O'Reilly compares "anger" motivating Tea Party movement to sentiment during Vietnam War era
February 09, 2010 8:33 pm ET
From the February 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
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The Tea Party Movement is about nothing but Hate.
The "Tea Klux Klan" as Keith Olbermann so aptly called them.
Hate Mongers Anonymous is closer to the truth as i cough up flem.
Speak truth to power.
Mr. News
So, the neo-cons don't want to pay down the debt? Let them be labeled accordingly.
Bill O is a piece of trash and he is doing his best to marginalize the job the President has been doing.
All of a sudden the Republicans HATE spending. I still haven't heard of the no-cost plan of getting this country back on track. Oh, I forgot - tax cuts.
I don't see it.
Think about it.
The current Tea Parties revolve around something that doesn't directly affect ANYONE, the national debt. Do you really think they are that angry?
You don't really mean that, do you?
Because if there was any direct affect of the national debt on the individual we would have heard from the Tea Party People before Rick Santelli brought up the idea on Feb 19, 2009?
As a matter of fact the anger would have steadily grown over the course of the Bush administration, but it didn't. Why is that?
The whole tea party thing is difficult to analyze, as to how real it is in the first place. But call it what you like, there is fear which is an essential precursor to anger.
And you haven't answered my original question. Do you really think the current anger rivals that found during the Vietnam era?
I'm not.
...their agenda is more about their hatred for Obama and less about the national debt.
Could be; in part likely is. I would say any Dem president would likely have faced a similar thing.
Do you really think the current anger rivals that found during the Vietnam era?
Your original comment was that this O'Reilly statement made him as kooky as the others at Fox. I don't see that. Neither this particular statement, nor O'Reilly generally, is anywhere near as kooky as the others at Fox.
You still haven't answered my question.
I watch Bill O on a daily basis and I have heard the things he has had to say and I have no doubt that Bill is a loyal soilder in the Fox News army.
How much researh does it take to figure out that the Community Reinvestment Act has NOTHING to do with our current financial crisis?
What about the guy in Oklahoma who shot the kid who was trying to rob him? The video shows the kid on the ground suffering from a head shot. Then you see the guy stand over the kid and execute him. Bill O said the DA was wrong for charging this guy with murder. What? Oh, the kid was black and the guy who shot him was white.
How about when Bill O claims that he doesn't understand the Health Care bills? Do you really think it is that hard to understand what is going on? Or what about getting someone who does understand it to explain it to you?
Bill O is a piece of trash.
IMO, no analogy is perfect and neither was the one OReilly made. The country was very strong economically back then and so was the dollar (although on its way down due in large part to the Vietnam War). There wasnt that kind of fear that there is today. ..... On the other hand there is no draft today as there was then. There is a lot of economically based fear today, not so much anger as then.
And the taxes they pay pale in comparison to the price that more than three million men who served in Vietnam paid.
It's an asinine analogy and one I find extremely offensive since both Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Gingrich supported the war in Vietnam yet chose not to serve.
I initially commented to Barry Bonds because I saw his comment as over-the-top critical. I mean how then do you react when he really gets something grossly wrong? I meant no disrespect to those directly involved back then.
But to get to the substance of it, we nearly crashed ala 1930's. It's not just the devaluation of dollar. That's an acceptable price to pay to avoid deflation IMO. It's also the shakiness of the general economy right now - the vulnerability still to a crash. And I personally believe we are in for a signifigant "double dip" or worse. Hope I'm wrong.
I know you meant no disrespect and I didn't mean to imply that you did.
The disrespect comes from these two clowns who can make comparisons between a small group of people angry about imagined tax increases to the entire nation's desire to bring about the end of a fifteen year war.
My comment was he is not AS kooky. I didn't say he was entirely sane.
I dont usually go the right-wing sites but I did recently to get the vibe from the comments sections. A lot of that kind of name calling goes on. For that matter I see it on some left oriented sites also. Not my cup of tea.
Its about raw power and money for the money men. The way they go about gaining control and power (and denying Dems the same) uses racism (among other things) to divide the people against themselves and against their own best interests.
(last part if this goes through)
If these tea partiers were so concerned about national debt, why didn't they show up until AFTER Obama was elected, because our last President did run up our debt a whole lot more.
How many times do you expect MMFA to post the same nonsense from these guys?
"O'Reilly compares "anger" motivating Tea Party movement to sentiment during Vietnam War era"
-Is that a lie or him stating his opinion?
"Bill O'Reilly and the technique of saying anything you can get away with to stir up the base"
-Is that a lie or just spinning what O'Reilly says on his show?
