Y’know, I have my problems with Daily Kos, but Dodd’s defense of the site is correct. O’Reilly is just nutpicking–that is to say, he’s taking a small handful of images and comments and holding them up as representative of the entire site. Daily Kos has a lot of flaws, but so does O’Reilly. He’s no hero, and Dodd did well against him.
I wonder if it will help. Kossacks have not really supported his campaign thus far, but he’s clearly making a play for them. Say what you like, their support matters. If they start to abandon Edwards for Dodd, it’ll be very interesting indeed.
One thing I noticed about the “offensive” Lieberman/Bush pic in this segment was just… how… long it stayed up there on the screen. Disturbing choice, Fox editorial staff.
DC is carved out of Maryland (they’re on the same side of the Potomac). The fed could try giving DC back to...
23 responses so far ↓
That’s the ultimate in O’Reilly’s hypocrisy. I’d never even seen that image before O’Reilly made a big deal about it. It was buried somewhere in the millions and millions of comments that have been posted in the tens of thousands of diaries at DailyKos. Who knows how many people saw it originally — plenty of diaries just scroll by every day with a handful of comments each, but let’s be generous and say a few hundred to a thousand…and most likely those people just looked at it for a second while scrolling through comments and either winced or chuckled, depending on each person’s taste for somewhat vulgar Photoshopped “political cartoons”.
Yet an image that O’Reilly claimed to find so deeply offensive was broadcast not once, not twice, but multiple times on his show, for many seconds at a time, to however many viewers he has. That image, posted by one of the more than 130,000 registered members at DailyKos, is supposed to embody the “hate” of all members of dKos, even though Kos himself didn’t choose to post it and it’s been buried somewhere in random comments for no one else to see or particularly care about for over a year ’till Bill O’Reilly made the editorial decision to feature it on his show, multiple times.
He made it sound like the image was the dKos banner or something. It’s utterly preposterous.
Dodd did a great job with O’Reilly and I do think his positive appearance will have an impact on netroots folks. I don’t know why you’d assume the support for Dodd would come from Edwards folks, though.
On the other hand, I don’t hold out much hope that the average O’Reilly viewer will be swayed by a logical appeal to common sense.
It is odd, isn’t it? I had never seen the image before, either. I do wonder where he got it.
I do wonder. Given the insane amount of coverage the Lamont-Lieberman primary got from this site, MLN and other Connecticut blogs, isn’t it odd that none of us have seen it at least once?
That sort of nutpicking is nothing new, sadly. The Lieberman campaign got rather good at it last year–I remember that the Lamont blog warned people against commenting in the short-lived comments section of the Lieberman blog for just that reason.
I can’t take Bill O’Reilly seriously. About two years ago, I read his “Who’s Looking Out for You?” book and I thought that it was a fantastic book. Then I considered regularly watching his show on Fox News. Then the news broke about his very strange and inappropriate treatment of female colleagues. I basically lost all respect for him. I have a hard time looking at him in the same way that I have a hard time looking at Bill Clinton … (when I see their faces, I basically want to look elsewhere ASAP)
Eye of the beholder.
Ever since O`Reilly admitted he was wrong regarding gun control and came out of the darkness on that issue I’ve been, while not a massive fan, a bit of one.
I thought he handed Dodd his head.
Either way - Dennis Miller’s take was on target.
The Dodd/O’Reilly Smackdown
Prior to the Dodd/O’Reilly smackdown, leftist bloggers in Connecticut who simply hate Lieberman were rooting for their champion – hint, not O’Reilly.
The show, largely a shouting match between the two, did not disappoint. O’Reilly produced a vile picture showing Lieberman preparing to perform a sexual act on Bush and asked Dodd, who is a friend of Lieberman, to condemn the picture and the site, DailyKos, on which it appeared. Dodd said no and went on to make a valid point: O’Reilly, he said, disliked the site because he disagreed with its ideological posture. This distaste preceded O’Reilly’s search for an offensive image on the site. That image, Dodd suggested, was not representative; yet, on the basis of a few remarks, O’Reilly was rushing to condemn millions of people… yada, yada, yada…
O’Reilly has over the years pretty much perfected the “I am alarmed and surprised pose one sees and hears so often on his show, and so it was not surprising when he was abashed that Dodd did not fulsomely condemn the image he had produced. Eventually, Dodd was clubbed into a grudging admission that the picture – showing Lieberman on his knees groping at Bush’s fly — was, shall we say, indelicate.
The truth is this: Many commentators on many leftist sites hate Lieberman, and the word “hate,” chosen carefully here, is not too strong a word. Evidence of that hatred is not hard to find on DailyKos and other leftist spin-off sites.
