Rantin' and Ravin' With O'Reilly

It seems that a few years ago, Bill O'Reilly got into a heated "chat" with Geraldo Rivera, over a drunk driver who had not been deported prior to causing a tragic accident. Now, O'Reilly is purporting that their shouting match was about "illegal alien crime, violent crime." So... to the transcript:

O'REILLY: When you enter this country illegally, number one, you have no right to be here, no right. That's the truth.

RIVERA: That's true.

O'REILLY: And, number two, when you're caught committing a crime, as this man was, four times.

RIVERA: He was drunk in public twice.

O'REILLY: Hold it. Four times.

(CROSSTALK)

RIVERA: And, one time, he was a drunk driver with no victims.

O'REILLY: He should have been deported the first time. And he was not. And the reason he wasn't deported...

RIVERA: Because he didn't commit a felony.

O'REILLY: It doesn't make any difference.

RIVERA: And he didn't commit a misdemeanor...

O'REILLY: He committed a crime.

RIVERA: He didn't commit a misdemeanor having to do with moral turpitude either.

O'REILLY: All right.

O'Reilly is correct when he says that it was a discussion about crime, but he has either forgotten the discussion or is misrepresenting it when he purports that it was about "violent crime".

O'Reilly's complaint is about the statement,

For a host who once got into an on-air screaming match with Geraldo Rivera over whether to blame drunk driving deaths on illegal immigration, it was a pretty significant shift in tone.

That statement can be interpreted one of two ways: First, that O'Reilly is relating drunk driving deaths in general to illegal immigration. That would not be a fair characterization of O'Reilly's statement. Second, that O'Reilly is relating specific drunk driving deaths, the two teenagers killed in the incident he was specifically discussing, to illegal immigration. That would be true.

O'Reilly didn't do himself any favors with his confabulation that the argument was about "violent crime", when it was not. He didn't do himself any favors with his narcissistic claim that the Talking Points Memo website "stole" that name from him. And he didn't do himself any favors by closing with a silly attack on the Internet and the TPM reporter's name. When you're accusing somebody else of playing fast and loose with the facts, it generally makes sense to try to stick to the facts, yourself.

You know what they used to say before they warned people, "Just because you read it on the Internet doesn't mean that it's true"? They warned you about television. Or the radio. Or the newspaper. Or books.

I hadn't watched the O'Reilly-Rivera face-off before. I came away with the impression that it was staged - a set-up for the epilogue in which O'Reilly and Rivera talk up their network:

RIVERA: You know, seriously, I think that one of the wonderful things about our network is that we are fair and balanced, that impassioned common peers...

O'REILLY: Yes. People can decide whether you're right or I'm right.

RIVERA: Right. And they can.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: And they will decide that I'm right.

(LAUGHTER)

RIVERA: Well...

O'REILLY: All right.

RIVERA: Maybe your viewers will, and my viewers will judge it the other way.

So, will — I think that there is — there is that — what that does is, you often talk about political correctness and left-wing media. And I think that they do think portray our network unfairly, because they fail to represent that we are on different sides of the fence, in this issue most passionately, but many others as well.

O'REILLY: That's why we have you on every week.

RIVERA: So, I — and I appreciate the chance.

It was interesting to see how quickly they shifted from red-faced bellicosity to collegiality, with both men gushing over the glories of Fox News.

Likability is a Factor, but You Won't be Dating the President

One of the conceptions pushed in recent election campaigns, most notably in the Bush-Gore race, was that people should vote for the candidate they would most like to drink a beer with. Never mind that you were projecting a fantasy onto a candidate who was unlikely to ever be in a position to actually drink a beer with you. Never mind that Bush didn't even drink alcohol. I recently read somebody ask whether, in the current race, the media perspective on which candidate would be the winner of that contest, the one you most want to drink with, would be another non-drinker.

