But don't let him fool you. As dumb as he is, he's not that stupid. He's well aware the invasion of Iraq has been about oil, despite his empty, demagogic rants against Big Oil's profiteering.
That's a US general, O'Reilly. Not far left loons, the ACLU, godless secularists, terrorist sympathizers, or communists.
Feel the noose tightening, O'Reilly? Metaphorically speaking, of course. But, like Bush, Cheney, and Rice [let's not be sexist], you are headed for the dock at an international war crimes tribunal.--June 21, 2008
Suggests McClellan is a weasel; denies Bush did anything "sinister"
Spouts long-discredited line that a) Bush was misled by bad intelligence and b) Clinton, Blair and CIA chief George Tenet thought Hussein was a "big danger" to US
June 3, 2008--Of course O'Reilly says Bush didn't lie. In defending Bush, O'Reilly's defending himself. He--and the rest of the capitalist media--helped Bush lie and spread the war propaganda the US rulers needed to win public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
O'Reilly shows a video clip of former CIA director George Tenet: Tenet: "Let me say something very clearly to everybody. We believed he had weapons of mass destruction...I believed it going back to my time in the Clinton administration when we were concerned about Iraq. I believed on the basis of 10 years of following it, data that we'd seen, his deception, his denial, his thwarting of the U.N...."
Well, there you have it. Case closed, according to Bill O'Reilly. Clinton, Blair and Tenet thought Hussein had WMD. That proves Bush wasn't lying, doesn't it?
Oh Really O'Reilly?
"Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq."
"CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, althought it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again."
Even this whitewash by the US Senate Intelligence Committee is forced to concede that Bush falsely linked Al Qaeda to Hussein to win public support for the invasion of Iraq.
It's also more evidence that Bill O'Reilly has helped Bush lie for over 5 years and is an accomplice to the war crimes committed by Washington against the people of Iraq.--June 19, 2008
This must be how O'Reilly won the Polk Award. Or was it the Peabody?
Off-camera, on-camera, Bill O'Reilly's vicious temper and thuggishness
dovetail nicely with his broader political views that endorse torture,
wars of aggression and the slaughter of innocent civilians who happen
to get in the way of US imperialism's strategic objective of
controlling natural resources.
We recall O'Reilly's infamous inquisition of guest Jeremy Glick back in
February 2003. On-camera, O'Reilly's temper toward Glick is permanently
captured in the transcript. Off-camera,
O'Reilly allegedly threatened to smash Glick's face into little pieces.
Glick, whose father, a Port Authority worker who died in the World
Trade Center, earned O'Reilly's wrath for not drinking the Factor
host's Kool Aid regarding Washington's invasion of Afghanistan; for
having the audacity to state that America's foreign policy had
something to do with 9/11; for mentioning the word "imperialism."
Such more for O'Reilly's version of free speech and a rigorous exchange
of ideas. So much for O'Reilly as a human being.--May 12, 2008
McCain: US Invaded Iraq for Oil; O'Reilly Fails to Ask Him About It
Factor Host Also Fails to McCain About Keating 5
"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about,
which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that
will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."--John McCain
That was on May 2. On May 9, the Republican nominee to be sat down for an interview with Bill O'Reilly. One would think a responsible journalist would put aside the softball questions and ask McCain to explain his war for oil statement. But Bill O'Reilly is not a responsible journalist. He's a propagandist for war aware that to ask that question would have embarrassed he and McCain. O'Reilly no doubt knows that when true journalists did ask McCain to explain his remarks, Mr. Straight Truth Express replied that he was talking about the first Gulf war in 1991. Sure you were, John.
All that does is reveal that oil was the true motive for Washington's aggression in 1991 and 2003.
O'Reilly asked all of ONE question about Iraq: "...So how much more does America have to absorb for a government that is inefficient and corrupt?" [Absorb? Iraq's lost 1 million; Washington's lost 4,000. Iraq didn't invade the US.]
Yes, puppets tend to be inefficient and corrupt, particularly when the imperialist masters who installed them are helping to cover up that corruption, as former US State Department officials are alleging.
Maybe O'Reilly can call McCain back for a follow-up interview to discuss this topic further. While they're at it, perhaps O'Reilly can ask McCain about Doug Goodyear, the lobbyist who will manage the GOP convention this summer who is also the CEO for the firm that was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military's dictatorship.
If O'Reilly was a responsible journalist and truly cared for the folks, he'd then ask McCain why he was a member of the Keating 5.
Which is precisely why Bill O'Reilly's April 18th Talking Points Memo praised Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for "doing their job"!
The fact that Stephanopoulos was helping to advance this reactionary agenda no doubt played a role in O'Reilly's failure to remind his viewers that Stephanopoulos served as communications director in the Clinton administration--an obvious conflict of interest that explained why this Clinton flunky acted like an "overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing," as TV critic Tom Shales accurately described it.
This also explains why O'Reilly had nothing to say about the fact that his fellow fascist and FOX colleague Sean Hannity had given Stephanopoulos the question about Weatherman Bill Ayers when the ABC "journalist" had appeared the day before on Hannity's radio program.
"Is that a question you might ask?" Hannity demanded.
O'Reilly Revels in Wright Hurting Obama, Bitter Democratic Factionalism
As
a mouthpiece for those capitalists who see continued Republican rule as
the best way to wage imperialist wars and roll back democratic rights,
Bill O'Reilly's happier than a pig in shit watching the Democrats self
destruct and Reverend Jeremiah Wright damage Barack Obama's candidacy. While
the Factor host vows to "be fair to Obama" as he gleefully joins the
McCarthyite attack on Wright's provocative views, a quick review of his
Talking Points Memos since the story broke reveals where O'Reilly's
head is really at:
"Race Hammer in Play Again" (March 13, 2008) "Obama Pastor Controversy Continues (March 16, 2008) "Obama Replies to Pastor Controversy" (March 17, 2008) "Obama Speaks on Rev. Wright and Race in America" (March 18, 2008) "Race in America, Starring Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson" (March 19, 2008) "Obama Strikes Back" (March 20, 2008) "Uncivil War Within Democratic Party" (March 24, 2008) "Shooting at Hillary Clinton" (March 25, 2008) "Barack Obama's Comeback" (March 31, 20080 "Worse Missteps: Obama or Clinton" (April 1, 2008) "Sticking up for Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan" (April 3, 2008) "Martin Luther King, Jeremiah Wright and Hollywood" (April 6, 2008) "White Backlash Against Rev. Wright and Racist Accusations" (April 7, 2008) "Playing Gotcha With Obama" (April 17, 2008) "Hating ABC News" (April 18, 2008) "Showdown in Pennsylvania" (April 21, 2008) "Long March Continues for Democrats" (April 23, 2008) "Racism and the Democratic Presidential Contest" (April 24, 2008) "Comeback of Rev. Jeremiah Wright" (April 25, 2008) "Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Excellent Adventure" (April 28, 2008)
We'll respond to excerpts from several of the above examples of O'Reilly's McCarthyism shortly.
In
the meantime, O'Reilly's "reporting" might have more credibility if in
the spirit of fair and balanced he devoted equal time to the remarks of
McCain supporter John Hagee, the extreme right televangelist who called
O'Reilly's Catholic Church a "whore" and believes that Hurricane
Katrina was God's way of punishing the people of New Orleans for their
tolerance of homosexuality.
This contemptible wretch just can't wait to show the world how much balls she has by slaughtering 65 million people on behalf of Wall Street and Zionist Israel.