Many of the comments following diary entrees on most blogging sites tend not to be discursive; they are, for the most part, semiotic signs signaling that the commentator is part of a pack formed to hunt down an ideological foe, like the sheets that cover the faces of KluKluxers, the black shirts of fascists and the arcane signs used by secret organizations to show solidarity with the group. Hatred, like bonfires, warms those gathered together around them.
The image that offended O’Reilly, left on the site of DailyKos for more than a year, was fashioned by one of these primitive, thoughtless, club wielding modern cavemen. And Reilly was right to condemn it. Dodd, one of the most civil gentlemen in the U.S. Congress, was wrong to withhold his contempt for those who had so contemptuously condemned his friend of many years, who is also one of the most civil gentlemen in the U.S. Congress.
But his point is well taken: Sometimes, in search of ideological friendships, we wander into primitive caves. Would it not be more prudent to avoid association with the hate-baiters?
IMO, Dodd did a very poor job debating the issue - he kept repeating himself and his only defense was that thousands of people visit and contribute to the site, so it can’t be all that bad. O’Reilly was obnoxious, as is his “schtick” - but his point was well made that people running for the highest office of this nation shouldn’t be supporting a website that features such ugly/distasteful images. Dodd should have also categorically said that he didn’t support that type of “discourse” - but he barely did, or at least the fact that he had “to be clubbed” into doing so speaks volumes to me.
Sorry - but I think Dodd lost this one.. and I am not a huge fan of O’Reilly either. Dodd certainly didn’t come out of it looking more like “presidential material” to me.
Republitarian: What could he have done on O’Reilly to look more Presidential? There’s really no way if O’Reilly has decided he doesn’t like you, as O’Reilly isn’t above cutting off mics and flat out lying to make his point.
More on point: the idea that Dailykos “features” that image is stretching the truth quite a bit. Does Flickr.com or Photobucket or whatever photo site “feature” pornography? Mere existence doesn’t really say much of anything.
Hell, if it did, I could take the existence of Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay and Ted Stevens and say that the Republican party features corruption. Would that be fair?
Sujal
Daily Kos? What’s that?
I never heard of it and it doesn’t sound like it’s worthy of my time. I don’t actually watch O’Reilly because he is more of a populist than a conservative which I find boring. I am glad he’s around though to expose this kind of thing.
You know it’s quite telling that real conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush can get by with just what they say, the arguments they make, without being forced to resorting to doctoring pictures to get people’s attention.
Goodness knows Dodd needed the air time. Is he still polling dead last?
Lieberman isn’t really all that conservative either. I really don’t know why you folks have such a problem with his re-election. Why can’t you folks just accept it and move on? You must realize that it damages your credibility and chances of picking up other seats that you refuse to accept the will of the people and just move forward to the next challenge. America certainly has enough challenges in front of her.
I read on another one of your lefty blogs some of you are still quibbling with Kerry’s (or was it Gores?) loss in Ohio and here we are almost to the new presidential election.
http://ctblueblog.com/?p=326
Dodd looks like a clown. I am not sure what he sought to achieve by getting yelled at by O’Reilly (who is a total whacko). Dodd is totally off base for in any way defending that picture, but I am not sure who he is looking to impress by going on O’Reilly…
My guess is that the people running Dodd’s campaign are some of the same ideologues who are more interested in proving a point with Ned Lamont than winning elections (and representing the majority of voters!).
Dodd’s only real selling point is that he’s a senior statesman– a throwback to the old Washington of the Kennedy Era.
Instead he is revealing more and more that he’s a washed up boob being sent out on fool’s errands by his staffers in a desperate attempt to take one last shot at being President.
Oh BTW– where is the concern amongst you guys that were he to get elected (if hell freezes over) that Jodi Rell will appoint a Republican as a Senator?
[quote comment="16889"]Dodd is totally off base for in any way defending that picture…[/quote]
The conservatives on this site are engaging in the same type of distortion of the truth that O’Reilly did. Let’s be clear: Dodd did not defend that picture. He condemned it. He made clear that it is wrong to condemn Daily Kos, a website that is visited, not by “thousands” of Americans, but “hundreds of thousands” of Americans, for the presence of a few offensive diaries or pictures posted by the more than one hundred thousand contributors.
Daily Kos features superb essays, analysis, and reporting and the vast majority of its diaries are far superior to the level of commentary found in the mainstream press. Certainly there is far more factual information and interesting discussion there than one will ever find in right-wing radio or Fox News.
But if you doubt my description, don’t believe me or Bill O’Reilly; just go to dailykos.com and make up your own mind. Unlike the “ditto-heads” who tune into Rush Limbaugh, Democrats think for themselves and believe that each should make up his own mind.
