Stewart and O’Reilly went at it. The LA Times quoting O’Reilly saying “It was more serious than I expected him to be.” Evidently Bill doesn’t get how smart Stewart’s comedy is and how hard it is to do his kind of satire day after day.
Through Fox’s “cyclonic, perpetual, emotion machine” the network has taken “reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao,” Stewart slammed. There are reasonable concerns, the “panic attack” portion to be broadcast on Fox Saturday night during Palin’s Tea Party performance.
The distinction in programming and how Fox zigzags in and out of serious reporting a reality lost on many who prefer the opinion shows. But that O’Reilly thinks Glenn Beck is the “every man” is truly mind blowing. Think “Lonesome Roads,” without the talent.
That FOX is, as Howard Dean once said, the “propaganda arm of the Republican Party” is lost only on the most dim. FOX is not a “news” outlet. It’s a free-for-all for the mentally challenged who couldn’t put a ten word sentence together if you gave them nine of the words. Peace
That’s a clever indictment, Imhotep, but it’s simply incorrect. It also doesn’t shed any light on the reality of the propaganda being spewed at Obama on that network. “Mentally challenged” hardly described their audience, even though the ideological bent of many of the people Fox attracts is not exactly enlightened, shall we say.
That said, a lot of independents watch it because there is not much on the other networks to ENTERTAIN them. That’s what people miss in this equation. To keep viewers glued to your channel you’ve got to have a gimmick, a hook, then keep ‘em comin’ back with fireworks. That’s Fox’s success. They’ve made their “news” entertaining, which was never the point of news when this all began, which is why Entertainment Tonight and opinion shows started popping up. You can’t make money on news these days. Ask CBS.
Hell, the Gong Show lasted for 9 seasons so there’s no accounting for taste. People also believe that right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institute are performing a public service. You and I both know that they simply tow, and then spew, the Republican Party line. Even the Rand Corporation, of late, seems to have devolved into a right wing clearinghouse. Once upon a time the Washington Post was a counterweight to the Washington Times, but even the Post has succumbed to this right wing scrum of FOX-like foolishness. But alas, that’s what happens when corporate money and what is defined as free speech is so badly mangled and mixed together by the likes of the Supreme Court. Peace
While it is perfectly obvious that Glen Beck is an operator who probably only believes a tenth of what he says he still appears to be emotionally troubled and pretty ignorant of history. One can only hope he will burn himself out sooner rather than later.Talk about a smuck.
Iv’e been reading than MSNBC’s answer to him KO is sliding into the dumpster, ratingswize. I guess there is not that large of an audience who love misogny on a regular basis. I wish they would bring back Phil Donahue.
I know this may be off topic but it looks like Obama old senate seat will go to a Republican…My cousin who lives in Illinois says many folks around her area dislike Alexi Giannoulias, the guy that won in the Dem primary. I think Dems have not learned their lessons from New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts. Why is the world would Dems pick another loser? And there Dem candidates in other states do not look great either… It looks like another repeat of 1994 U.S. midterm elections under Bill Clinton…creepy
Back on topic…I like Bill O’Reilly he seems to be a fair minded guy. Though he can at times lean extremely right with his views I still prefer him over Glen Beck.
I watch Glenn Beck regularly; I really think liberals should watch to see what he’s thinking, and saying. He’s speaking to a lot of people every day, just check the ratings. Dismissing his power in the marketplace of ideas is just stupid.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War….
Think about it.
Rahm Emanuel tells us that the “Left are f***ing retards.” If Rahm thinks that it might explain why the WH sounds, and acts, so much like the Republicans do so much of the time. Peace
O’Reilly is much more fair and balanced than Olbermann, Matthews, and Maddow combined! It’s also why O’Reilly is up 55% over the last year why Olbermann is down 44%!
More power to you Noogan~ I just can’t do it. In the same way I don’t watch horror movies because I just don’t want some images in my head. You can be our spy and report back to us.
I can’t argue with you JoeCHI because I don’t watch O’Reilly enough to make the comparison. I did really appreciate his fairness to Hillary during the primary when everyone on MSNBC was trashing her.
Matthews is his own brand of crazy,Olbermann must have been a huge dork in HS as he appears to be still trying to work it out but maddow is the biggest disappointment. She had such potential but she would rather make fun of those she deems “not in her class” then offer reasonable analysis.You see glimmers of it once in a while and then she starts clowning again I think they have all hurt the cause much more than they have helped it. Greed and self interest appear to be in full gear.
Lake Lady says:
04 February 2010 at 12:06 pm
Frankly, I find them all to be cartoons. Look, any of them will give the true believer what they want to hear, none of them are particularly fair or balanced, or add anything of particular value to body politic.