In a just world, she'd be tried and convicted before an international war crimes tribunal and sentenced with no mercy, joining Bill O'Reilly at the gallows pole where they could pray to their maker in unison. How touching that would be.--April 25, 2008
And wins the endorsement of Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The same ultraright publisher who led the campaign to impeach her husband in 1998. She has no principles, no scruples, no values, no shame. This is not ambition. This is a lust for power.
Meanwhile, Clinton has blamed her dismal showing in many state caucuses on MoveOn.org, the group which was founded to defeat that impeachment drive, whining that its members "flood[ed] the caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me." Hillary also falsely accused MoveOn of opposing Washington's invasion of Afghanistan.
Sit-down reveals strategic agreement between multimillionaires
Differences on taxes, wars, torture only tactical
Clinton proves her populism is phonier than O'Reilly's
Clinton: "...And I really don't think the United States government was behind AIDS."
O'Reilly: "Obviously, Rev. Wright is delusional. There's not a shred of evidence to back up that nutty statement." [Talking Points Memo, April 3, 2008]
Speaking of which, it's more and more troubling to keep hearing that the only way Clinton can win is if something bad happens to Obama, like "an act of God" in Tim Russert's words, or if "something drops on Obama's head," as Bill O'Reilly so eloquently put it; let alone former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckaby's sick joke about someone "aim[ing] a gun" at Obama.
Whatever you do, Obama, do NOT choose Clinton as your running mate!--May 8, 2008
This cretin just can't hide his racism. As the Scorpion told the Frog in Aesop's fable after stinging him ensured their deaths: "I can't help it. It's in my nature."
If
this were a prizefight, it would have been stopped. Reverend Michael
Pfleger's command of history and the facts knocked O'Reilly's flunky
right out of the ring. Particularly satisfying was how Pfleger shot down Mr. Ambush's attempt to falsify and rewrite history by painting Martin Luther King Jr as a harmless Uncle Tom who would have joined Clarence Thomas in opposing affirmative action. [See "Their King and Ours" on page 1 of this site, A Tribune of the People.]
"Dr. King I believe would cry today... if he saw the plight of poor people, saw us in a war that's immoral, founded on a lie...saw the conditions that exist today... I think Dr. King would be considered by you, by Mr. O'Reilly, and your viewers... as an angry madman..."
Right you are, Reverend, particularly after King's 1967 anti-Vietnam War speech in which he condemned Washington as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
When O'Reilly's flunky tried to peddle King's "judge a man by the content of his character and not the color of his skin" line as an example of how he preached loved while Wright preaches hate [it's also a thinly disguised attempt to falsely brand King as an affirmative action opponent], Pfleger set the record straight: "... read the first part of that speech, when he talked about the injustices of America, read his speech about the Vietnam war, you like to take Dr. King and repackage him into this wonderful little loving sweet guy who had this olive branch in his hand [trans: Uncle Tom] that's not Martin Luther King...cause I knew him too, and Martin Luther King spoke truth to this country, and that's why he's dead, too, because they decided he had to die..."
O'Reilly Hit Man: "Well, thank you very much..." he stammered, fully aware by now that both he and O'Reilly are not in Pfleger's league--intellectually or politically.
Stooges with financial ties to military contractors
FOX, O'Reilly in middle of scandal
Arm-twisting, ass-kissing, profiteering, censoring, and manipulating shamelessly carried out by representatives of a kept press to hoodwink US workers to die for Big Oil and capitalist profits
"In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes when when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeoparding their access.
"A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. [emphasis added]
" 'It was them saying, "We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you," 'Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said."
" '...We knew we had extraordinary access,' said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lt. colonel and Fox analyist who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growingmilitary contractor.
"Like several other analysts, Mr Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that 'some four-star could call up and say, "Kill that contract." '....
"Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion but were careful not to express them on air." [emphasis added]
"Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst [and frequent O'Reilly guest], was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq's purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. he recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had 'smoking gun' proof.
" 'We don't have any hard evidence, ' Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. 'We are looking at ourselves saying, "What are we doing?" '
"Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel..."concluded that the analysts were being 'manipulated' to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Br. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public." [emphasis added]
"Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national contracts."
" 'There's no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,' Mr. Bevelacqua said. ' You're talking about fighting a huge machine.' "
....Still, even the mildest of criticism could draw a challenge. Several analysts told of fielding telephone calls from displeased defense officials only minutes after being on the air.'"
"On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the 'twisted version of reality' being pushed on analysts in briefings, called the Pentagon to give 'a heads-up' that some of his comments on Fox 'may not all be friendly,' Pentagon records show. Mr. Rumsfeld's senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when he told Bill O'Reilly that the United States was 'not on a good glide path right now' in Iraq, the repercussions were swift." [emphasis added]
Cowan was fired from the analysts group the next day.
Of course, the Times has blood on its hands as well, since its editorials and reporting, including that of the wretched Judith Miller, played a huge role in helping Bush lie to the American people about the aggression Washington committed against Iraq.
O'Reilly's role proves what we've been saying on this site for 6 years: O'Reilly's no mere journalist who expressed his First Amendment views on the issue. No, he was a conscious, willing, enthusiastic participant in the systematic web of deceit planned and executed in the White House, Pentagon, and board rooms of the major capitalist news organizations that was designed to facilitate the illegal, murderous invasion of a sovereign country.
Bill O'Reilly is no journalist. He's a war criminal who deserves to meet his maker at the gallow's pole.--April 22-24, 2008
O'Reilly's Partisan Spin Again: Demands Obama Denounce Wright's 9/11 Comments, Lets McCain off Hook for Hagee's Claim Katrina Was God Punishing New Orleans for Homosexuality
Pastor Wright's 9/11 Remarks Unnerve O'Reilly and Entire US Political Establishment
Whatever Wright's confused formulations, they express the awareness--and anger--among broad layers of Americans that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were connected to US foreign policy. This Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews and their ilk cannot tolerate. They know that despite all their efforts on behalf of the US ruling class to cover up their murderous intrigue, tens of millions smell the stench of 9/11. Propagandists, mouthpieces and spinmeisters like O'Reilly and Matthews are well aware of the subversive--even revolutionary implications of 9/11, because once you know that "your government" either sponsored or allowed terrorist attacks to occur in order to win public support for military aggression in oil rich nations, then it's time for that government to go, to be dumped in the trashbin of history, as Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky would say. Hell, the Declaration of Independence demands that of its citizenry.
O'Reilly and Matthews, obedient lapdogs for the capitalist class they serve, immediately dismissed Wright's remarks as lunatic before distorting them without seriously analyzing a single word.
O'Reilly: "...Jeremiah Wright has been exposed as an anti-American hater."
No he hasn't. Wright hates US government foreign policy, not "America." He doesn't hate his city. He doesn't hate his community. He may hate racist warmongers like O'Reilly. But he doesn't hate "America." Wright's problem is that he's limited by his political flaws; he's a bourgeois religious figure and member of the urban petty bourgeoisie who lacks a proletarian, internationalist perspective that would prevent him from saying "we" bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "We" the American working class--didn't bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They--the US capitalist class--bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
With that as a qualifier, let's do the fact check that media whores O'Reilly and Matthews failed to do.
Wright: "We bombed Hiroshima." True.
Wright: "We bombed Nagasaki." True.
O'Reilly: "He believes the USA is no better than Al Qaeda."
Wright didn't say the USA is no better than Al Qaeda. He said the USA has slaughtered more civilians than Al Qaeda.
And that's a fact.
Wright: "And we nuked far more than the thousands in New Y ork and the Pentagon...." True.