The simpler spin on this issue came from a friend who, after we discussed the closeness of the race, responded to my invitation for a prediction with, "Which candidate is the most likable." I responded that most people seem to identify President Obama as most likable. "Then he's going to win." The reasoning: people who really haven't made up their minds about which candidate they prefer are going to end up voting for the candidate they like. There's an element of projection here as well - that the candidate you like would like you back. Despite the stories of Mitt Romney as a gracious host, it's difficult to imagine relating to him as a friend.

The Republicans, in no small part due to the conceit of the 2008 election that people only supported Obama because they liked him, or were voting for social reasons, recently ran a campaign ad in which a Republican staffer pretended to be a disillusioned Obama voter, "breaking up" with Obama. It's belittling to voters, but I guess the ad worked with focus groups. Another version of the argument was presented in this editorial, in which a career political commentator describes his wife as an irrational voter, looking to vote not based upon the issues but instead likely to vote for whichever candidate she likes the most.

I saw a "man crush" version of this argument on a Fox News website, in which the author purported that he was disillusioned with Obama, because Obama is more into policy than politics, more into family than schmoozing.

President Obama is said to abhor the daily machinations of Washington politics. He refuses to miss more than two dinners a week with his daughters. He prefers not to meet with senators, congressmen or significant donors, yet he still expects to reap the benefits normally provided by those circumstances.

Wait a minute.... the guy likes Obama less because he has strong family values and eschews glad handing at cocktail parties?

Obama snubbed the advice of George Soros (perhaps his wealthiest and most influential donor) and has alienated many other important supporters.

That appears to translate into "Obama hasn't sold out to the billionaire that the right has attempted to depict as something akin to Satan incarnate". What message would the author have us draw? That Romney knows how to sell out to billionaires? That if Soros writes checks to Romney's campaign, Romney will be calling him up for advice? One second the author is ranting about how Obama doesn't get into politics the way he wants, the next he's raving that Obama's ads are too mean. Ah, yes... Fox News. One would not expect coherence.

I think Gail Collins was trying to be humorous, but her latest column on Mitt Romney draws on the "boyfriend" theme.

Mitt Romney broke our deal.

Perhaps he didn’t know he’d made it, although, really, I thought it was pretty clear.

He could do anything he wanted during this campaign as long as he sent out signals that once he got in the White House he was not likely to be truly crazy.

The then describes Romney's factually incorrect, over-the-top demagoguery on the Lebanon embassy tragedy as the deal-breaker. But Collins has to know that this was not exceptional behavior on Romney's part - it's been his approach from day one.

If we're going to stick with the romantic relationship theme, it's akin to having an affair with a married person and, when he finally divorces his spouse and marries you, being shocked that he has another affair. You may think you're "that special", but you're not - if you marry a cheater, you'll find yourself married to a cheater. The Romney you are now able to recognize is the Romney you've been looking at the whole time - you're just seeing him more clearly.
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Update: Kathleen Parker wrote a column to the effect of, "It's not important that we like the person we elect as President", a statement that is true but... in the context of a Parker column strikes me as an admission of the problem mentioned above - people find Obama more likable, and that's a problem for backers of the Republican candidate. Let's recall the type of argument Parker makes when she perceives a likability advantage on the part of the Republican candidate.

Off by an Order of Magnitude....

Or two?

On The O'Reilly Factor, Gretchen Carlson falsely claimed that "about 35 percent of the in-state tuition people or students" at University of California schools "were illegals." In fact, only 0.34 percent of undergraduates in the University of California system in the fall of 2008 were "potentially undocumented" students who received the in-state tuition rate.*

To be fair, perhaps it was not intended to be a factual statement.

Racism? I Don't See No Stinkin' Racism!

How could you possibly imagine that there's any racism here?

Bolling began the segment itself by saying, in part, "So what's with all the hoods in the hizzy? A month after the White House hosted the rapper Common, who glorifies violence on cops, the president opened his doors to one of Africa's most evil dictators. Here's Ali Bongo, the Gabonese president, who's been accused of human rights violations and plundering billions of his country's dollars."

