For some reason, Bill O'Reilly decided to respond after the Daily Show's recent piece joking about how Fox News has become liberal.
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Now here's O'Reilly's response.
1: I like how O'Reilley opens with a condescending, yet back-handed compliment about how the daily show is usually not mean-spirited and is pretty funny, thus relegating it to mere entertainment.
2: After his first clip, he says "To be fair? Ha!" I want you to listen to the way he speaks here very carefully. Do any of you remember the geeky or nerdy kid back in middle school, as he tries to feign confidence in the face of bullies or mocking. He would talk slowly, acting in a grossly confident manner, trying to mimic confident behavior that they see in other people. They might put their hands behind their back, chuckle arrogantly, or pace around shaking their heads like some kind of James Bond bad guy. I see the same behavior here.
Moreover, unlike Stewart, who makes fun of real contradiction, O'Reilly makes fun of Stewart's joke. Attacking his "to be fair" comment. It was a joke. It would have been like Stewart making an anti-Semitic comment and then attacking him for hating Jews.
3: O'Reilly finally arrives at the pay day, where he will reveal the Daily Show's gross misappropriation of the comment. He says "once again," as though Jon Stewart is constantly taking things out of context and, to my knowledge, he's almost never done that. Importantly, he never contradicts Stewart. If the comment had been something like "survey says: most protesters are simply loons, but we disagree," or something like that, it would have been a legitimate complaint.
But it wasn't. If anything, it made O'Reilly's position worse. He said most have been peaceful, but more than a thousand have been arrested. He argues he was talking about the ones who were arrested, but that doesn't matter. We've had extreme protesters at both the RNC and at the most recent protests, where, oh right, people were armed. It doesn't matter if the protesters were actually loons or not. He said he'd never call protesters loons, but called protesters loons. And then he expanded the description to include people arguing for the "destruction of the American system; for retreat in the face of terrorism." That gross exaggeration includes almost everyone who would have hated Bush enough to stand around outside with signs. So, effectively, he was calling all of the protesters loons.
I also must admit surprise that only 45% of the Daily Show audience is liberal. Why would any conservative watch it when most of the conservative figureheads in the country are constant fodder for the show? Oh, and in another study, Fox News viewers were the second-most clueless when it came to current events, where Daily Show watchers were second-best informed. To be fair, O'Reilly Factor viewers were only a few ticks behind Daily Show viewers.
4: Alright, about playing to your audience, O'Reilly lives in the world's biggest glass house.
5: "Media attacks during Holy week." Why does whether it's during Holy week matter? Regardless, again, this isn't a contradiction. She was still bitching about Christians being attacked. She said no one should be attacked, but that position was immaterial to her complaining that Christians were being singled out. If she had said "Christians are an easy target, but Muslims and Jews get the worst of it." That would have been material to Stewart's comment.
6: Stewart isn't worried? Did he just miss this episode?
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7: "Some people believe he's presenting an accurate portrayal of the country on his program, and that is frightening." Again, I reference the study above. O'Reilly has a little more room to speak, since his viewers are decently well-informed, but the network he's on has an audience comprised primarily of idiots.
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