"WATCH: Jon Stewart's entire interview from The O'Reilly Factor"
-Is that a lie or is that just posting an interview?
"O'Reilly: Stewart "destroying" US -- "if you watch his show, you almost have to smoke marijuana ... only kidding"
Opinion or lie?
I could keep on going but there's really no point. What did O'Reilly lie about today? Doesn't everybody on FNC lie all the time? Don't they misinform every time they open their mouth? There was only one post about the Beck show today and that was just him stating his opinion.
Fear of taxes does not compare to fear of Vietnam.
If I had a choice I'd pay the extra taxes.
And, by the way, it's not anger over paying taxes. That's an oversimplification of the Tea Party movement. It's primarily about the role of the government, the size of the government, and the power of the government.
These two should not make these kind of comparisons. Neither was close enough to the anger in the country in the sixties and seventies to speak truthfully about what families were fearing back then.
Did either of them serve or have family members who went? How many of O'Reilly's friends from Marist died in Vietnam?
...none of which bothered you guys when Republicans were in office, expanding all of the above far more than Obama has.
As for your assessment of the phony Tea Party movement, you are incorrect. While there may be some folks who have that opinion, according to a Republican strategist, about 50% have some sort of belief in that regard, [many don't even know what they are protesting . . . they blame Obama for TARP], the other 50% are just not happy that there's a black man in their White House. Tancredo's speech and Farah's speech at the convention pretty much bears that opinion out.
Typing on "o'reilly lies" yields 2.3 million hits. Typing in "obama lies" yields 28 million hits. Typing on "olbermann lies" yields 4.9 million hits. What's your point?
Where's the source that says 50% of Tea Party people aren't happy with a black man in the office?
Wrong try again
I see what bintx is saying about using the internet search engine you can find what you are looking for.
However it is disingenuous to say that even when giving his "opinion" that Mr. O'Reilly is somehow not misinforming his audience.
If people are lying, then they are lying. It don't matter if it is an opinion or a purposely misleading statement.
O'Reilly has more credibility than the others over there because he is less estranged from reality. That though makes him a a higher value target. His temperament leaves a lot to be desired as well. It's human nature to react emotionally to someone who is emotional himself, not to mention rather arrogant.
You're right. Popularity doesn't always prove anything. There gets to be a certain point though when the disparity between FNC's popularity and MSNBC's popularity has got to be telling you something.
I mean, really, if FNC had 10 million viewers and MSNBC had 2 viewers, wouldn't you think that meant something significant?
This is another thing that bugs me: why do people who hate liberals/progressives have no problem with using the actions (or hypothetical actions) of same for moral justification?
I have a funny feeling you're lying there. How about some sort of source?
BTW that funny feeling I had was caused by the fact that I already looked up the numbers.
Most people and most media businesses would be too embarrassed to try to come very close to that style on the left.
Also their audience does tend toward a hatred for the Democratic Party (for various reasons including the demographics of the parties). There is less of that raw animosity by the left toward the right. Fox has a natural audience which has been primed for years by right-wing radio, etc.
They are also on the basic package cable.
Month to month he averages about 3.8 million viewers a night. And my source is Neilson, the company that actually does the ratings.
We have 310 million people in America, so that means about 1% of the American people watch the O'Reilly Factor, and that is a fact.
The top news show is NBC with Brian Williams, he gets about 10 million viewers a night.
1) NBC Nightly News - 10.3 Million
2) ABC Nightly News - 8.5 Million
3) CBS Evening News - 6.7 Million
4) The O'Reilly Factor - 3.8 Million
O'Reilly is 4th, yet he claims he has the highest rated news show in the world, yes he actually said that, which is another lie.
O'Reilly also claims that nobody watches NBC news because they have a liberal bias, when it's the #1 most watched news show in America, and Brian Williams has no bias at all.
The lies are endless, some people just see what they want to see.
The biggest lie that he tells is the claim that he is a nonpartisan independent with a no spin zone. When in fact, he is a 100% right-wing Republican spin doctor.
He tells that lie every night when he opens the show with "Caution you are about to enter the no spin zone."
And here is a recent lie O'Reilly told, he syas there is no hate on the right. When you have to be deaf, dumb, and blind, to believe that.
After Ted Kennedy died almost every right-wing website on the net trashed him, and they did it to Jack Murtha too.
Just yesterday O'Reilly lied about the Bob Shrum analysis of the Sarah Palin Tea Party speech. Billy played a clip of Palin from the Fox News Sunday show, then he played a clip of Shrum doing an analysis of her speech.
O'Reilly lied about the whole thing, because Shrum was talking about her Saturday night speech, O'Reilly played a clip of her Sunday morning interview.