Wright: "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africans." True. Washington did support apartheid South Africa and it still supports Israel's state terrorism against the Palestinians. That's a fact that unfolds before our eyes every day.
Wright: "And now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now been brought right back into our own front yard."
Again, Wright's got his "us and thems and we's" confused, but amidst his confusion is the fundamental truth that Malcolm X expressed long ago when he characterized Kennedy's assassination as the "chickens coming home to roost." Wright is expressing what tens of millions of African Americans and many other Americans know--you commit that much violence and mayhem around the world as the US government has done, and well, what goes around comes around. In other words, Washington has turned America into a bloody deathtrap for its inhabitants.
When Wright damns America, he's damning American imperialism and the crimes it has committed against humanity since the Filipino war; he's damning Washington for killing millions of Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese, Iraqis, Central Americans, and Indonesians, among others; he's damning racist lynchings of Black Americans; he's damning Washington giving syphilis to Blacks at the Tuskogee Institute in the 1930s.
O'Reilly: "At this point, the story tells us more about the media than Senator Obama."
Yeah, starting with you, media boy.
O'Reilly: "You'll remember the very liberal New York Times attacked John McCain for associating with a lobbyist nobody ever heard of. The Times put the story on page one and the liberal media ran with it. The McCain story was about association and judgment, was it not?...But the NY Times buried the pastor's story. The paper must think its readers are stupid."
The "very liberal" NY Times lied for Bush and helped him wage a brutal, illegal war and occupation. The very conservative Bill O'Reilly has buried the story of another controversial pastor, John Hagee, a McCain supporter who said that "Hurricane Katrina was the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans for planning a homosexual parade on the Monday that Katrina arrived." O'Reilly must think his viewers are stupid.--March 18, 2008
O'Reilly on Media Exploitation of Spitzer Scandal: New Meaning to the Pot Calling the Kettle Black
"New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in Big Trouble" (March 11, 2008) "Far Left and Spitzer Scandal" (March 12, 2008) "Governor Eliot Spitzer Quits" (March 13, 2008)
A Democratic governor ruined by a tryst with a call girl? That's Music to O'Reilly's ears at a time when Bush is loathed and conditions are favorable for a Democratic sweep.
"Keep in mind that every time a Republican or a clergyman gets into trouble, these same far-left loons gleefully join in the witch-burning. Hypocritical doesn't even begin to cover it." ("Far Left and Spitzer Scandal," Talking Points Memo, March 12, 2008)
Pot calls kettle black, O'Reilly style: "Keep in mind that every time a Democratic gets into trouble, these far right loons [like O'Reilly] gleefully join in the witch-burning. Hypocritical doesn't even begin to cover it."
From the same Talking Points segment: "Eliot Spitzer broke the law, so he has to resign as governor. There's no comparing what he did to any civil or private action, including the situation of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. When you are the chief law enforcement officer of a state and you violate criminal law, you've got to go."
Here the right-wing spinmeister apologist for Bush proudly displays his hypocritical selective double standards. The truth is as follows: "George W. Bush broke the law, so he has to resign as president. [Actually he should indicted and convicted for war crimes,with no mercy shown due to the gravity of his crimes and complete lack of remorse.There's no comparing what he did to any civil or private action, including the situation of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, or the situation of Eliot Spitzer.]
"When you are the chief law enforcement officer of a nation and you violate criminal law, you've got to go."
Bush violated federal and international laws against torture, federal laws prohibiting spying on American citizens; he violated the constitution in undermining habeas corpus and due process when he arrested Americans without charges or evidence. He violated US and international law when he illegally invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, war crimes that have killed over a million Iraqis and Afghans. It's Bush who has to go. Along with Bill O'Reilly, the number 1 aider and abettor of Bush's crimes against humanity in the capitalist media.--March 16, 2008
O'Reilly: "Something is disturbing about that because so
many innocent folks are hurt in any scandal, but we Americans like the
action and the press lives for it, so that's not going to change." [emphasis added]
Hey O'Reilly, don't lump the rest of us in with your sick mind; don't drag all Americans into your pit of salacious envy. You and your ilk like Chris Matthews live for it. You overpaid, parasitic ruling class scribes are paid millions precisely to "substitute scandal-mongering and character assassination for any genuine and open debate of policy and issues...." (WSWS, "Politically directed dragnet snares New York Governor Spitzer", 3/13/08). Your "hand-wringing and feigned outrage over the personal sexual conduct of this or that politician" and your contribution to the "media's dissemination of lurid details--all have the effect of debasing the political environment."
O'Reilly: "There's no sympathy here for Eliot Spitzer, but his family is another
matter. How awful." [Crocodile tears from a dangerous, powerful hypocrite]
But that isn't stopping O'Reilly from doing his part to drag Spitzer's name through the mud and plastering television screen and his website with all the lewd and lavicious details videos like "Psychology of Prostitution" ["Gov. Spitzer's costly call girl revealed. How does one get involved with prostitution?"] and "Big Business: Ex-call girl details life inside world of prostitution"]
Humiliate kids, desecrate their religion, throw puppy off cliff
It's all part of O'Reilly's noble mission in Iraq. Must be just a few more of those few rotten apples.
On one level those soldiers are working class victims of the US capitalist political/military command; their demented behavior a result of the barbaric, dehumanizing training ordered by that imperialist war command. On another level, these particular soldiers, stupid enough to be consciously caught on video, are war criminals in their own right, perhaps there are IED's with their names on them.--March 8, 2008
What's Behind O'Reilly's Knee Jerk Defense of McCain-- WAR
February 24, 2008--It should surprise no one that Bill O'Reilly jumped to Senator John McCain's defense against allegations of impropriety raised in a recent NY Times article. It is no mystery why O'Reilly ignored the questions and contradictions already surfacing regarding McCain's categorical denial of any impropriety. O'Reilly spins for and defends McCain for the exact same reason he does for George W. Bush--the war in Iraq and the imperialist wars to come.
Oh Really O'Reilly
COSMOS LEFT
believes FOX talk show host Bill O'Reilly has emerged as one of the
most dangerous individuals in this country. There are other bourgeois
pundits more personally obnoxious than O'Reilly--Hannity, Colter,
Limbaugh--but none of these cretins pretends to be working class
heroes. O'Reilly does claim to speak for workers, as fascist demagogues
usually do.
COSMOS LEFT
will expose this liar as a deadly enemy of working people; a demagogic
windbag railing against the weak and bankrupt liberal elites who refuse
to discipline unruly Black kids in public schools, and won't militarize
the borders to keep out those damned illegal Mexicans.
The
overriding theme of OH REALLY O'REILLY is that behind O'Reilly's
politics of resentment with a smile lies the face of American fascism.
"There are
dozens of them—the Krauthammers, Coulters, Sowells, Wills, etc.,
secreted out of the pores of an elite increasingly insulated from the
general population and hostile to democratic rights. Their vocation,
for which they are handsomely paid, is pumping out lies and filth on a
daily basis. They are incapable of principled or reasoned discussion.
There is no dialogue with them. They stand on the opposite side of the
political barricades."--World Socialist Web Site
COSMOS LEFT places Bill O'Reilly at the top of that list.
Mounting Calls for O'Reilly's Resignation Over Lynching Comment
George W. Bush: "Lynching should not be used in any way, even in jest."
We'll track it down? Lynching party? Boasting about the legions of fascist goons you know you have at your beck and call, O'Reilly?
