Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Their freedom requires your slavery.

I really should read my own blog.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The willow is too close to the house.

This fight is for everything.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The revolution will be supervised.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

White supremacy is terrorism.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Creeping Zombies Open Thread

Late Night Creeping Zombies Open Thread

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Stale leftovers, and yet: This is the kind of pervasive media bias we need to be hyper-aware about as the 2016 primaries ramp up. As Tom Scocca explains to Gawker, “Politico’s Dylan Byers Works for Fox News PR“:

Dylan Byers, the dumbest media reporter alive, has typed up some thoughts at The Politico about, as his headline puts it, “Why the Bill O’Reilly charges aren’t sticking.” Aren’t they? Or at least, isn’t their “sticking” or not “sticking” in some way related to the work of a media desk such as The Politico‘s?…

The reason why Brian Williams got into deep trouble for lying about his war experience while Bill O’Reilly hasn’t is that Williams and O’Reilly have different jobs, for different employers. Brian Williams was paid to sit in front of a TV camera and give viewers an ostensibly neutral, agreeable account of current events. When people began disagreeing with Brian Williams about his presentation of facts, loudly and in public, it hurt his ability to perform those duties for NBC.

Bill O’Reilly is paid to go on television for Fox News and say things that get the viewers upset, even if those things are false or nonsensical. So what if his experience in the Falklands war was bogus? So is his experience in the War on Christmas. The fact that people are calling him dishonest simply proves, from Fox’s point of view, that he’s doing his job.

Thus the network maintains a political campaign’s approach to controversy—where NBC wants to make trouble go away, Fox News wants to use trouble to promote itself. Instead of apologizing or investigating, the network counter-spins as hard as it can. You say Bill O’Reilly lied about being in a war zone; Fox says you’re lying about the meaning of “in” and “war” and “zone.”

And it works. Byers blames Mother Jones for coming after O’Reilly with a story that “could be argued away on semantics”—argued away, that is, if you are trying to argue semantics with someone as dull-witted as Dylan Byers…

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Bill O’Reilly is paid to go on television for Fox News and say things that get the viewers upset, even if those things are false or nonsensical. So what if his experience in the Falklands war was bogus?

    (This is Sccoca paraphrasing Byers, btw)

    Um, because it is a lie and his moronic viewers consider it to be fact?

    You know, sort of like how Joseph Goebbles claimed that the next voice you heard was from Stalingrad when it was actually from a sound booth in Berlin?

    Dylan Byers has a low number on the tumbrel manifest for Village vermin.

  3. 3.

    waspuppet

    Thus the network maintains a political campaign’s approach to controversy …

    I’ve been saying this for years: Fox doesn’t act like a news network; they act like a political campaign, but without a candidate, or even worse without a job they’re aiming for or an Election Day when it’s all over one way or the other.

    And they’re like the worst part of a presidential campaign: In between the beginning of summer and the conventions, when nothing real is happening but the campaigns have to do and say something every day, so they pump out crap like “Last night’s episode of ‘Two and a Half Men’ perfectly illustrates the point I’ve been making for years about the capital gains tax” (exaggerating)(only a little).

  5. 5.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Tonight’s Daily Show speaks to this post. I thought Stewart was supposed to be around for a few more months. The guy hosting the show looked like Stewart but there wasn’t a “let’s all get along” vibe. A pretty good rant about Fox was the first segment.

  6. 6.

    Major Major Major Major

    I think the cat may make a good guard cat after all, assuming anybody can get past our building’s defenses.

    When the cleaning ladies came he wouldn’t let them in until I scooped him up and locked him in the bathroom.

    Of course, *I’m* the one he ended up clawing for that. But what must be done must be done.

    And now everything smells clean so he’s crazy suspicious of every item in the apartment.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    I had dinner at a fancy restaurant in the middle of nowhere with my siblings this evening and didn’t get home until nearly midnight. Then I thought I’d try to catch a rerun of PBO’s town hall on MSNBC, but all I’ve seen is rebroadcasts of the regular show line-up. Phooey.

    @Major Major Major Major: You’ll thank that stalwart watch-cat when he stands off a dozen ISIL-ninjas.

