s [Republican pollster] Frank Luntz who did it. And ah…

DELAY: Ooh, I like Luntz…

MATTHEWS: Hillary did not do well.

DELAY: Really?

MATTHEWS: Kerry did well.

DELAY: You’re kidding?

MATTHEWS: I am not kidding. They didn’t like Edwards. They thought he was a rich lawyer pretending to care about poor people. Hillary was “know it all.”

DELAY: Nothing worse than a woman know it all.

[Tape is edited. Continues…]

MATTHEWS: Thanks. I owe you one. I owe you two!

DELAY: No, you don’t.

MATTHEWS: Today and last night. No, I do.

DELAY: I appreciate it…

The White House launched a campaign this week to blame the media for their troubles, especially the war in Iraq. This new strategy may backfire on them.

Case in point is CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who spent the run-up to the war in Iraq blandly repeating GOP talking points and rarely, if ever, asking probing questions about the reasons for war the administration provided, all of which have proved to be false.

Two interviews conducted by Blitzer this week seem to show that his loyalty to the Bush cause may be getting shaky:

Bad Wolf

On Tuesday, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Helen Thomas, an old colleague of his from the White House press corps, about her “tough questioning” of President Bush earlier that day regarding the reasons he took the country to war in Iraq.

In the interview, Blizter zeroed in on Thomas’ partisanship:

BLITZER: You did say in January of 2003, you said — you said, “This is the worst president ever. He is the worst president in all of American history.”

THOMAS: I never said that on the record, but it certainly got out.

At the end of the segment, Thomas turned the tables and reminded Blitzer that during the Lewinsky scandal that he had asked President Clinton if he thought he should resign the presidency over his affair:

BLITZER: We sat in those briefings for a long time together. Helen, I hope you’re around…

THOMAS: You ask very tough questions.

BLITZER: Well, I’m trying to do the best I can, like you.

THOMAS: You asked President Clinton why he wouldn’t resign.

BLITZER: I asked him some tough questions, but that’s another time. And this is another story right now.

So Helen’s “tough questioning” of Bush about his implausible reasons for taking the country to war were inappropriate, but Blitzer’s “tough question” about Clinton’s extramarital affair was perfectly in scale with the seriousness of the matter?

Good Wolf

In an interview Wednesday with former Senator Bob Dole, Blitzer actually interrupted the former majority leader as he rolled through his now three-year-old GOP talking points about Iraq and blithely attempted to elide 9/11 and Saddam:

[…]

On February 3, 2006, rightwing talk show host Chris Matthews did a segment on “Hardball” in which he speculated that the arsonists behind the church fires in Alabama might be gay activists:

Just hunching it out, being a bit of a cop here, I’m trying to think, could it be a person who doesn’t like what they stand for? Is there any outstanding disputes on social issues, gay right, marriage—let me see—abortion? Any of those issues out front where the Baptist Church might have got an enemy it didn’t know about here, or knew about?

And…

MATTHEWS: Is there anything in the papers down there where the Baptist Church has taken a position on some social issue: gay marriage—something that’s hot—where that would have aroused somebody?

GUEST: I haven’t seen that, Chris, but it’s very viable, because, you know, we had an arson of a Unitarian church in rural Virginia back in the summer and it was right after the church, on a national level, had embraced some gay members. And then there was an attack on this church in Staunton, Virginia, so things like that can happen.

MATTHEWS: That’s why I’m thinking like that, because the more liberal churches would drive some people on the right crazy and maybe a more liberal person who is gay for example would feel that they’ve been terrorized by the beliefs of another church too. We don’t know.

It is fascinating and awful.

And dead wrong:

Law enforcement officials arrested three men March 8 in connection with a string of nine fires at Baptist churches in rural Alabama.

Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk, both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, said they set the fires as a “joke,” authorities said.