I have come to the conclusion that Mr. O'Reilly spends as much time complaining about other networks as he does reporting "news." It is incredibly ironic when he goes on a rant about truth and news. "What does matter is a news organization putting out falsehoods, and that happens all the time at NBC." Mr. O'Reilly's assertion that NBC puts out falsehoods is fairly outrageous given the evidence he provides to that point. Basically Mr. O'Reilly is claiming that because Scott McClellan responded to Chris Matthew's question "The people who say call Sean, call Bill, call whoever, did you do that at..." with "Certainly", that NBC is putting out falsehoods. First of all, let's be clear here. NBC asked the questions, but Mr. McClellan responded to them. If Mr. McClellan lied in his responses, that is not the fault of NBC, nor is it NBC that is putting out falsehoods. It would be Scott McClellan. What Mr. O'Reilly objects to is the fact that his name was implicated as a sounding board for the Bush Administration. The fact is that the response Scott McClellan gave was vague enough that neither Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity was officially implicated. The word "whoever" made the response ambiguous. So, it is not even true that Mr. McClellan lied to Chris Matthews unless it is false that Mr. McClellan talked to people from Fox News at all. So Mr. O'Reilly chose a very poor example to make his point.
This brings me to a potential paradox. Mr. O'Reilly claims that NBC puts out falsehoods. Mr. O'Reilly does not actually indicate any of those falsehoods (not legitimate ones, anyway). Without proper support for his statement, doesn't that make Mr. O'Reilly's claim a falsehood? And would that not also make Fox News responsible for putting out falsehoods? Of course, in this case one can't be sure whether Mr. O'Reilly is speaking the truth or not, simply because he provides no evidence and nobody is going to be able to prove otherwise. But, then, in the United States people are innocent until proven guilty. So, until Mr. O'Reilly presents some hard evidence to support his claim that NBC puts out falsehoods, it should be assumed to be false, or at least in error.
Like a pouting child, Mr. O'Reilly demands an apology from Scott McClellan. First of all, apologies are meant to be given, not taken. I don't think Scott McClellan had anything to apologize for, though he was gracious enough to apologize anyway since Mr. O'Reilly needed it so badly. But it becomes truly ludicrous in the following exchange:
MCCLELLAN: So you don't owe me an apology for calling me a liar or calling me...
O'REILLY: You were a liar. You said I received talking points and I didn't.
MCCLELLAN: No, I didn't. I was not confirming that. I'm telling you that right now, I was not...
O'REILLY: You're parsing the damn thing. Come on, be honest.
The fact is that Scott McClellan never said that Mr. O'Reilly received talking points or anything else for that matter. After reading this conversation, I truly think that Mr. O'Reilly should be apologizing to Mr. McClellan, not the other way around. But, since Mr. O'Reilly has such a huge ego, he can in no way make such an apology.How does Mr. O'Reilly close things out? The way only he can: "Now I've had enough dishonesty from the media, and I'm betting you have, too. So we are going to confront blatant deception and go after the deceivers, no matter where they are. If we don't do that, no one will. Enough is enough. The spin stops here. And now so does the deception." First of all, this sounds like a direct quote from a President Bush speech...just replace deception with terrorism and deceivers with terrorists. Secondly, considering how deceptive Mr. O'Reilly already is with his right wing propaganda, I sincerely doubt he will be going after deceivers. It makes for some darn good rhetoric, though, doesn't it?
And that's "The CounterPoints Memo."
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