  8. 8.

    gene108

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Stewart’s always been good at busting Fox “News” bullshit. The attention he got 10-12 years ago was basically calling bullshit to right-wing talking points.

    Whoever replaces him better keep that much up.

    Also, I am disappointed at Brian Williams suspension. The people calling for him to be shit-canned were right-wing hacks, a notch or three below O’Reilly, in terms of the size of their audience and they effectively claimed a journalists scalp.

    There’s nothing a right-winger in the media can do that will harm him / her other than question the validity of right-wing talking points and / or the conservative conventional wisdom of the day.

  9. 9.

    sm*t cl*de

    as his headline puts it, “Why the Bill O’Reilly charges aren’t sticking.”

    Takes me back to the good old days when the news media declared that Reagan was the ‘Teflon presidency,’ i.e. that charges “weren’t sticking”. Which was basically their way of saying “It’s too much trouble to keep harassing Reagan about each new corruption scandal, because he is too blithely deficient of shame and awareness to answer the questions… so rather than do our jobs and make the charges stick, we’ll tell the American public that they collectively don’t care about the scandals, and move on to the sports.”

  11. 11.

    Bobby B.

    I’m waiting for the day Stewart or SNL go after Comcast-NBC’s “Meet the Press”‘s republican-on-host porn. It seems to be a sacred cow to many in the TV industry.

  12. 12.

    MattF

    O’Reilly is thin-skinned, and he has a lot to be thin-skinned about. Pointing out his various lies and stupidities will be a short-term loss, Politico will win the morning with a defense of whichever RWNJ is feeling paranoid today.

    But the longer term may be a different story– O’Reilly has credibility with his audience, that can be chipped away– look what’s happened to Palin and Beck. It’s about time someone worked that vein with O’Reilly.

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    NYTimes article on Bill O’Blowhard today. Check out those they got to go on record, and that the Times dances around calling Fox News not exactly a news organization.

    It seems like they’re calling O’Reilly and Fox News out, as carefully as possible, so as not to draw a lawsuit from the wealthy rageaholics they’re covering. This is labeled “News Analysis.” You know, libtard opinion, without any factual basis!

    Bill O’Reilly and Fox News: They’re in It Together

    Fox’s handling of the controversy says a lot about the network. It also says a lot about its most visible star, a man who perhaps more than any other has defined the parameters and tenor of Fox News, in the process ushering in a new era of no-holds-barred, intentionally divisive news coverage. … He and Fox News have risen not on the back of big interviews or high-impact investigations but on the pugnacious brand of conservatism personified by Mr. O’Reilly.

    [Glad they went with “intentionally divisive;” wondering if that description will appear in any future stories on MSNBC. All that you need to know about CNN’s decline:]

    “Bill’s credibility with his audience is not based on his record as a traditional journalist,” said Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN/U.S. “His credibility, in the view of his fans, is based on his trenchant analysis of the events of the day, his pulling no punches, his willingness to call it like it is.”

    [like it is. uh huh]

    There are other differences between the two controversies. The incident at the center of Mr. O’Reilly’s occurred more than 30 years ago; Mr. Williams’s happened in 2003. [which was just yesterday, amiright?] And his accusers are journalists, not military veterans as they were in Mr. Williams’s case. But the most meaningful point of distinction — and the reason Mr. O’Reilly’s job is almost certainly safe — is that he is not an anchorman, with all of the cultural weight that title carries. He’s a professional provocateur.

    [What they won’t say: it’s not just that he’s not an anchorman, it’s that he’s not purveying actual news. Nor is his channel. Is the NYTimes implying that thus he and they need not follow standards? A previous headline called O’Reilly a “Fox News Host.”]

    “Larry King loved everybody and Bill O’Reilly doesn’t love anybody,” said the journalist Michael Kinsley, a former co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.” “The truth is I sort of prefer the second. It makes for better television.”

    And [The O’Reilly Factor’s] popularity among conservatives has made Mr. O’Reilly an influential force in Republican politics. Last month, he met privately with the former Florida governor and likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush. (Mr. O’Reilly’s guest list is by no means limited to members of the right. President Obama sat down for two pre-Super Bowl interviews with him.)