Let's do a quick Google search for "Hoods in the hizzy". Okay... here we go:

Oops - Daddy Bongo, granted - you know those banana republics, in which power passes from father to son - but with the wrong hizzy host? With a dash of Jack Abramoff, to boot? Nothing to see there, folks....

The Power to Create a Competing Narrative

Paul Waldman comments on the ideological conformity demanded by the modern Republican Party:

What the right has -- as Gingrich discovered last week to his chagrin -- is a ruthless identity border patrol, with agents spread throughout the political system. Step over any one of a number of lines, even lines that didn't exist just weeks ago, and those agents will inform you, with all the subtlety of a truncheon to the kneecaps, that you are no longer within the conservative nation. "For Republicans running for president in 2012, there's a new political reality: Support Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan -- or else," wrote the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza....

As much as liberals like to imagine the right as a hierarchically organized, smoothly humming machine, the truth is that their system is diffuse, much more like a school of fish than one giant shark. A variety of players influence the school's course: politicians, media figures, activists, and advocates. It isn't a conspiracy in which orders are delivered from above. If there really were a conspiracy, it would be headed by someone with enough sense to say, "This Medicare plan is really risky. Let's not make it a litmus test."

Except that there are powerful right-wing players who can easily create a counter-narrative that will reduce the impact or even reduce the momentum of ideological conformity. There are people who can issue orders from above. One such person is Roger Ailes.

No, Ailes is not an all-powerful media figure who heads a conspiracy, dictating right-wing opinion. But he is the head of one of the most influential news entertainment operations in the world. Had he issued a memo instructing his news entertainers to do so, they would have backed off the "Newt is over" messaging. They could even have pushed back with a, "Ryan's plan is right-wing social engineering" message, or "Even if you disagree, Newt is the most brilliant Republican on the planet so we have to at least hear him out." Instead he unleashed the hounds. Safe to say, Ailes doesn't want Newt to win the nomination or to heavily influence the debate leading up to the nomination.

Let's not forget the "Attack of the 50' Eyesores" effect - recently seen with Donald Trump's flash-in-the-pan flirt with running for the Republican nomination. When international events pushed him out of the headlines the public lost interest - and the President's gentle but public humiliation of Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner left the media with little incentive to again pick up his cause. Is it a coincidence that when Palin irked Ailes by ignoring his advice to keep her mouth shut over the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, his network stopped taking a "damn the facts, liberals hate her" philosophy toward her various gaffes and personality quirks?

As long as people like Ailes have disproportionate power over who can obtain and maintain sustained media attention, they will have disproportionate power as kingmakers and in defining the public debate. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's reality.

When You Hitch Your Wagon to a Lie Machine....

Although it was Jonathan Capehart's response that first caught my eye, Stephen Stromberg wrote about Mike Huckabee's "slip", suggesting that President Obama grew up in Kenya,

It's the Republican equivalent of a Freudian slip....

This episode demonstrates something more pernicious than the existence of one more Obama conspiracy theorist. It demonstrates the extent to which references to birther-like mythology -- and its less-offensive-but-still-pretty-absurd cousin, the Dinesh D'Souza-inspired speculations about Obama's "Kenyan, anti-colonial worldview" -- have become embedded in conservative political culture. It demonstrates the extent to which Republican politicians feel the need to indulge the portions of the GOP base for whom Obama's "Kenyan" roots matter -- whether by asking for his birth certificate or merely suggesting that this man, who has in many ways lived a quintessentially American life, is nothing like the rest of us in some fundamental, worryingly foreign way.

In context, Stromberg is not describing an actual Freudian slip, but is suggesting that "Huckabee was simply floating around on auto-pilot, mouthing the sorts of things he heard at CPAC."

Capehart is less sympathetic, dismissing that the statement should be described as a "Freudian Slip":

A slip would be saying "Osama" instead of "Obama" when referring to the president. What the former Arkansas governor, who is reportedly thinking about running for the Republican presidential nomination again in 2012, did was inexplicably slide head-first into the far right's nether world of conspiracy and paranoia.