O'Reilly also claims that Palin is qualified to be the President, when polls show that 70% of the people do not think she is. Even 56% of Republicans do not think she is qualified, yet O'Reilly lies that she is.
The lies are endless, if you actually look for them.
2-7-10 -- O'Reilly claims the Tea Party is a mixed group of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. Then his own network showed what a lie that is, foxnews.com reported this:
In a bid to advance the tea party movement from holding rallies to holding office, the leaders of the anti-establishment groups announced a new political organization Friday that they say will "endorse, support and elect" conservatives across the country.
And this:
Prospective political candidates will be expected to support the Republican National Committee platform.
Proving that O'Reilly is a liar, and it was proven by his own network.
Then on 2-8-10 O'Reilly cited a new CBS poll and said "Most Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party."
O'REILLY: "I don't know whether this is just a hobby or whether this is developing into a serious political movement, but there's a new poll out that shows most Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party."
That is also a lie:
Here is what the actual poll said:
Nashville, Tennessee -- One-third of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party movement, but a plurality has no opinion at all, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates that 26 percent of the public has an unfavorable view of the Tea Party movement and that 4 in 10 have not heard of the movement or don't know enough to form an opinion. The poll's Friday-morning release comes as what's billed as the first national Tea Party convention begins its first full day of meetings in Nashville.
"The Tea Party movement is a blank slate to many Americans."
According to the survey, Democrats by a 2-to-1 margin have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party movement; Republicans like it by a 3-to-1 margin. Among independents, 35 percent of independents hold a positive view and 24 percent have a negative view.
The poll says one third of the people (33.3%) have a favorable view of the Tea Party. Earth to Bill O'Reilly, one third is not MOST people, it's not even 40% of the people. So you are a LIAR.
I could give you a hundred more just like that, but to make it easy just go to oreilly-sucks.com.
Now what you got to say sparky?
Ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom, war is peace.
These guys even lie about the past.
This "political anger" (as o'reilly seems to refer to it) is felt by millions upon millions of Americans, myself included, yet we are not in any way involved in this made-for-TV miniseries "tea party movement" being broadcast on Fox News Channel, least of all are we being "led" by it.
In the last two years of the Bush Cheney administration, the banks and financial services companies of America ("Wall Street") conveniently "lost" more than a trillion dollars of the American people's private capital, money that was entrusted to those private corporations, most of it uninsured.
But when they realized they were "Too Big To Fail" (which means that if they "lose" that money the "loss" will have to be covered by the U.S. Treasury, despite no FDIC or other insurance being in place, because such a gigantic trillion dollar "loss" would rock the national economy, which it of course did), that money was somehow "lost", and the good money of people's investments was negligently (and criminally I say) thrown after bad money (bad paper).
This "loss" is the reason for the current and great consumer recession that we linger under now, and for the high unemployment it is causing.
Is this the reason behind our "political anger"? Yes, that and the fact that this "loss" has not been investigated in the least by the Obama administration, let alone anyone (on "Wall Street" or in the SEC or anywhere) being held accountable or blamed or even charged.
Instead all that money was simply backfilled into the places places it was embezzled and stolen from... excuse me, into the places from which it was "lost".
President Obama is our only "hope" in recovering any of that money from the many offshore accounts it went to, and our only agent who can investigate and hold accountable those firms and fund managers that "lost" that trillion dollars (where did it go), yet he is doing nothing of the sort.
Instead, he seems glad to have given our money out of the U.S. Treasury to "Wall Street" to cover those "losses", and in so doing seems servile and pleading to those same banks and financial services companies, that they should not pay themselves such handsome bonuses at this time, and would they please be more careful in the future... instead of him (Obama) and Congress doing their jobs and regulating the Trust that "Wall Street" betrayed.
That's my "political anger" in a paragraph or two, I could write much more about the President forfeiting his Commander in Chief responsibilities to the subordinates (Gates Petraeus Mullen McChrystal etc) that Bush and Cheney left behind, or about how he retreated on health care reform under a blizzard of health care industry bribes...excuse me, "contributions".
I'm one of those persons who at present is "angry" with him and with Congressional Democrats for doing nothing at all about a theft of private capital that greatly exceeds that embezzled by the Savings and Loan and banking industry in the 80's, for which there was an investigation and there were criminal charges (however few and lame).
But I have no role at all in the made-for-TV Fox miniseries "tea party", least of all am I or anybody else I know who are similarly "political angry" or just plain disappointed, being "led" by the nonsense and noise o'reilly speaks of here.
Comparing monetary policy and worry about paying more taxes to the sacrifice made by a generation of Americans is petty and an insult to those who made that sacrifice.