    [anything a little different there? Private meeting since he’s an “influential force” vs. interview with a sitting President? Who happens to be President of Fox viewers too, as dismayed as they are about that? Both sides, you know. Was it a purely private meeting, or was it an interview? Did any of it appear on air?]

    His popularity may not be built on his credibility as a news anchor, but Mr. O’Reilly’s audience is loyal, and the current flap seems unlikely to damage his reputation among his fans. … On Monday night, when Mr. O’Reilly addressed the controversy on the air, his audience was more than 10 percent larger than the previous week.

    [as a news anchor. Note the different standard again.]

  14. 14.

    Elizabelle

    @Bobby B.: “Meet the Press” should not be a sacred cow to anyone.

    All of the Sunday shows have gotten perverted to conservative guests and talking points. They’re fig leaves of “public interest” programming requirements for holding a broadcast license. Don’t we still have that standard?

    More institutional fail and rot from within. Rot which was not accidental.

  17. 17.

    Morzer

    Noted with mild amazement:

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/south-korea-legalises-adultery

    South Korea’s Constitutional Court has struck down a 60-year-old statute outlawing adultery under which violators faced up to two years in prison.

    The nine-member bench ruled by seven to two that the 1953 law was unconstitutional.

    “Even if adultery should be condemned as immoral, state power should not intervene in individuals’ private lives,” said presiding justice Park Han-Chul.

    It was the fifth time the apex court had considered the constitutional legality of the legislation which had made South Korea one of the few non-Muslim countries to regard marital infidelity as a criminal act.

    In the past six years, close to 5,500 people have been formerly arraigned on adultery charges – including nearly 900 in 2014.

    It seems that a Supreme Court can be good for something after all.

  19. 19.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Morzer: At least one member of our Supreme Court has a sense of humor: Justice Elena Kagan got Seussical in a dissent yesterday.

    As the plurality must acknowledge, the ordinary meaning of “tangible object” is “a discrete thing that possesses physical form.” A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form. See generally Dr. Seuss, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960).

    Permission to gigglesnort, your honor.

  20. 20.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mustang Bobby: When my roommate from college was a 1L he sent me a case to look up. So I went to the Law School at my university(I was in grad school) and found the case. The entire decision was written in rhyme.

  21. 21.

    NorthLeft12

    The following analogy may be more of an indictment of our present day media.

    Mr. O’Reilly is more akin to a columnist in a newspaper who is [these days] not required to present a realistic “opinion” that is based on facts [as most of the public understands that concept].

    So why would anyone be surprised that he is less than truthful about his past, present, or future?

    Please refer to David Brooks, Thomas Freidman, Maureen Dowd, for just a few of the most esteemed of this ilk in the pinnacle of journalism to boot. I won’t attempt to venture into the morass that is the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    Despite a last-hours intervention by the Republican chairman of the House committee that handles D.C. affairs, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and D.C. Council members said Wednesday that they would not back down from implementing the will of the 70 percent of city voters who approved legalization in November.

    I look forward to the libertarian outrage over this.

  23. 23.

    kindness

    The ordering for that line at the guillotine….it keeps changing. Let us hope that Dylan is OK with being bumped to the front.

  24. 24.

    JPL

    CBS News just had a nice segment on Aaron Schock’s modeling career. Oh whoops, he’s not a model. I mean Rep. Schock and his possible ethics violations. I do wonder why they labeled Crew a liberal organization though. Crew seems to be bipartisan to me. hmmm

  25. 25.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @JPL: Maybe willingness to be bipartisan and liberal are the same thing these days.

    Fox pours poison into the country’s ears. No wonder we’re sick.

  27. 27.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Elizabelle: I think it’s good to keep in mind that Billo is on TV, and TV gets outsized attention.

    Crooks and Liars:

    Bill O’Reilly, Fox’s biggest star, also had his lowest month since 2001 among that [25-54] audience, with an average of 313,000 viewers. That did not reflect his overall popularity, or his huge total audience of 2.1 million. But much of that audience is over 55 years old.

    The median age for Mr. O’Reilly’s audience reached a new high, 72.1. And less than 15 percent of his audience fell within the 25-54 group. (He still dwarfs his news competition in terms of numbers: CNN averaged 145,000 viewers in that hour among the 25-54 year old audience, and MSNBC just 127,000.)