Capehart also notes that Huckabee's spoekesperson "misspoke" and meant to say "Indonesia" instead of "Kenya,

So, then, what about all that stuff about the British and Kenya and Obama's father and grandfather? Oh, nevermind.

Capehart is, of course, correct that this wasn't a Freudian slip and should not be dismissed as one. It means, as Stromberg suggests, that Huckabee is so immersed in a sea of disinformation that he can't see the shore - and that he either doesn't know or doesn't care. Huckabee should have taken full responsibility, not attempting to dismiss his spread of factually incorrect information as having "simply misspoken", but acknowledging that his speculation about the President went far into the realm of lies, delusions and/or fantasy.

I don't think Huckabee is planning a run for President. He's building himself a mansion, and is raking in a ton of money working for outfits like Fox that don't care if his comments are truthful. In fact, some of his paymasters may prefer that his comments about the President not be truthful. If you ask the age old, "Is he stupid or lying" question, what answer is implied when you follow the money?

The Climate Change Bill that Wasn't to Be

The New Yorker recently published an article, "As the World Burns", about the failure of climate change legislation. The article finds plenty of blame to go around, including the actions of the Senators who drafted the legislation, the White House (particularly the person(s) responsible for suggesting that Lindsey Graham supported an increased gas tax), Republican obstructionism, and reactionary idiocy from members of the public at Republican "Town Hall" meetings. And let's not forget Harry Reid's self-serving gambit to prioritize a non-existant "Immigration reform bill" over the climate change bill. Harry Reid's statement seems to have ended the possibility of proceeding with the bill.

But what is truly striking is how much Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and Lindsey Graham were willing to give away in order to simply get the energy industry to agree not to oppose the legislation. If you thought the deals the Obama Administration cut to limit industry opposition to healthcare reform were offensive... this, to me, seems like at least another order of magnitude. The final bill was better than nothing, I suppose, but I have a real problem with buying off special interests with huge subsidies and promises that preferential treatment will continue far into the future, perhaps indefinitely.

Beyond that, I can understand why the White House at a certain point seemed to stop caring about this legislation and acting like the bill wasn't even under discussion, making concessions that the authors of the bill hoped to use as carrots to lure Republican moderates to support the legislation. After reaching out, time and time again, on other issues, President Obama seems to have learned that "Republican bipartisanship" inevitably involves Lucy yanking away the football.

I'll give Lindsey Graham credit for joining the team that drafted the bill, but I'm not convinced that he would have ultimately voted for cloture in the face of a filibuster by his party, or in favor of the final legislation. Graham noted that as soon as Fox News figured out that they had a serious bill, "it’s gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it’s gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves" - it's not simply a matter of duplicity that leads Republicans to yank away the football, it's a realization that powerful, monied interests will turn against them. Fox isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party - it advances the policy goals of right-wing billionaires who, through Fox, campaign contributions, and other similar steps, hope to obtain and maintain the Republican Party as another of their holdings.

It's not so much that they can't by Democrats - there's a reason this bill needed Republican support to pass. It's more that, when it comes to their interests, the wholesale price on Republicans is lower. This will only get worse, thanks to the Supreme Court's wrong-headed Citizens United decision.

The article also points out that the public at large puts a very low priority on climate change.

As Much As The Next Guy....

Michael Gerson shares this gem:

I dislike media bias as much as the next conservative. But I don't believe that journalistic objectivity is a fraud. I was a journalist for a time, at a once-great, now-diminished newsmagazine. I've seen good men and women work according to a set of professional standards I respect -- standards that serve the public. Professional journalism is not like the buggy-whip industry, outdated by economic progress, to be mourned but not missed. This profession has a social value that is currently not reflected in its market value.

Amazingly, Gerson's entire column lamenting the decline of journalism, concluding with the assertion that conservatives dislike media bias, fails to even mention Fox News.

More to the point, Gerson used to work for the Bush Administration whose contempt for the media seems fairly characterized as one of the many knives in the back of professional journalism. By way of example, has Gerson already forgotten Talon News and Jeff Gannon? Down the memory hole....

