Occasionally, watching Bill O’Reilly react to one thing or another – badly – it has become rather common to have a macabre thought of how it will all end for Bill-O.
Will he have a public meltdown…no, not like he’s already had, I mean a gigantic, awe-inspiring, jaw dropping meltdown on the air so big that FoxNews pulls the plug during the show because O’Reilly is waving his pants in the air and has his necktie around his head like a bandanna?
Will he take a hostage?
Will he climb a tower?
What is he doing with that loofah?
Those sort of things.
Well, apparently that moment is drawing ever nearer.
Several weeks ago, during a ‘Countdown’ segment, Keith Olbermann mentioned that O’Reilly was going after NBC and the international business of its parent corporation, GE, because of him. I thought, well that’s possible, it is O’Reilly, but I doubt he and Roger Ailes would be so dumb as to be explicit about it.
How I could have doubted that, is a mystery to me:
Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News star, is mounting an extraordinary televised assault on the chief executive of General Electric, calling him a "pinhead" and a "despicable human being" who bears responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq…The high-level appeals failed, and O’Reilly has escalated his criticism of GE in recent weeks, declaring, "If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt."
Yeah, because the Bush Administration and its enabler, Bill O’Reilly, have absolutely no responsibility of any kind for deaths in Iraq. Heck, Bush even promised Pat Robertson there would be no casualties. And we all know, Bush is never wrong … in Bizarro World.
But O’Reilly’s usual level of disconnect is being exceeded in this case because he has the thinnest skin in the world. Though Roger Ailes, his GOP-loyal boss is a close second. However, Ailes has a good excuse, his skin is stretched taut through years of dedicated eating.
Early last year, the sources say, Capus called Ailes to say that O’Reilly had gone over the line with reckless attacks on Engel. But, the sources recounted, Ailes said he agreed that NBC was against the war and had aligned itself with Olbermann’s mockery. Capus, he said, had the power to shut down the situation by telling Olbermann to back off.
The conversation grew tense as Capus asked whether Ailes was threatening him with retaliation by O’Reilly and News Corp. if Olbermann kept up his criticism. Ailes kept returning to highly personal comments by Olbermann, whom he referred to with an expletive, and the impasse remained. The sources declined to be identified furnishing details of private conversations.
Poor, besieged Roger Ailes.
– the onetime Republican consultant asked whether NBC still cared about the truth. Olbermann had inaccurately called Ailes "the lead political consultant for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign." Ailes worked for Giuliani’s New York mayoral campaign in 1989, but no evidence has surfaced that he played a role in the presidential bid.
Zucker did nothing as a result of the call. "I have never asked Keith Olbermann to tone anything down," he said in a brief interview.
Olbermann said in an interview that his sources say Ailes was offering the campaign advice, which he did not explain or detail in his commentary. It would be a major breach of journalistic ethics for the head of a news channel to advise a politician, especially one his reporters are covering.
I’m sure Roger Ailes really acted with journalistic integrity when he had "imaginary" conversations with Sean Hannity to stop explicit endorsements of Rudy Giuliani every night from last Summer until memories of 9/11 forced Giuliani to drop out in February this year — because it was only seven months until 9/11.
This article comes from Howie Kurtz so naturally it lacks the depth that could have actually explained the detail of O’Reilly’s bizarre behavior better. For example, we all know the relationship he claims he has with Ailes that can be counted on, in a pinch:
If you cross Fox News Channel, it’s not just me, it’s Roger Ailes who will go after you. I’m the street guy out front making loud noises about the issues, but Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes and makes things happen so that one day BAM! The person gets what’s coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he’s going to get a knock on his door and life as he’s known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.
When O’Reilly’s biggest meltdown finally comes, someone please remember to overlay the viral video on YouTube with "Sting" playing O’Reilly out, as Bill utters his final words, "We’ll do it live!".
(pic from Comandante Agi)
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Who’s the funny man with the green tie, mommy? He scares me.
O’Reilly will remain on TV until he keels over dead. And then Fox will prop up his corpse and keep the cameras running.
Good morning all. Nice post Attaturk.
Olberman is really getting to the guy – and the recent video of his meltdown makes him look nuts indeed.
I was troubled by the WaPo’s ‘even-handed’ tone, stating that Olberman’s taunts were on a par with O’Reilly’s bs — I guess that’s typical.