    When his show is on, it’s on 2x a day. Presumably that total viewership includes both showings. Let’s say 1M people/hour. Or about twice the number of people in the air, on average, at any given time. Or about 0.3% of the US population.

    His audience is tiny (as is all of cable news), and it’s mostly old people. He gets attention because he has a big microphone, and TV and the media thinks its important.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who wonders how much of his “viewership” numbers is at medical facilities, airports, JiffyLube, and similar places with a captive audience. Presumably the demographics don’t count those places.)

  28. 28.

    WereBear

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Those stark facts is what keeps me going most days. To really get sucked into Fox News, it helps tremendously to be a grumpy old racist who is still incensed about those hippies who won’t get haircuts.

    And that kind of ranting is essentially incomprehensible to anyone under 55.

  30. 30.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    It won’t harm O’Rielly because his audience wants to be lied to. I rather suspect being a fake combat vet helps him.

  35. 35.

    Sherparick

    @waspuppet: Their candidate is rule by the uber-wealthy. When David Koch calls Scott Walker, Walker’s first response will always be “How High” do you want me to jump this time.

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @WereBear:

    And that kind of ranting is essentially incomprehensible to anyone under 55.

    Also known as the people who don’t vote in midterms. :-P

  39. 39.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Omnes Omnibus: That is so cool. When I write scholarly papers or articles, I often cite fiction, but since I’m writing about plays and theatre, that’s expected. I am glad to see that other professions have an appreciation for good writing no matter if it rhymes or not.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MomSense: Of course not, The Lorax would have been more than a citation in a footnote in a case about thneeds. Do try to think these things through in the future. :P

  41. 41.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @debbie

    : From now on, whenever O’Reilly criticizes someone, that person should first respond by pointing out that the source of the criticism is a known liar.

    I am surprised it hasn’t happened yet. But remember his audience thinks Obama is a communist Muslim, just like Adolf Hitler – they want affirmation for their fantasies not information.

  42. 42.

    danielx

    “Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

    Where’s a Mary McCarthy when you need her….

    @WereBear:

    And that kind of ranting is essentially incomprehensible to anyone under 55.

    Unless they hang out here or at powder blue satan’s location, in which case they’ve heard enough references to dirty fucking hippies and hippie punching to get the gist of it.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Fox pours poison into the country’s ears. No wonder we’re sick.

    That’s true. I liked that the NYTimes went with “intentionally divisive.”

    Fox is making this an ever more ungovernable country, and we have so many problems to address. Also opportunities (climate change remediation) that will only become more expensive and less possible the longer they’re delayed.

  46. 46.

    danielx

    @Sherparick:

    It’s worse than that; when either of the Kochs calls Scott Walker and says ‘shit’, Walker’s first response will be to squat and make grunting noises.

  48. 48.

    Cervantes

    @gene108:

    Also, I am disappointed at Brian Williams suspension.

    Because you admired his work?

    I think that entire news division could have fallen off the face of the earth thirty years ago (taking with it Brokaw and Russert and Mitchell et al.) and we’d all have been less misinformed and less disinformed as a result.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    “Whistleblowing” is the most glamorous thing right now. You could cash in a ton of progressive cred on that.

  53. 53.

    Nutella

    @WereBear:

    And that kind of ranting is essentially incomprehensible to anyone under 55.

    Under 70. The hippies and yippies of the 1960s are now well into their 60s.

  55. 55.

    carbon dated

    It pisses me off that Mother Jones (which I respect) and David Corn (whom I’m starting to think is a little sleazy) are getting all the credit for scooping this. Corn basically took a Nation article by Greg Grandin that came out a week earlier and expanded it, with little more than an anonymous link to credit the real reporter here. Worse, the story has become ‘O’Reilly’s a lying liar’ (duh) rather than the far more egregious crime cited by Grandin, which is that O’Blowhard may have actually helped cover up the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador.

  57. 57.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @carbon dated: Hell, Al Franken covered all this back in the 90’s.

    O’Leilly has always been a rancid sack of shit. Always. That’s why Ailes hired him in the first place.

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