Clearly, if that website were such a cesspool comparable with the propaganda of the Nazis and the KKK, as O’Reilly suggests, Democratic candidates and majority leader Harry Reid would not be addressing its convention.
Any well-trafficked political site that allows anonymous or pseudonym posts is going to have quite of bit of bizarre and tasteless stuff, as well as a lot of “moonbats”, especially sites that cater only to one political side, such as DailyKos or Free Republic.
Even some of the more mainstream sites that allow anonymous posts are going to have a lot of junk: the Yahoo message boards about news articles got to the point that they became unreadable because of the vitriol coming from both sides of the aisle that Yahoo took them down (on another note, the Yahoo stock chat boards, which used to have occasional nuggets, now are so overrun with spam that they’ve also become useless).
It’s a bit easier to keep sites such as this one clean because there are people from both sides, there aren’t that many posts, and Genghis et al seem to do a pretty good job of keeping the junk away. If you look at the main page of Free Republic, it looks like in the last several minutes, there have been 15 or so comments PER MINUTE. Policing that becomes almost impossible if you have other stuff to do, like eat, socialize, or leave your house.
O’Reilly critized Free Republic a week or so ago, and he’s criticized DailyKos. Perhaps he’s worried that these sites are well trafficked, and allow their collective users to see unfiltered news. Free Republic was instrumental in uncovering the Rathergate issue regarding Bush’s military records.
Now, as far as Dodd defending DailyKos, heck, any publicity seems good for him. But recall that Kos himself has said some weird things in the past, and any politician should be wary of getting too close to various bloggers, lest these bloggers come out and say something totally nuts. Edwards’s campaign actually hired bloggers that it later had to fire because of outrageous things they apparently said (I can’t remember the details, but I’m sure they are google-able).
Don,
You’re so postmodern! Now where could you have picked up that faux intellectual talking point? Maybe from Professor O’Reilly here or here?
I disagree with Kos about 115% of the time when it comes to politics. The one thing I will give him is that his site is truly democratic and open. If I were to go on there and post in 2006 “Joe Lieberman has been an outstanding United States Senator, and Ned Lamont is a neophyte politician who will embarass our state and country,” they would find that more offensive as anything Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like. I might even toss in a defense of his cloture vote on Alito for good measure.
But they would not delete it. If I said something horrible about a member of Ned’s family, they wouldn’t delete it. I could have suggested that someone physically hurt the man, and my post would stay up. Just because something remains on DailyKos.com does not mean the community endorses the content. People are free to say whatever they like in that forum. It’s the very democratic foundation of the blogosphere.
Like I said, I disagree with Kos on an awful lot, but he is principled and sincerely defending democracy and free speech. I thought Dodd’s defense of the community was right on, and I hope it wins him some suppport.
Bill O’Rielly doesn’t want to report the news to you. He want’s to entertain. The best way to entertain is with drama. Controversy breeds drama like mold in a petree dish.
Bill O’Reilly isn’t interested in telling you the truth, getting his facts straight, being right (in fact being wrong is just as useful), giving his guests a fair shake, advocating a cause, debating the issues or taking a stand.
Bill O’Rielly is interested in one thing and one thing only and that is the ratings number he gets after a show. He is yet another fine example of entertainment and opinion being offered to the public as news and fact.
Remember that old expression “If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem”? Bill O’Rielly is part of the problem.
Places like Kos are ok but without the structure of fact checking and bloggers forced to prove any statement of fact it isn’t much more useful. Just a bunch of people spouting off to each other. Which is nice and makes everyone feel good, it even encourages debate (as does O’Rielly his one saving grace I suppose) but it isn’t much use beyond that.
Instead of educating and informing the public as to the way things are our politicians and pundants would all prefer to spend their time reacting to each other’s ever widing circle of nonsense. The one who feigns the most shock and disgust wins.
“You know it’s quite telling that real conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush can get by with just what they say, the arguments they make…” John R. McCommas
Probably not the best two people to pick there John. Coulter and Rush frequently resort to sensationalism, much like O’Reilly, in order to get attention. Let us not forget Coulter’s numerous calls to kill all liberals, or that Rush’s best argument against Stem Cell research was a bad impression of Michael J. Fox shacking. Perhaps you meant to say William Buckley and George Will?
“O’Reilly is just nutpicking”
Hmmm. I think you have him confused with the MLNers, who need to apply generous salves to a soft collection of dangly objects in their trousers.
I do think Kos is crap, but that doesn’t mean it should be muzzled. Kos has his own festival now! Our own Geek Girl is there. (By the way Geek Girl… don’t eat the brownies!) And good for him, because Air America’s five listeners couldn’t get their own festival.