We've said it many times: Bill O'Reilly is a repulsive racist. Even by George W. Bush's illustrious standards, O'Reilly should be yanked from the airwaves immediately. Then he should be thrown before the mercy of an international court for his role as an accessory to US imperialism's war crimes in illegally invading and occupying Iraq. But no mercy should be shown.
O'Reilly's comment is at least as offensive as Don Imus's "nappy-headed ho's" slander against the Rutgers' women's basketball team. Given the recent spate of noose-related incidents involving the Jena 6, Golf magazine's cover and Kelly Tilghman's bimbo-like remark about lynching Tiger Woods in a back alley, O'Reilly showed his usual sense of class and good judgment. As he himself said, "Context is everything." Of course, the racist buffoon just can't help himself. As the scorpion once told the frog, "It's in my nature."
We've also said that Bill O'Reilly is the most dangerous man in America, in that he represents the face of American fascism today. This fact was recognized in an astute article by the Huffington Post's Bob Cesca, who in his call for O'Reilly to resign in disgrace wrote, "...unlike you and your Stalking McCarthyite Schutzstaffle--your Lynching Party--we're not a mob out for vengeance."
While Cesca correctly illuminates the nexus between the fanatical followers of O'Reilly, Malkin, Coulter and Beck with the recent death threats levied against Obama, he's wrong when he says O'Reilly "clearly doesn't understand the repercussions of this kind of race-baiting language. And that indicates a staggering lack of understanding about what sorts of reactionary people are dialed in."
Bullshit. O'Reilly is well aware of the repercussions generated by this race-baiting language, and he knows full well the sorts of reactionary people are dialed in. Because they're his people. He's the fascist leader; they are the brain-dead, Kool Aid guzzling followers. And in time, the US working class will forge a Red Guard to defend ourselves against the ultrarightist violence unleashed by the scum coalescing around Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage.--February 20-24, 2008
"Al Qaeda is isolated in Pakistan, and the Taliban gets pounded in every engagement. "
Oh Really O'Reilly? Is that why US Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently stated the US is "ready, willing and able" to send US combat forces into Pakistan? Is that why Pakistani President Musharraf was recently seen begging for continued Western support for his hated regime?
Is that why two recent US military reports warned that Washington faced failure in Afghanistan? Is that why one report began: "Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan"? Is that why the German foreign minister rejected Washington's request to send more troops to southern Afghanistan to fight the Taliban? Because "the Taliban gets pounded in every engagement" Then why's Bush asking for more help from Germany if things are going so well.
O'Reilly: "Back here in the USA, people like Michael Moore call the presence of American forces in Iraq evil." Tens of millions more Americans than just Moore have witnesses the horrors that have been inflicted against Iraqis in Americans' name, and those Americans have had enough. They agree with their working class brothers and sisters in Iraq--they want the US forces to go, because the Bush-ordered aggression has destroyed their country.
O'Reilly: "A dishonest media trumps up stories about returning soldiers killing people."
The stories about returning soldiers killing people and exhibiting other manifestations of post traumatic stress disorder caused when you brutalize soldiers in their training and then throw them into another country as occupiers. The result will be dead people--from Iraq to America. And their blood is on Bill O'Reilly's hands. He deserves a guilty verdict as much as Bush and Cheney at the coming international war crimes tribunals with their names on them.
O'Reilly: "Hollywood pinheads make movies disrespecting the armed forces."
Whatever flaws that may exist in these films made by O'Reilly's "pinheads," if he's referring to Brian DePalma's "Rededacted," the revolting atrocities of murder ad rape by US soldiers against an innocent Iraqi family chronicled in "Redacted" are factual representations of what happened. The only people "disrespecting the armed forces" are those who trained and ordered those soldiers to treat all Iraqis as the enemy, the soldiers who willingingly and enthusiastically followed out those immoral orders, and war propagandists like Bill O'Reilly who unflinchingly defends US imperialisms "noble effort" in Iraq--one that slaughtered about a million Iraqis, destroyed much of the country, killed and maimed thousands of Americans--and one that was based on documented lies.
Take a seat at the coming war crimes tribunal with your name on it, Bill O'Reilly.--February 11, 2008
Which means O'Reilly belongs in the dock alongside Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and their ilk. O'Reilly wasn't merely a journalist exercising his 1st Amendment rights. He was an integral part of a murderous war machine who consciously propagandized and lied on behalf of it.
Bill O'Reilly is guilty of international war crimes. He should receive the severest punishment for his aiding and abetting in US imperialism's war atrocities.--January 23, 2008
"We're still looking for all the veterans sleeping under the bridges..."
This is what happens when your job is to spin for George W. Bush and the US imperialist war machine he commands. The more O'Reilly spins for Bush, the more he wallows in his own shit, the more he disrespects those soldiers he claims to speak for so hypocritically and self righteously.
Confronted with VA facts on veteran homelessness, O'Reilly beats cowardly retreat
After Keith Olbermann and others called him out on the facts, the punk sang a different tune the following night. Yeah, there may be 200,000 homeless vets, but it's their fault because they're drug addicts and mentally ill. It's not the economy. It's not the capitalist system. It's not Bush. It's individual failings--an echo of his racist argument that there's no more racism in the US; if Blacks aren't succeeding, it's their fault for being lazy and undisciplined.
Moments after contemptuously downplaying reports of violence committed by US veterans, what does O'Reilly cover in his next segment?
One Marine accused of murdering his Marine wife!
F**K THE "CLOUD OVER BASEBALL"!
It's the cloud over Washingon and its media whores like Bill O'Reilly that we should be outraged over. Their lies resulted in the deaths of a million Iraqis and Americans.
A Catholic's Prayer to the Lord about Bill O'Reilly
Lord, if you do exist, please take Bill O'Reilly now, before he causes more pain and death to more innocents. He has abused and distorted your teachings in the name of war, persecution, and hatred long enough. He is unrepentant, completely without remorse, and appears hell bent on bombarding Americans with repackaged lies on behalf of Washington's imperialist war machine. He is a satanic wolf in Christ's toga.
Take him now. Much of the world would rejoice and sing your praises.--Jan. 15, 2008
If O'Reilly were a serious and professional journalist interested in providing his viewers with a fair and balanced perspective, he would tell them about the well documented business connections between Cheney's Hallibuton in Iraq and Iran, and Bush's decades-long relationship with the Bin Laden family.
But since O'Reilly is the principal media propagandist for Bush, Cheney and the US imperialist war machine, his demagogic rant against GE should be seen trying to boost his network's ratings against a competitor.--Jan. 14, 2008
Apparently the notion that an African American might actually be elected president is enough to send the racist Bill O'Reilly over the edge. This egotistical, demagogic blowhard is so racist and so Republican, he can't stop himself from revealing what a thuggish GOP dirty trickster he truly is.--January 6, 2008
Tactical differences aside, Bill O'Reilly has been one of George Bush's most effective and consistent mouthpieces and media cheerleaders for Washington's imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every lie Bush told about Iraq--WMD, ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, bringing freedom and democracy to its people--was dutifully echoed and rationalized by Bill O'Reilly.
Not content with the Iraqi and American blood spilled as a result of his earlier lies, now O'Reilly is helping Bush deceive Americans all over again regarding Iran.
It's what O'Reilly means when he talks about Washington's "noble mission" in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's no shock that death and destruction followed O'Reilly's latest "Gidget goes to Afghanistan" junket.