What’s even more troubling is the degree to which the NEWS becomes a story about a celebrity spat: meanwhile, these nobodies in Iraq are so tacky they keep dying.
We’re living in a nearly totally synthetic world (except FDL, natch). We’re fed these stupid processed ideas.
Olberman is great, but — I haven’t seen him discuss the NYT/Barstow rent-a-general story — that story the MSM is working so hard to ignore. Did I miss it? Or is he running interference for his pal Brian Williams?
Tell me I missed it, okay?
[Good morning! I posted this late on the “one soldier says no” article but forgive me, it seems relevant here. Thanks, Attaturk, love your sense of the ridiculous. BTW, Bill O. used to be a young, lovable, earnest reporter at Channel 3 in Hartford,CT. What happened?]
Lee Camp, comic, was on Fox News apparently invited to make fun of Huckabee but at the end of his segment he popped off calling Fox News a “parade of propaganda” among other things. Don’t know if you caught this.
He wrote an article about it for AlterNet. Will post the site at end. (the clip of him is very cathartic!) Here is some of what he said in his article:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/78148/
Good morning, pups. It’s [gag] Kristol and Krugman today. William “I’ve never been right about anything” Kristol typed a thing called “McCain’s Exceptionalism.” Grasping at straws, and whistling past the graveyard, he says that three developments this past week were promising for John McCain, or what amounts to pretty much the same thing, problematic for Barack Obama. Mr. Krugman says folks are “Stranded in Suburbia,” and that with rising oil prices leaving many Americans stranded in suburbia, it’s starting to look as if Berlin, a city of trains, buses and bikes, had the better idea.
http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/
The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and the biscuits are out of the oven. I’m shuffling off to the kitchen to get another cup of tea…
there’s an elephant in the room;
HEY, BILLO, YOUR KID IS NOT IN IRAQ AND NEITHER ARE THE KIDS OF THE PRESIDENT, RUMSFELD OR CHENEY
man, he opens the door, we need to walk in and climb down his throat
Oh. my. goodness. gracious………..
You have just made my day, week, and, quite possibly, month!
*smooches* {{{{{{ }}}}}} and any other appropriate emoticons with which I am unacquainted.
This one was also quite nice:
But in a broader sense, what “happened” to make me call Fox “News” a “festival of ignorance” was the past twelve years of knowing this festering pile of propaganda coated with drivel and wrapped in the American flag has been spewing its poisonous eggs into the brains of average Americans. Now THAT’s desecration of the flag – watching it flap back and forth behind a Fox “news” program.
Didn’t actually use the word “fascism”; sometimes the unsaid says it all. *g*
Heading back over there to check out comments.
Interesting about Ailes in the Newsweek review of Nixonland last week. Apparently going all the way back to Nixon if you wanted the most despicable vile lie-cheat-n-steal kind of politics, Ailes is yer man.
O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh are just his junkyard dogs.
What on earth are all those reich wingers doing hanging out at alternet? It ain’t like it’s gonna change their minds….or what passes for minds. :-(
Morning Attaturk, and his Attaturkers
When the Mainstream Media Attacks! -each other [hee hee hee]
here’s what’s on Washington Journal
7:30 0am – Brian Montgomery, Housing & Urban Development (HUD), Federal Housing Commissioner
8:00 am – Martin Baily, Brookings Institution, Economic Studies Senior Fellow — Credit Report
8:45 am – Peter Beinart, Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Foreign Policy Senior Fellow — TIME Article
9:30 am – Newspaper Articles & Viewer Calls
Does he scare you as much as Mommie Dearest in the background?
I agree – Kristol’s McCain fantasy today smells of desperation.
One of the (many) striking things that separates Obama from the likes of McSame, Kristol, W, HRC, Pinch Sulzberger, HWBush et. al. – is the fact that he has reached his position by virtue of his own achievements, not as the son (or spouse) of somebody else.
(in fairness, McSame has a genuine life story of his own – but he is the son and grandson of legendary admirals, and this has shaped him)
The second big problem Obama represents is that he doesn’t get his funding at the usual trough – the big check-writers who summer in Nantucket the likes of Russert and Kristol.
I think Kristol’s moved from denial into brittle denial, with panic now breakign through.