Especially coming from two men who supported that war as long as it was someone else risking their life fighting the war.
And to those two jerks who keep giving you a thumbs-down on this thread, I ask --
Do you really believe that sacrificing life and limb, losing loved ones, getting PTSD, etc. is really comparable to the "diminished buying power of the dollar"??
If you do believe that, how do you live with yourself?
I was wondering about those thumbs down ratings. especially the response to my saying that if I had the choice, I'd rather pay higher taxes than having gone to Vietnam.
Are they saying that they would have preferred Vietnam?
It must be comfortable for them to sleep at night knowing that there are more than three million of us who wish we only tax problems to bring to bed with us each night.
Most of the people demonstrating against Socialism, Marxism, Communism, Fascism, the race of the president, the birthplace of the president, healthcare reform, ACORN's involvement in the election, etc. have not and will not pay any more tax under this president than they id the last president.
The majority of american's had family members or friends involved in the war or in danger of being conscripted to fight the war.
So for the last time. O'Reilly and Gingrich are using the pain, suffering and patriotism of a generation of real Americans to cover for the petty, greedy, uninformed, pawns being used by the healthcare and wealthy conservative lobbyists to fight against their own economic interests.
Clearly, Clinton and Biden don't fit the description.
For Gingrich or O'Reilly to compare the level of anger now to the "minority" who were angry and campaigned against the Vietnam War is nothing more than their attempt to justify a very vocal, well financed, small group of angry older white people and their dissatisfaction with the results of the 2008 presidential election.
Even someone whose only experience with the anti-war demonstrations was through TV would have seen that those opposed to the war crossed all ethnic, racial and class lines. By the early seventies demonstrations were led by veterans of the war and by men still serving in the military.
This nation saw 58,000 of it's sons lose their lives and 304,000 of them were wounded. 3,40,000 of them served in country, and more than 7,000,000 served in the military during the war.
Every family in America paid a price much higher than any Teabagger's imagined tax increase. And those families were the ones in the streets, school rooms, and civic meetings demanding that the war end.
For O'Reilly and Gingrich to use the sacrifice of these men and america's families and compare it to the petty, monetary complaints of a group of people who are proud to stand alongside the most vile racists this country has seen since the day of Jim Crow, is down right despicable.
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Did you think that we'd forget that one, craigmanynumbers? Did you think that that was going to slip on by? History, once again, is not on your side.
Sure, LBJ gets a lot of the blame. I won't argue that point. In fact I agree. But every president from Truman to Ford had blood on his hands.
You might also blame the rabid anti-communist movement in America in the fifties and sixties for our entanglement in SE Asia.
Many prominent Republicans made their careers by drooling and foaming at the mouth against communism. Tailgunner Joe and Tricky Dick Nixon come to mind.
Also, read the links provided by Conchobhar above. Nixon with his "secret plan" is as culpable as LBJ. Could the killing fields have been prevented if Nixon had stayed out of Cambodia? We'll never know.
Every president, each party and many different countries share the blame for hopefully, the longest war in our history.
Do you remember that Kent State took place under Nixon's rule? So did Woodstock, since you so irrelevantly chose to bring it up. Do you recall the Christmas bombings? The invasion of Cambodia?
Because of Lyndon Johnson's political cowardice, we escalated our involvement in the Viet Nam military conflict that HE had inherited from JFK. What could have been a great era in American history was completely squandered, and all because LBJ feared the political repercussions that would have most certainly been unleashed from the right. The Great Society went right down the drain as a result of the money and the national resources that were diverted into prosecuting that foolish and, ultimately, unwinnable war, and Johnson more than earned the scorn that was rightfully heaped upon him.
But that does not absolve Nixon for his continuance of what he recognized as a flawed and realistically hopeless strategy. Both of those so-called men would be burning in hell today for their cowardice if hell actually existed. Your attempts to serve as an apologist for Nixon are just plain sad.
my comment was that the left always seems to forget kennedy and johnson and spins it towards nixon like you have. good god man it was a horrible mistake. just like bush started the iraq and afganistan wars or would you like to blame obama for those just to be fair for your argument. and also you don't know me and i don't know you, don't preach to me about vietnam.
It's funny that you don't like our preaching to you but you can preach to us. Us, which includes at least two Vietnam veterans who've been responding to your history lesson.
The outsized ego necessary to make a man think he should be president seems to make them conflate the good of the country and his own political survival. Why else would a man start, or continue, a war that he knows is unwinnable? Because it's political death, in this country, to be perceived as "weak" against Communism, terrorism, or whatever the fear du jour is.