'Surge' Success Means America's Successful Conquest of Iraq
Workers shouldn't get sucked in or deceived by the tactical debate raging among O'Reilly and other supporters of this filthy, illegal predatory imperialist war. The entire framework of this debate is fraudulent, designed to throw dust in our eyes and obscure the illegality and immorality of Washington's invasion and occupation of Iraq. When they talk about the surge succeeding, they're talking about the success of Washington's pacification of Iraq. They're talking about whether or not the US conquers Iraq and establishes a puppet regime that will facilitate Washington's control of Iraq's oil and strategic position in the Middle East.
The invasion was based on lies. Never forget that fact.
The reason Bill O'Reilly hates Mark Cuban and Brian DePalma's new movie is because it illuminates what he has been trying to shield from US working people.
Redacted is not a work of fiction.
The brutal rape and murder of 15-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza, the burning of her corpse, and the murder of her family in the village of Mahmoudiya--is a reality. It happened. And the world knows it happened, despite the attempts by Bill O'Reilly and other apologists for Washington's filthy colonialist aggression in Iraq to suppress it.
Cuban and DePalma are not "hurting the troops" or "helping the terrorists." Bill O'Reilly is.
"Unless the White House is involved, this isn't a major story"--Bill O'Reilly, 9/30/03
From COSMOS LEFT ("OReilly Cleans Outhouse at White House," Oct. 1, 2003):
"Except the White House is involved, O'Reilly, and only a shameless apologist for George Bush could utter the above words....
"It DOES involve the White House, as the whole world knows except O'Reilly, if you can believe him. The CIA sent former Iraq ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger last year to find out if Iraq tried to buy uranium 'yellowcake' from that country. When Wilson returned to Washington, he told Cheney, the CIA, the National Security Council and the State Department that the yellowcake story was bogus.
Despite Wilson's report, which was later confirmed when the International Atomic Energy Agency dismissed the allegations as based on crudely forged documents, Bush dramatically included the Niger uranium 'evidence' in his January 28 State of the Union address. Justifiably angered, Wilson went public with his protest in a July 6 op-ed column in the NY Times, criticizing Bush for using evidence he knew was false to support the war.
"This was a humiliating embarrassment for Bush. Now the White House had to admit that the famous '16 words' were false and should not have been included in the speech, blaming the CIA for the 'mistake.' One week later, right wing pundit Robert Novak, citing 'two senior administration officials,' reported that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative, and that Plame was the one who suggested her husband should go to Niger to verify the uranium allegations.
"In publicly revealing Plame's identity, Novak had 'outed' a CIA agent, which is a federal felony that violates two statutes: the National Agents' Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act. That's a major story, O'Reilly. And 'two senior administration officials' means it involves the White House.
You don't have to be a political scientist to figure out that the Bush cabal, severely embarrassed and incensed at Wilson for exposing their Niger uranium lie, retaliated by revealing the identity of Wilson's wife. The White House also intended to send a message to anyone else thinking of publicly crossing them.
"The Bush cabal is so drunk with power, so arrogant, and so vicious, they could not restrain themselves from breaking federal law and risking impeachment charges.
"O'Reilly's spin is so bankrupt it's almost laughable. He enlightens us with this comment: 'There's now no question in my mind that whoever exposed the ambassador's wife did so to get revenge, because Wilson wrote an article embarrassing Bush over the Africa uranium Iraq situation.'
"Oh Really O'Reilly? Tell us something we don't know. And just who has the motive to exact revenge on Wilson but the president who Wilson embarrassed?
"O'Reilly pathetically tried to throw dust in everyones eyes. It wasn't Bush, you see. It's the 'hate industry,' a less-than-scientific term that O'Reilly doesn't even attempt to define. Someone tried to hurt somebody for political reasons, and it backfired, you understand.
"O'Reilly's obfuscation continued unabated. O'Reilly: 'There's no question that the far left despises President Bush, just as the far right loathed Bill Clinton.'
"Oh Really? Far left, far right, leaves us with no option but to listen to O'Reilly, the voice of reason and moderation in the middle. Except that no one loathes Clinton as much as the far right does except--Bill O'Reilly.
"O'Reilly: 'The haters have power right now in America.'
"Yes, and you're living proof of that, O'Reilly.
"O'Reilly: 'Passionate debate and respect for opposing points of view are what this country is all about.'
"They may be what this country's all about, but they're not what O'Reilly is all about, as we saw when he told Jeremy Glick to shut up and threatened to smash his head into fucking pieces.
"In truth, this country is about violence and revolution: the violent subjugation and extermination of Native Americans, a bloody anti-colonial revolution, and a bloody civil war.
"And that was just to get the country started and unified.
"O'Reilly: 'Whoever tried to hurt Ambassador Wilson by leaking his wife's CIA connection, which is illegal, is now being hunted and has brought embarrassment to the Bush administration.'
"Notice how O'Reilly's point of departure is that Bush is innocent. Somebody must have wronged him. O'Reilly glosses over the obvious motive that inspired the leak--revenge against Wilson for embarrassing the White House over its manipulation of intelligence data to wage war.
"While O'Reilly babbles about the 'haters in power,' he fails to inform his viewers that it was the CIA that approached the Justice Department within a week of Novak's column and urged an investigation of the leak.
O'Reilly doesn't tell his audience that it was the CIA that drafted a 'crime report,' which is a formal notice that a crime had been committed.
"O'Reilly doesn't mention the September 27 Washington Post report that two Bush officials had cold-called six other journalists in July and told them it was Plame who volunteered Wilson to go to Africa to investigate the uranium allegation.
"O'Reilly doesn't tell his audience about the widely held belief that the source of the Washington Post story was Tenet or a high level CIA official.
"Of course, O'Reilly has a self interest in censoring this story, since more than any other media whore O'Reilly helped Bush lie to the American people about Iraq. He thinks that by throwing around meaningless but provocative phrases like 'hate industry' he can distract attention from his own culpability in these crimes, and his own responsibility for dead Americans and Iraqis."--
COSMOS LEFT, 10/01/03
O'Reilly's Hatemongering Toward Gays and Immigrants Paves Way for Fascist Pogroms Against Them
During a recent Factor segment, "High School Lesbians Voted 'Cutest Couple' for Yearbook," Northwestern University psychiatry professor Dr. Laura Berman destroyed O'Reilly while exposing his homophobia:
Berman: "...it's starting to become at least a small trend, if not a large one, that homosexuality is becoming, thankfully, more normalized..."
O'Reilly: "Now you realize that you said, thankfully, that I don't know 50 60 percent of the country is going to be angry with you for saying that...it is a valid point of view...we don't want to normalize homosexuality in a pu blic way in an academic setting,in high school, among minors. We don't think that reflects..."
Berman: "Why?"
O'Reilly: "...how we feel about it. Well, for a number of reasons. One, social. It's much more difficult to be a homsexual than a heterosexual in America. [Yeah, because of homophobic bigots like you] Two, religious. There are people who believe that kind of a lifestyle... is against their religion...Three, an expositionof sexuality in a minor...is inappropriate in an academic setting.
Berman: "...where you're getting stuck is assuming that validating or acknowledging homosexuality as a reality is somehow going to make homosexuality more likely to happen...And what we do know is that homosexual teens are four times more likely to be seriously bullied, [no doubt by kids who read The O'Reilly Factor for Kids]...two times more likely than heterosexual kids to be significantly involved in drugs and alcohol and abuse drugs and alcohol, and six times more likely than heterosexual teens to have suicidal attempts...And they have nowhere to turn. [They'd better run from O'Reilly[
O'Reilly, going down: "Well, I think."
Berman: "They have no support systems."
O'Reilly: "Look, I've been very consistent on this since my first book was written. I think private behavior belongs in private settings...I don't think it belongs in the high school yearbook."