An article in today’s NYT says McCain has to rely on party financing… And Obama will send out an e-mail and the money will roll in…
Maybe it’s a small thing, but what does this mean? Surely, it is not funny. No, maybe outrageous. Thanks
“Look at Al Franken, one day he’s going to get a knock on his door and life as he’s known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.”
Scarecrow’s upstairscrow
I’d say that Bush is pretty thin-skinned himself, as is Dick “Go F*** Yourself” Cheney.
SO? ;)
Good Morning Attaturk and Firedogs -
the coming meltdown has the air of inevitability to it now don’t it -
he got away with his barbarically insensitive comments about that poor kidnapped teenager, so I don’t know what on air hijinks would ever take him out unless he goes total Father Coughlin and spouts something anti semitic on the air. Nope, it’ll probably be pics
from that heavenly week in New Zealand will surface somewhere, maybe on that foul mouthed femblog . . .
“If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt.”
There is no chance O’Reilly’s kid will be killed in iraq. Zero. Same for Karl Rove, Joe Lieberman, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, G.W. Bush, Jeb Bush and countless other “supporters” of the war effort.
Their job is to promote war. The dying shall be left up to the lower classes. After all, they volunteered, didn’t they?
I am so glad you asked. They did not volunteer for 5 years of futile and illegal occupation. They were duped, as we were discussing last night. It is the cowards in leadership who do not acknowledge the error that has produced the killing. Delusional W is incapable of seeing what he has wrought.
You got it!
I stopped reading the NYTimes after they endorsed the coup d’etat in Venezuela, but if I hadn’t then, I would’ve had to after they hired Kristol. We can all understand him having a job in that linear-thinking conclave of Fox News, sure, why the hell not? But the Times’ thing just forwards my theory that they’re such triangulating pussies in Sulzburgeria that they’ve instituted an affirmative action program for the chronically stupid.
And now, I think, they have hired the Kathleen Parker Twit. She is not illiterate, but uninformed, I’d say. Really loopy, likes to smile alot while saying zip.
Actually, I think she’s in the Washington Post pool, right?
Same outreach program to the handicapable, not as marquee.
I don’t know, you would think at certain levels of the trade of reporting and parsing information, wrongness would weigh into whether someone gets a fucking job or not. I mean, does anybody know any farmers who fail to actually raise crops year in and year out?
Attaturk writes,
Zinger! Sorta like “Michael Moore is fat.”
They’re ALL thin-skinned, because they (Bush, Cheney, Ailes, O’Reilly, et al) are bullies, thugs, and cowards, with the emphasis on cowards. And you know what? These guys’ share a very simple, easy to understand psychology that involves repressed homosexuality and fear-projection. It ought to be possible to predict and manipulate these guys like the tools they are, but the Democrats have never invested in propaganda the way the Republicans have.
Weekend at Bill-o’s!
Most excellent.
Thanks for the response, Waccamaw. Nice to see spontaneity ON FOX!!! Love your quote, too. Sorry I missed you earlier.
What is interesting to me, too, is that it took an in-your-face comic to risk the social injunction of politeness … to push back. As he said, even his mother was uncomfortable with HIS rudeness. I wondered about those protesters turning their backs on Schaefly, now an old lady. Did she deserve it? What she has promoted all these years? Yes, she did. But, girls, please don’t be RUDE. Oy vey.
Why in this society are we coaxed to eat sh*t and smile? With people not of my “politics” … we don’t discomfort each other and discuss politics mostly. Respecting the conditioning of being “nice”? Yes, sometimes I pop off. But mostly to the choir, or potential choir. Keep the veneer of civilization while REAL civilization goes to hell in the handbasket.
I think Bush came to power, and Reagan before him, because the liberals became the silent majority. A false sense of security. Underestimating the fragility of our democracy and the irrational and destructive fear, anger, egoism etc. in our brethren. Our own brand of egoism, too, was there.
I mentioned that old movie in another comment, Gentleman’s Agreement. About anti-Semitism and one character confronts another and says when people are making crude jokes, do you look away uncomfortably or do you PROTEST? Do you not approve but share the same country club life with bigots, bigots who cause others at the very least not to enjoy quality life because of their arrogance and cruelty. And the Edmund Burke quote how evil prevails when GOOD people do nothing.
I am going to leave my comfort zone more often and speak truth to power … power above me, but power beside me in terms of passive, willfully ignorant people. Gotta overcome my low-down, people-pleasing ways.
Later …. :)