O'Reilly, JetBlue and Daily Kos
Fox’s Bill O’Reilly lambasted JetBlue for supporting the Daily Kos blogger convention, calling the website a collection of radical left wing hate mongers. They then sent a reporter to ambush Dave Barger, JetBlue’s CEO and asked him if his company supports a hatemongering website that has comments such as:
1. “The world would be better off without Tony Snow”, after his cancer returned;
2. “Better luck next time”, after an assassination attempt against Cheney in Afghanistan;
3. “Evangelicals are nutcases”;
4. “The Pope is a primate”; and
5.“Some attacks on coalition forces are legitimate”, which during the ambush interview changed to “attacks on coalition forces are legitimate”, a small but very significant change.
In response, JetBlue cancelled most of their sponsorship of the event.
Given that the Daily Kos has large numbers of comments that are mostly unregulated a smattering of such comments is not much of a surprise. What is surprising is that these were the best O’Reilly’s team could come up with, especially since some of the comments are pretty justifiable.
1. Tony Snow has done a terrible job and arguably the world would be a better place without him wielding power. I’m not saying I want him dead, just not in power.
2. Cheney has done an astonishingly bad job. Without him in power, the world would be a much better place. Frankly, given the amount of horror that the man has unleashed through his hamstringing the attack on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to pursue a disastrous policy in Iraq that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of people to no benefit and great harm to America's security, not to mention his flagrant abuse of power and of the US Constitution, if Cheney died, I wouldn't be overcome with grief.
3. People who embrace superstition that is directly contradicted by scientific evidence ARE nutcases. Think about it, if I said the sea is boiling hot, because my holy book, Alice in Wonderland, said so, you'd rightly call me a nutcase. Same logic applies to evangelicals and evolution.
4. The Pope IS a primate, under both definitions of the word, he is the highest-ranking clergyman and a human. That Fox picked up on this is amazing. It’s like when I was 7 years old and someone would say, “your epidermis is showing”. Also, the only people I can think of who would find this comment offensive are people who have decided that evolution is false despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary because it contradicts a literal interpretation of the Bible.
5. It depends on your perspective. From our perspective, no, but we’re the occupiers. There are Iraqi patriots who don’t want occupiers on their land. If the US were invaded because Bush had pissed off another country’s leadership, I think there would be quite a few people who didn’t like Bush and weren’t religious nutters who would fight the occupiers.
By the way, I’ve always thought that Bill O’Reilly really is the “no spin zone” because to spin, you have to start with the truth.
1. “The world would be better off without Tony Snow”, after his cancer returned;
2. “Better luck next time”, after an assassination attempt against Cheney in Afghanistan;
3. “Evangelicals are nutcases”;
4. “The Pope is a primate”; and
5.“Some attacks on coalition forces are legitimate”, which during the ambush interview changed to “attacks on coalition forces are legitimate”, a small but very significant change.
In response, JetBlue cancelled most of their sponsorship of the event.
Given that the Daily Kos has large numbers of comments that are mostly unregulated a smattering of such comments is not much of a surprise. What is surprising is that these were the best O’Reilly’s team could come up with, especially since some of the comments are pretty justifiable.
1. Tony Snow has done a terrible job and arguably the world would be a better place without him wielding power. I’m not saying I want him dead, just not in power.
2. Cheney has done an astonishingly bad job. Without him in power, the world would be a much better place. Frankly, given the amount of horror that the man has unleashed through his hamstringing the attack on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to pursue a disastrous policy in Iraq that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of people to no benefit and great harm to America's security, not to mention his flagrant abuse of power and of the US Constitution, if Cheney died, I wouldn't be overcome with grief.
3. People who embrace superstition that is directly contradicted by scientific evidence ARE nutcases. Think about it, if I said the sea is boiling hot, because my holy book, Alice in Wonderland, said so, you'd rightly call me a nutcase. Same logic applies to evangelicals and evolution.
4. The Pope IS a primate, under both definitions of the word, he is the highest-ranking clergyman and a human. That Fox picked up on this is amazing. It’s like when I was 7 years old and someone would say, “your epidermis is showing”. Also, the only people I can think of who would find this comment offensive are people who have decided that evolution is false despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary because it contradicts a literal interpretation of the Bible.
5. It depends on your perspective. From our perspective, no, but we’re the occupiers. There are Iraqi patriots who don’t want occupiers on their land. If the US were invaded because Bush had pissed off another country’s leadership, I think there would be quite a few people who didn’t like Bush and weren’t religious nutters who would fight the occupiers.
By the way, I’ve always thought that Bill O’Reilly really is the “no spin zone” because to spin, you have to start with the truth.
Labels: afghanistan, Bush, culture, Iraq, religion, republicans
posted by The Yank Abroad at 8:26 pm
2 Comments:
My recent favourite from O'Reilly is his report on ... and this really was what he said ... "Violent Lesbian Gangs". Be very afraid good God-fearing people, they're on their way! It even got a mention in my recent Carnival of the Feminist.
Great post Dave, thoroughly enjoyable read. :)
Is there an RSS feed for your blog? I think there is because this is a blog, but unless I'm just being thick, I couldn't see a link to it on your page.
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