Media Bias, McCain and Obama

In an interview that takes the term "softball" to a whole new level... Sean Hannity throws a series of marshmallows at McCain.

HANNITY: Even if Scott Rasmussen has a poll, 49 percent of Americans think the media is trying to help Barack Obama win. Only 14 percent think they're trying to help you win.

MCCAIN: The American people are very wise.

Poor John - he looks like he's about to faint from the medial pressure. Get the poor man something to drink - perhaps some coffee. Er, thanks, Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, and thanks for also giving him donuts - let's get his blood sugar back up. But we're supposed to be buying into the notion that the media is not (or is it "no longer") John McCain's "base".

What's really going on with the media? Look at David Broder's latest:

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture.

* * *

So where was the risk? It existed mainly in the minds of some journalists and, perhaps, in the musings of Obama staffers who wanted to hype the journey.

Acknowledging all that, it is still the case that Obama is pulling off this trip in great style and thereby has enhanced his Oval Office credentials.

In other words, McCain goaded Obama into taking an international voyage that he would otherwise have forgone in the interest of campaigning right here in the United States, and the media's perspective that the trip could be a horrible mistake is crashing head-on with the fact that Obama has pulled off the voyage in grand style, managing to look informed, engaged, and (worst of all) Presidential.

Meanwhile, how has the press been treating McCain? Very well. They've given scant attention to a series of blunders and gaffes that would have triggered excoriating attacks on Obama. The stack is now so high that we may be reaching a tipping point, even on the network that edited a McCain interview to replace a bungled answer with an attack on Obama - and no, I don't buy the excuse that the wrong answer was inserted after the question because the editor felt time-pressured.

I think a lot of the criticism of McCain (or even Obama) for gaffes and misstatements, or ill-advised jokes or off-hand comments, is unfair. They're under what approaches 24 hour surveillance. They're working hours that (even with McCain's taking some time off on weekends) would be grueling for much younger men. It's pretty astonishing to me that they don't make more blunders under the circumstances. And by that measure, as long as it's a two-way street, I think it's reasonable for the media to focus on the major issues instead of blowing minor misstatements out of proportion.

Of course, that's not actually what the media's doing. News coverage of the campaign seems to be primarily focused on the campaign itself - "Is that campaign ad 'fair'?" "Which candidate is the media darling?" "What did McCain say about Obama's campaign today?" - it's effectively substance-free. If Obama had not gone to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than hearing about those nations we would probably be hearing another story about the (supposed) diminishing importance of those wars to U.S. voters (in the face of a lack of media coverage). The last thing the public needs is a network that often reduces itself to a 24-hour free advertisement for the Republican party inviting McCain, in a kid gloves interview, to accuse the media of treating him unfairly. But that's what we're given.

Obama on Fox News

Obama agrees to an interview on Fox. An Obama spokesperson says Obama will "take on" Fox News, refusing to specify what that means. Third parties spun that as a promise of confrontation, but that's not apparent from the actual statement made. Some people imagine that the only possible meaning of this phrase is for Obama to devote a considerable portion of his interview to attacking the bias of Fox News. And instead he puts in a strong performance, but doesn't attack the network.

Some pro-Obama sites, and of course some anti-Obama sites, want to characterize Obama's campaign as having acted "in bad faith" or having "lied".

You're kidding me, right? You really wanted Barack Obama go to on Fox News, act like a petulant child, and fill the airwaves with a whole new set of anti-Obama sound bites and clips? That's better than his "taking on" the challenge of a Fox News interview, and coming out looking like a competent Presidential candidate?

For future reference, saying you're going to "take on" a challenge doesn't mean that you will be confrontational. You should be pleased that Obama did well, not complaining that he chose not to play the part of a partisan warrior. That latter approach? Some of us would call it, "Playing into a trap."

Well, That Settles That!

Rupert Murdoch on Fox News:

We're not in the least bit biased, we're a fair and balanced company.