Berman: "But you'd be OK with the cutest couple, heterosexual couple, though."
O'Reilly: "I would be, because that is the norm of society...[Get the "X" brands hot and ready.]Homosexuals ... are six percent of the population..."
Berman: "But since African-Americans are a minority, would you have a problem with an African-American heterosexual couple?"
O'Reilly: "No, because African--because race is no conduct. There is a difference between who you are and what you do ..."
Berman: "So you're judging homosexuality as..."
O'Reilly: "Not judging-I'm not judging anybody and anything..." [Telling people they're not normal and should stay hidden is not judging?]
Berman: "Right. This isn't about sexuality."
O'Reilly: "Sure it is."
Berman: "Just a couple."
O'Reilly: "This is a lesbian couple that was voted in there...because they're a lesbian couple." [emphasis added]
Berman: "But they're not flaunting their sexuality."
O'Reilly: "How do you know?"
Berman: "They're just in love."
O'Reilly: "...How do you know they're not? You don't know that."
Berman: "They're not flaunting their sexuality any more or any less than a heterosexual couple might."
O'Reilly: "Look...there's no reason why Brandy and Lupe had to declare themselves anything other vthan friends. They didn't have to do that. They chose to do that."
Berman: "If they're in love, but they're due--they hae the same right to do that as any heterosexual."
O'Reilly: "It's not about--it's a matter of appropriateness.That's what it's a matter of. And look."
O'Reilly: "You're dismissing all--look I'm not--look, I don't want any kid to be bullied. I wrote, "Kids are Americans, Too" for gay kids who are getting bullied. They should read the book, know their rights. I don't want anything like that to happen."
Got a guilty conscience, O'Reilly? This is classic O'Reilly demagoguery. He's forced to claim he doesn't wnat kids to be bullied, knowing that everything else he's pushing is inflaming hatred, intolerance and bigotry toward gays. It's the same when he peddles that "I'm not anti-immigrant" lie; he thinks his lip service sympathy for immigrant workers trying to eke out a living in the States negates the nightly xenophobic vitriol he spews at Mexican workers--they're invading hordes bent on turning America brown and Democratic; they're the equivalent of biological weapons; they're terrorists threatening national security; they're criminals, whether they have criminal records or not.
O'Reilly: But you're dismissing a very legitimate point. This is inappropriate. You don't define yourself in a high school yearbook."
Berman: "Only if you judge sexuality."
O'Reilly: "in a sexual way. Period. You don't do it."
Berman: "These kids--these kids need support. And they need to know that it's OK to be who they are."
O'Reilly: "Well, let them go to a support group run by you. It doesn't need to be..." [This from an individual who wrote a book telling gay kids their rights? I want to check out the passage in which Mr. Gay Rights Supporter gives advice to gay kids about not being bullied.]
Berman: "Here I am."
O'REilly: "You know, you don't have to take out posters and put them on your front lawn." [Yeah, I know if I were a gay kid, I'd run to O'Reilly for guidance.]
Berman: "Because they're supporting all the other kids that are stuck in hiding and now will feel safer."
O'Reilly: "That is your extrapolation. Somebody else would say you're encouraging that kind of experimentation..."
Berman: "...It happens anyway."
O'Reilly: "All right, doctor, that's the old argument. Let's legalize drugs because it happens anyway..."
Berman: "Drugs are not the same. Homosexuality is not illegal."
O'Reilly: "But it--you know what I'm talking about." [Translation: "Well maybe it should be."
Berman, exhibiting a touch of ESP: "And it shouldn't be illegal."
"Why did author J.K. Rowling out one of the 'Harry Potter' characters as gay?"
"Another Church Under Attack in San Francisco" "This [arrest of man wearing explosives on steps of church] comes on the heels of two gay militants invading a San Francisco Catholic Church defiling the Eucharest there" [emphasis added] --They "defiled" the church by receiving Holy Communion. O'Reilly is attempting to equate wearing explosives with receiving Holy Communion.
O'Reilly Blasts Carlin for Blaming California Fires on Selfish Consumers, While Ignoring Beck's "a handful of people who hate America...are losing their homes in a fire"
As we saw below in his kid gloves treatment of fascist commentator Ann Coulter's anti-Semitic remarks, Bill O'Reilly employs a double standard when it comes to his like-minded fascist allies. When Beck spewed his latest obscenity--clearly directed against the same Hollywood elite O'Reilly attacks daily--we heard nothing from O'Reilly. But he was quick to pounce on comedian George Carlin's rant on The View against that same liberal Hollywood elite, which he called "selfish" people who "just care about having a comfortable place...these people with the fires and the floods and everything, they overbuild, they put nature to the test and they get what they have coming to them."
After saying he "can't wait for the sea levels to rise... and for "some of these cities to disappear," Carlin went on:
"There are places that are going to go away. The map is going to change and that's because -- people think nature is outside of them. They don't take into them the idea that we are part of it. They say, 'oh, we're going for a nature walk. We're going to the country because we like nature.' Nature is in here. And if you're in tune with it, like the Indians, the Hopis, especially, the balance of life, the balance, the harmony of nature, if you understand that, you don't overbuild. You don’t do all this moron stuff. There are too many people-"
George Carlin is a brilliant comic and satirist who has blistered the Establishment for decades with his biting, iconoclastic razor sharp wit that has never shied from offending conventional sensibilities. While his politics are left of center, antiwar, and antiBush, Carlin's petty bourgeois perspective--evidenced in his romantic idealization of Hopi Indians--sometimes limits his understanding of class society. It's not the "people" who are to blame for testing nature by overbuilding in dangerous fire areas. Houses are built all over southern California because it's profitable for real estate moguls, large construction firms, and Wall Street investors to build them. The "people" are not to blame for and do not profit from the anarchy and chaos of the free market's private profit motive--the capitalists are.
But Carlin's politics are left of center. Beck's are very much to the right of center--close to Bill O'Reilly's. Thus, like Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck gets a pass. Those fascist types stick together.--October 27, 2007
O'Reilly Shills for Pentagon Again Echoes Pentagon Flunky's Denial that Iraq Diverts Firefighting Resources
Responding to California Lt. Governor John Garamendi's challenge to George W. Bush to send Californian National Guardsmen back from Iraq to help fight the disastrous wildfires, O'Reilly told his October 24 Factor viewers: "Well, a quick check with the Pentagon revaled this."
Video Clip: Paul McHale Asst. Defense Secretary: "I can tell you unequivocally that the ongoing war fighting activitites in Centcom have had no negative effect at all with our regard to our ability to assist sufficient forces to assist civilian authorities in fighting the wildfires."
There you have it. Run along, now. Nothing more for you here. The Pentagon has spoken. Given unequivocal assurance to boot. This from an institution that brought us Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, and Falluja.
"The Factor has learned that about 17,000 National Guard are available right now, but not needed."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Then how do you explain this May 11 San Francisco Chronicle report, as reported in the October 25 World Socialist Web Site article by Patrick Martin: "the California National Guard says equipment shortages could hinder the guard's response to a large-scale disaster. A dearth of equipment such as trucks and radios--caused in part by the war in Iraq--has state military officials worried they would be slow in providing help in the event of a major fire, earthquake or terrorist attack." [emphasis added]
Martin continues:
"This report was published only days after a tornado destroyed a west Kansas town, and Governor Kathleen Sibelius complained that so much Kansas National Guard equipment was in Iraq that the disaster response efforts were being undermined. Lt. Col. John Siepmann of the California National Guard told the Chronicle that similar issues would arise in a major disaster there. 'Our concern is a catastrophic event,' he said. 'You would see a less effective response.'