Fox indeed has a lot of bells and whistles and shiny objects, and the distinction between hard news and commentary grows wider and wider each year. It frightens me to think that Independents prefer eye-glazing spectacle over hard news, but that would certainly explain why many of these self-proclaimed Independents are so easily duped by tea-baggers, Sarah palin, and Glenn Beck.
It appears that the lessons of the past 8 years have not been learned.
But I’m sure somehow it’s all the fault of the President…
Lake Lady…I think MSNBC needs a complete remake at their News Station…CNN needs to be revamped as well. I use to enjoy watching CNN while working out at the gym. Now a days I don’t bother to turn it on at the gym. I can’t stand Wolf blitzer and most of their other on air TV personalities. At one time, CNN was the number 1 cable news station…to look at them in their sorry state today it’s hard to believe.
Right now, Fox News is riding high in the cable news business…Because they have no competition. Though I doubt they will stay on top for too long.A innovative upstart News company will most likely replace Fox News one day.
I personally hold Mr. O’Reilly responsible for the death of Dr. Tiller with his hateful and over the top rhetoric, to call him “fair and balance” is an insult to the two words. It might be elitist but I count myself lucky not to be among that particular demographic. CNN sells news and not opinion and frankly has much better coverage of international news and issues than both MSNBC and FOX. Who’s in airports and hotels? (crickets) Hint it’s not MSNBC or FOX.
CNN has also finally made the move to 100% news coverage over opinion, the line seemingly coming after Dobbs departed. Crowley and crew offering straight up news, nothing else, which is why their ratings suck, but they can at least be proud of their coverage.
Glenn Beck is … “Lonesome Roads,” without the talent. T.M.
Do not underestimate Glenn Beck. As Sun Tzu pointed out you must know yourself and your enemy to be successful in any conflict. The man has a real talent, it is not a particularly beneficial talent if you are concerned about the general welfare of the Republic, but it is a talent none the less. The man has an innate ability to display and capture others emotions. He is a direct appeal to the lizard brain, an appeal to anger, loss, frustration, bitterness, and bigotry. It is an appeal to inchoate rage over loss of unearned privilege. It is a not so subtle argument that “those people” “know their place.” The coding about “real Americans” is not all that indirect after all. Most importantly it is an appeal to the authoritarian mindset.
Deconstruct the idea of 9/12 and it is an appeal to raw fear, an appeal to the suppression of individual to some supposed greater good. It is a fundamentally anti-democratic notion. It works because there is a subset of the nation that wants to hear this. They want their fears confirmed, they want facile explanations that make them the feel good, that validate their exclusionary ideology. They want a return to an America where they are top dogs again, where the others “know their place.”
TM as a radio gal, or at least a woman who dreams of getting back on the broadcast ether, you know where this man comes from. He is still the same old morning Zoo radio performer he has always been; he just moved his shtick to TV and to politics. This kind of raw, emotional programming is very successful. It is a rather perverse form of performance art, but it does take real talent to pull it off. Just because Beck is a shallow, egomaniacal, fraud does not make him any less dangerous. His “talent” may be utterly evil but it is very real; we underestimate it at our peril.
If I may interject some things here …
Taylor, you nearly nailed the entire thing above (ratings).
One of the things I grew up with was the difference between an ‘entertainer’ and a ‘politician’. People voted politically because they felt it was their ‘duty’. And believe it or not there was a rule in society (normally followed) that there were two things one NEVER brought up in conversations – sex and politics.
Over the decades politics and ‘entertainers’ began to merge.
“Respect” for the president? – died with Nixon.
Today? I see very little difference between American Idol and our political elections (the only one being that in ‘Idol’, you can vote more than once).
I believe Scott Brown was elected because he was more ‘attractive’, more ‘entertaining’, and more ‘likable’. I believe those concepts certainly didn’t hurt Obama’s election as well.
“Issues”? Those are totally dependent on who people are listening to these days. As someone who watches both sides (people who ‘only watch FOX’ are just wrong if they think of themselves as ‘fair’ or especially ‘balanced’) it is absolutely *amazing* how north & south the ‘take’ is on any given subject. And the soap opera cat’s claws are getting ridiculous. For example: the Right was screaming about Obama not getting info from the Christmas bomber. Now they’re screaming because he IS talking – and Obama is telling people about it. MSNBC needs to re-do their stuff alright.
And they need to rename it “Days of Our Lives”.
It’s getting ridiculous.
One last thought ?
FOX ‘News’ gets such *huge* ratings ? __
_ because liberals have a life.
Sorry.
Oh, I forgot to mention _
The day I watched politics begin its merge with the ‘entertainment world’ ? _
was the day Nixon sat across from John F. Kennedy debating on television – without any makeup (JFK looked *gorgeous*). The election was so close, that little thing may have decided it.