So when does Ben & Jerry’s name a flavor after him?
Don,
You’re so postmodern! Now where could you have picked up that faux intellectual talking point? Maybe from Professor O’Reilly here or here?
Not exactly Mike. Here’s what I said: “Many of the comments following diary entrees on most blogging sites tend not to be discursive; they are, for the most part, semiotic signs signaling that the commentator is part of a pack formed to hunt down an ideological foe, like the sheets that cover the faces of KluKluxers, the black shirts of fascists and the arcane signs used by secret organizations to show solidarity with the group. Hatred, like bonfires, warms those gathered together around them.’
I am not comparing writers at Kos to Nazis. I am simply making the point that the non-discursive, short comments one sees on blogs are semiotic signs; it is the semiotic signs that are like KluKlux hoods, other arcane signs, etc.
You have to be careful when you’re reading poetry not to be too prosy in your interpretation.
Actually, I don’t think O’Reilly is much more discursive than Kos. I think they’re both showmen and, to a large extent, party hacks — like Dodd.
Your comment was not discursive enough. Nice try though.
Many of the comments following diary entrees on most blogging sites tend not to be discursive; they are, for the most part, semiotic signs signaling that the commentator is part of a pack formed to hunt down an ideological foe, like the sheets that cover the faces of KluKluxers, the black shirts of fascists and the arcane signs used by secret organizations to show solidarity with the group. Hatred, like bonfires, warms those gathered together around them.
Don,
Clearly no one could reasonably interpret you to be comparing writers at Kos to Nazis and Klan members. Where could my head have been? Definitely not discursing. That’s what average folk like me get for tangling with such a smartie as yourself!
Just an average smartie, Mike. But as least I’m on record as having said that the writers at Kos — probably smart to make a distiction here between the front pagers and, as I said in the piece you’re referring to some “commentators” on leftist sites (didn’t mention Kos here) — were not Nazis, which is more than can be said for Mr. Reilly, who also was criticised in the piece. You don’t want to misinterpret these things, do you MIke?
By the way, Mike, here are some non-discursive comments taken randomly from a single posting at Kos. Not too Nazilike, but still the odor of bonfires is apparent:
by kos
Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 01:52:03 PM PDT
In the tradition of the Lieberthugs bringing mob-politics to Connecticut, Lieberman continues to engage in the sort of nasty politics he supposedly decries. Here is a PDF version of a direct mail piece attacking me.
Lieberman doesn’t like me or this site. Obviously. But look how he continues to play with Republican frames and language. The flyer virtually spits out “leading left-wing blog”, as if it wasn’t a Democratic blog supporting the very same Democratic Party that Lieberman claims he’ll still caucus with.
Lieberman is no Democrat, not since primary voters gave him his well-deserved kick in the face. Hopefully, on Tuesday, the broad Connecticut electorate will finally rid this warmonger from the Senate.
____________
comments: They do nothing for the Iraqis and are being used for the Bushco neocon politics, their War Profiteering, and to cover the massive War Crimes, all committed in our name. Lieberman is a very chickenhawk, asshat too! Shame on Connecticut voters if they elect this corrupted and sold-out man!
by mjd in florida on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 07:05:33 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
————————
Joe, you just doesn’t get it. Its about your record stupid. Its your votes. You don’t represent us anymore.
And the only response you have is to whine and kvetch. That’s all we’ve heard from him here in Connecticut for the past 6 months. Its soooo annoying. God, put a sock in it, Joe. You’re like a spoiled friggin’ brat.
Connecticut should be embarrased to re-elect this man next Tuesday.
by ottomatic on Fri Nov 03, 2006 at 03:36:52 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
————————–
What “liberal” would vote for torture and the Bush energy bill? What “liberal” would be first and foremost in pushing the U.S. into a stupid imperialistic venture? What “liberal” would shill for religion in public schools? Barbara Boxer has lost my respect. You can’t be on both sides of important issues, put your personal loyalties ahead of what’s best for this nation, and still continue to be taken seriously as a true leader.
by trinite on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 08:44:28 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
Kick in the face… Lieberman supporting war profiteering and torture… a real chickenhawk ass… deserved a kick in the face…a spoiled friggin brat… a shill for religion in public schools…
I know you’d be the first to reprove these verbal thugs for their intenpret language, Mike, so I won’t even ask you to do it.
They are so like non-Nazis around a bonfire. Like the Nazis around the bonfire, only not Nazis. You are so not cloaking redneck O’Reilly smears in comically pompous and conspiratorial language. I love your poetry, man. You gotta get published.
MikeCT,
Well, at least we agree they’re not nazis. It’s a beginning. And neither of us like smears. It’s a start.
You must log in to post a comment.