"Among the equipment shortages were diesel generators (zero instead of 39 required), GPS devices (zero instead of 1,410), and 209 vehicles of all types, including 110 humvees and 63 military trucks. All this equipment was in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and thus unavailable for use in California."
Yet O'Reilly lost no time this week spinning for Bush and his imperialist war in Iraq, lecturing his audience with total certainty that California had every resource it needed and Iraq had not diverted one dollar or piece of equipment.--October 27, 2007
Panicked and frustrated by America's turn to the left, O'Reilly answers with new book, "Kids Are Americans, Too" Translation: Your kids have to die in bloody imperialist wars for Wall Street's profits, too. It's driving O'Reilly nuts that American kids are not lining up for war with the jingoistic fervor he's been working overtime to generate.
O'Reilly Lies About Chicago Area High School Students Antiwar Protest
In his November 8 Talking Points Memo, "Freedom of Expression Comes with Responsibility," Bill O'Reilly lied about the facts surrounding the West Morton students' sit-in staged to protest the ongoing criminal occupation of Iraq. In so doing, he allied himself with the school board's attack on the students' constitutional right to free speech and protest. After plugging his book "Kids Are Americans Too" by saying how it "bluntly tells teenagers what their rights are and what they cannot do," O'Reilly continued:
"Enter some student protesters at Morton West High School in Chicago. A few dozen decicded to protest the Iraq War in the school cafeteria. Citing the disruption, school officials asked the kids to take it outside. Some of them refused, and they were suspended."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
That's not the way it was reported in the November 9 World Socialist Web Site, which is a far more scholarly, reputable news source than The Factor. Kristina Betinis wrote:
"
"The November 1 protest began with about 60 students in the cafeteria during lunch-hour. About 30 students left the protest after being threatened by school authorities. Students said they were told they would not face suspension if they moved the protest to a room adjacent to the principal’s office. They also said they were initially told that they would have to serve a Saturday detention for participating in the sit-in.
"Once the remaining students had moved to the new location, school officials cordoned off the protest with caution tape and barricaded the area with tables, in an effort to discourage other students from joining. By the end of the school day, the protesting students were told they would be suspended."
Coming up: Spitting Out O'Reilly
COSMOS LEFT will demolish and dissect O'Reilly's defense of cold-blooded murder by Green Berets and torture by Bush's "professionals" found in Talking Points Memos "Military Justice: Two Green Berets Are Exonerated" (Oct. 1, 2007), and "Telling the Truth About Torture" (Oct. 8, 2007).
"Military Justice: Two Green Berets Are Exonorated": O'Reilly: "As we reported last week, Captain David Staffel and Master Sergeant Troy Anderson shot and killed a wanted terrorist in Afghanistan and were hammered for doing so. Even though two separate investigations in the Afghan theatre clearly stated the Green Berets effectively did their duty, General Francis Kearney took the investigation back to Fort Bragg, where the men had to endure embarrassing allegations.
"Now the men have been found not guilty of anything by the commander of the special forces. So the case is closed. General Kearney, however, should publicly apologize to the men."
We'll also examine O'Reilly's criteria for acceptable dissent found in his rants on Bruce Springsteen, habeas corpus, Sean Penn and Hugo Chavez--and the corrupt, demagogic reporting that accompany those irrational ravings ("Legitimate Dissent vs. Anti-American Dishonesty," Oct. 3, 2007).
We'll take on O'Reilly's ugly xenophobic hysteria against Mexican immigrants and willed ignorance on the workings of the international capitalist system in "The 'Open Border' People Strike Back" (Oct. 4, 2007) and "The Trouble with Mexico" (Oct. 9, 2007).
"Is the Press Killing American Military People?" [Talking Points Memo, 10/15/07]
O'Reilly's spin on Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez's recent speech to military journalists is classic fascist demagogy, of a piece with the Nazis' propaganda in the 1930s that blamed Germany's World War I defeat on the bankrupt liberal elites back home who "stabbed our boys in the back."
O'Reilly begins by showing a video clip of Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez's speech to Washington journalists:
"What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war. For some of you just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own preconceived notions, biases, or agendas."
O'Reilly: "Wow. Now the general, I believe, is talking about liberal media outlets like The New York Times and NBC News, both of which trumpeted the general's criticism of the Bush war plan, but ignored his media attack."
A far more incisive analysis of Sanchez's words came from theWorld Socialist Web Site's Barry Grey in his October 15, 2007 article, "An antidemocratic tirade: Former US commander blames 'partisan' poilitics and 'agenda-driven' media for Iraq debacle":
"Media reports on the speech focused on Sanchez’s criticisms of the administration’s war tactics, while virtually ignoring its broader, authoritarian thrust....
"Sanchez was clearly speaking for a broader constituency. The failure of the US military adventure in Iraq has fuelled recriminations and conflicts within the military and between it and civilian authorities. Among sections of the officer corps, the commitment to the Constitution and its principle of the subordination of the military to civilian authority is growing increasingly tenuous.
"In his speech, Sanchez directed his fire against the Bush administration, the State Department, the National Security Council, Congress, the Democratic and Republican parties and the media, while sparing the Pentagon and brushing over the role of military commanders. [emphasis added]
"On Sunday, two days after Sanchez’s speech, the New York Times published an article based on interviews with officers attending the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas which made clear that the possibility of a military coup in the US is openly being discussed. The article described conflicting views among the mid-career officers at the school as to where the chief blame lies for the military disaster in Iraq, with the civilian authorities or the military commanders who refused to defy them....
"Sanchez concluded his remarks with an avowal of his evangelical Christian beliefs, saying, 'Praise be to the Lord, my rock who trains my fingers for battle and my hands for war.' This is significant, since an important ideological component of the increasingly politicized US military is the promotion of right-wing fundamentalist dogmas within its ranks."
Yes, while O'Reilly whines baselessly that Christians are a persecuted minority [the US imperialist empire is declining as Rome once did, but it's not feeding Christians to the lions], he says little if anything about the ongoing dismantling of church/state separation manifested in the fusion of right wing fundamentalism with the US imperialist military establishment.
While O'Reilly Wages Holy War Against Gay Nuns Receiving Communion,
He "doesn't even care, to tell you the truth" about Coulter's anti-Semitic remarks
That's because birds of a fascist feather flock together. O'Reilly has no problem with Coulter's "[we] Christians just want Jews to be perfected" because he's as much of an anti-Semite as Coulter.
O'Reilly and Coulter are bosom buddies. Ideological soul mates. Co-"thinkers". Political reactionaries and religious fanatics who are joined at the hip to serve the US capitalist class by insidiously mixing flag-waving jingoistic patriotism, militarism, and right wing Christian fundamentalism to hoodwink and disorient working people so we remain under the spell of the "free" market and private profit, willing to die in brutal colonial wars so O'Reilly, Coulter, and the rest of the capitalist swine can remain rich.--October 18, 2007
Maybe it's time to call it a day, O'Reilly. Pack it in. Go home. You've been humiliated before the entire world by a close political ally, the normally reliable Bernard Goldberg. COSMOS LEFT has no love for Goldberg; he is every bit as much an enemy of working people as Bill O'Reilly. But next to O'Reilly, Goldberg has a scintilla of principle and integrity. After hearing O'Reilly blast CNN's Wolf Blitzer for "sitting there like a mu mmy" and not challenging former President Jimmy Carter's statement that the US had been violating international norms of torture honored for 60 years, even Goldberg couldn't help but notice O'Reilly's hypocritical double standard revealed in the Coulter interview.
