On Tuesday night, Bill O’Reilly devoted a portion of Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” to discussing the subject of dangerous, partisan “Web logs” and answering the pressing question: “Who’s behind the smear campaigns?” The show, which featured guests David Kline of the Blog Revolt and Jed Babbin of the American Spectator, quickly digressed into an O’Reilly rant, in which he more or less smeared liberal blogs for smearing him.
“They can make stuff up,” noted O’Reilly. “Look, they make stuff about me … every day. Every day of my life. And believe me, I’ve got to have bodyguards. I’ve got to have security wherever I go. And it’s because of them. I don’t fear them; I loathe them.”
It didn’t take long for the bloggers to return the compliment, and yesterday various watchdogs set about the all-important task of smearing O’Reilly, for smearing them, for smearing him — in short, one big, inbred, self-referential smearfest.
O’Reilly directed much of his ire at the Web site Media Matters, which monitors right-wing news outlets and calls them out on what it perceives to be their shortcomings on any given day. “I think they’re the worst, although Smoking Gun is awful,” said O’Reilly. “But Media Matters, this is a George Soros-funded thing. They’ve got a lot of money. They have no ethics or scruples.”
Afterwards, various bloggers rushed to Media Matters’ defense. “Why are you such a coward, Mr. O’Reilly?” responded Crooks and Liars. “Why not have on somebody from Media Matters to air out your complaints with? You never even cited a single issue that they got wrong about you, so basically you are being a smear merchant.”
Another Day in the Empire wrote, “As usual, O’Reilly’s program presented the false right-left paradigm with ‘adult’ neocons on the right and liberal ‘children’ (O’Reilly wasted no time in characterizing them as zombies) on the left. “Of course, no mention was made — in the name of Fox’s alleged balance and fairness — of the fact that the American Spectator (all grown up and thus not a blog) made its name slandering Clinton by way of the Arkansas Project. But then Fox, as the official neocon Ministry of Disinformation, is notorious for only telling one side of the story.”
In the meantime, Media Matters itself was hard at work on O’Reilly: “Last night on his Fox News program, The ‘O’Reilly Factor,’ Bill O’Reilly devoted a segment almost exclusively to attacking the work of Media Matters for America,” noted Media Matters, in a post titled “Take Action: Urge Bill O’Reilly to stop his cowardly smear campaign.” “Not only did he accuse us of lying, but, true to his normal style, he offered no evidence to back up his claims and instead relied on sweeping generalities and vague innuendos.”
“This is not the first time O’Reilly has attacked Media Matters, an organization dedicated to exposing conservative misinformation in the media,” continued the post. “Last December, O’Reilly repeatedly and personally attacked Media Matters, its leadership, and its staff. After this smear attack, the president and CEO of Media Matters, David Brock, wrote him a letter asking for the chance to respond to these spurious attacks. We never received a response. This struck us as strange, since nearly two years ago O’Reilly said: ‘If you attack someone publicly … you have an obligation to face the person you are smearing. If you don’t, you are a coward.’ By his own words, Bill O’Reilly appears to be a coward.”
In the meantime, Think Progress took a different approach. “Yesterday morning, right-wing Powerline blogger John Hinderaker (“Hindrocket”) told readers that his partner Paul Mirengoff would be appearing on last night’s O’Reilly segment about bloggers,” noted Think Progress. “But later in the day, Paul posted an update, saying that O’Reilly had chosen someone else. Which begs the question: If O’Reilly was actually turning guests away, why did he try to smear Media Matters by claiming he had trouble booking anyone for the segment?”
Got it? Smear. Counter-smear. Ah, yes, time for the counter to the counter-smear — in this case, Powerline debunking Think Progress’ debunking O’Reilly. “Here’s a clarification for those who watched Bill O’Reilly’s excellent segment on left-wing smear-bloggers this evening,” notes Powerline. “At one point, O’Reilly stated that a number of potential guests wouldn’t do the segment with him due to fear of being harassed by leftist bloggers and their minions. And earlier today I said that I wasn’t going to appear on the show as originally planned, due to a ‘change of direction’ in the segment.
“I wasn’t one of those who turned down the appearance,” Powerline continued. “I was rejected after an amicable interview with the producer. During the interview, I stated that many left-wing blogs I’ve read are deplorable and that I would be happy to describe on the air some of the harassment (e.g., obscene phone calls) we’ve been subjected to as a result of their smear campaigns. I also stated that I don’t regard the smear blogs as particularly dangerous because they aren’t taken seriously. Based on the interview, the show decided to use someone else (David Kline, who turned out to be very informative) — a perfectly legitimate decision on its part.”
Kline, for his part, wasn’t so happy. “I have two regrets about my appearance,” he wrote yesterday on Blog Revolt. “First, not being familiar with Media Matters, I could not defend them or refute O’Reilly’s and Babbin’s accusations. And second, I wish I had managed to tell O’Reilly that, given his national forum and his audience of millions, he was just being a baby for whining about being criticized by bloggers.”
What does it all mean? Nanny, nanny, boo, boo.
–Felix Gillette
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.