GOLDBERG: Bill, I say this as a friend and as a supporter of the show. And I watch it all the time and all that. But you got very passionate about the Catholic sacrilege in San Francisco, but when Ann Coulter made her comment about how everybody should be a Christian, including all the Jews, because they should be more perfected, man, I was waiting for you two to French kiss. I mean, it was -- you weren't the old Bill O'Reilly.
O'REILLY: "I ignored the controversy."
Oh Really O'Reilly? Why? You didn't ignore the controversy of Jimmy Carter's forthright comment that torture is very much a part of US policy.
O'REILLY: "Ann Coulter is a commentator. She says some crazy thing that I think is unjustifiable. But why do I want to debate it with her? She doesn't have any credibility in the area."
HALL: "But Bill, you said everybody should be challenged. I think Bernie's got a good point."
O'REILLY: "Well, I did challenge her in the interview, Jane. It wasn't a kissypoo interview. I mean -- but I wanted to --"
GOLDBERG: "Yes, it was."
O'REILLY: "I didn't want to get into that because I don't give it any credibility, Bernie." [Then why have her on the show, moron?]
HALL: "Yeah, but I think Bernie's got a point. There's certain people -- Ann Coulter is on the Today show. She is loved by the mainstream media. She says anti-Semitic things. [She says it on O'Reilly's show! He says nothing because he agrees with her!] She says anti-gay things. And no one seems to ever call her on it."
O'REILLY: "All right. Maybe I should have said it was anti-Semitic. I don't think it was anti-Semitic. I think it was just dumb."
This is torture, asshole Bush.
Bush, O'Reilly: Who? Us? Torture? Where?
At his October 5 press conference held the day after the NY Times disclosed the existence of two 2005 secret Justice Department memos that specifically authorized headslapping detainees, freezing detainees and waterboarding, George W. Bush declared: "This government does not torture people."
Bush is playing the same game with the American people as his chief media propagandist, Bill O'Reilly: use a euphemism for torture--like "enhanced interrogation techniques"--so you can deny you're torturing. Just like Richard Nixon wasn't bombing Cambodia illegally in 1970--he was just ordering "protective reaction strikes," you see. But people were dying--as people are being tortured now. The evidence is in the photographs. And while a picture is worth a thousand words, there is no shortage of printed materials proving that the horrors inflicted in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA torture chambers around the world are directly linked to the White House.
In fact, Bush's legal henchmen (Yoo, Gonzalez, Addington) specifically crafted memos designed to immunize Bush from prosecution for torture because they knew they were practicing torture.
We will deal with O'Reilly's October 11 Talking Points Memo entitled, "The Truth Police and Jimmy Carter," in which he, among other things, insults the former president by implying he is senile. It's all part of his campaign to shape the character and moral fiber of America's youth.
This is torture, asshole O'Reilly.
Sleep deprivation is torture. Being left naked in cramped, freezing cells is torture. Beatings are torture.
This is torture, assholes O'Reilly and Bush
Terrorizing detainees with vicious dogs is torture. Simulated drowning, the hideous practice known as "waterboarding," is torture.
Mansur Gidfar defends his school and classmates against O'Reilly's insults, then shows O'Reilly how to be a true journalist by getting his facts straight.
The group that led the walkout on the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance is called Student Worker.
That's Student Worker. As in France, May 1968. Mansur is well on his way to having his own communist Web site one day. Once can pray to secular gods this gives O'Reilly a heart attack.
Jackson Schools O'Reilly on Jena
The combination of the furor sparked by Bill O'Reilly's racist remarks and the militant mass movement emerging in Louisiana to protest the racist prosecution of the Jena 6 forced O'Reilly to 1) finally recognize the importance of Jena as a news issue and 2) finally have Rev. Jesse Jackson on The Factor. The conversation soon revealed that either O'Reilly truly didn't know the facts of the Jena story--which makes him a worthless journalist--or that he's a liar.
O'Reilly Conspicuously Silent on Jena 6
He's too busy trying to sort out his surprise that "there was no difference" between Harlem restaurants and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship."
Yeah, and they even eat with knives and forks.
More evidence of the rank racism reeking from this repulsive, reptilian, reactionary right winger:
"...There was not one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'MF-er, I want more iced tea'...it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense that people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."
Nope, they didn't chuck spears, and they didn't offer a screaming blonde to King Kong. Nice to see they met with O'Reilly's standards of civilized behavior.
"They're just trying to figure it out: 'Look I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it.'"
Here O'Reilly is really earning the money the ruling class pays him to spread capitalist propaganda and serve as an apologist for the white power structure that he admits he's a proud member of. It's not the system that's oppressing Black people. There's no more racism. It's all on the individual. Social oppression; the social relations permeating society; these are irrelevant. If you're not successful in America in 2007, it's your fault, the individual's fault; you're too lazy, or unskilled, or addicted, or rebellious. But don't blame the economic system that benefits Bill O'Reilly.
Reflecting on his attendance at an Anita Baker concert, O'Reilly stated: "The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedoes, and this is what white America doesn't know, particularly people who don't have a lot of interaction with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg."
The Black culture is not homogeneous. Rather, it is a reflection of the growing class differentiation and polarization within the Black community.
Sometimes O'Reilly actually makes an accurate statement, though not for the reason he believes.
"...I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves."
They are. That's why 50,000 of them from all around the country mobilized in Jena, Louisiana the other day to protest the racist prosecution of the Jena 6.
"They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture."
They are "getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons." As the World Socialist Web Site wrote: "The officially sanctioned leaders of the demonstration--Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, and others--were largely bypassed in the initial plans for demonstrations against the prosecutions...
"The issues raised in the Jena Six prosecutions cannot be resolved within the framework of the Democratic Party, which is entirely complicit in perpetuating the social conditions that underlie the resurgence of racism in the United States. The layer of black businessmen and entrepreneurs represented by figures such as Jackson is indifferent to the enormous social problems confronting workers of all races."
The same layer that rubbed elbows with Bill O'Reilly at that Anita Baker concert, no doubt.--Sept. 21, 2007
Sept. 27 Update: O'Reilly's Defense: I'm a racial healer, not a racial divider; I'm not a racist, I fight racism
His "defense" illuminates that most of his fans are racists
O'Reilly claims he was only trying to ease the fears many whites have of African Americans by pointing out the latter are no different than whites. O'Reilly was talking to his fan base. His "defense" only illuminates the fact that much of his fan base, his grandmother, many fellow Irish-Americans [a remnant of the 1863 New York City draft riots], his entire milieu are racist. He was telling his fans, "Look guys, not all Blacks are gun-toting rapper thugs. There are civilized Blacks; acceptable Blacks; conservative Blacks; rich Blacks; cultured Blacks. Why, some of my best friends are Blacks. Like Juan Williams." More on him shortly.
O'Reilly's in essence telling his racist friends, "Don't be racist. Don't hate all Blacks. They're Americans too. We need them to die for Wall Street's profits and in Wall Street's wars. Because hey, that's capitalism."
In attempting to defuse the stereotypes held by whites regarding Blacks, O'Reilly ended up reinforcing many of the more common ones. Far from healing racial divisions, O'Reilly has deepened them with his arrogant, clueless, insensitive, ignorant bigoted remarks. If he were a better man, he'd at least recognize his statements were o ffensive and apologize for them. But he's not a better man; or even a good man. O'Reilly is, as we've been
