Wednesday, November 30, 2005
The Daily Aneurysm: Apparently Not Smearing Bill O'Reilly Enough
Boy, am I disappointed. A couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail to Bill O'Reilly explaining why I should be on his list of media enemies. Yesterday, he revealed the list, and I'm not on it. Of course, practically no one else is, either.
I'm thinking maybe that if Bill didn't take time to explain why he picked the three lucky ducks he picked--posting only their names and nothing else--maybe he didn't have time to read my e-mail. He's a busy guy, what with being the general-in-chief defending Jesus against the people who are making war on Christmas--and with his latest gig, analyzing Bush's Iraq speech on the Today show this morning. I kid you not. Out of all the people in the world, he was NBC's chosen "expert," even though MSNBC is one of the entities on his enemies list. Today's producers are so dim that they probably don't know about the enemies list (hey, if they don't know that O'Reilly is a half-crazy ideologue and not an actual journalist . . .), so you have to let them off the hook. But what about Big Bad Bill himself? I don't imagine the contradiction is a problem for him. If his head hasn't exploded from cognitive dissonance in the last five years, it isn't going to explode now.
Recommended Reading: Great loads of it. On the subject of cognitive dissonance, The American Prospect features a quick piece by Robert Reich on the odd spectacle of conservatives dissing Darwin's theory of evolution while wholeheartedly embracing the thoroughly discredited theory of Social Darwinism that arose from it more than 100 years ago.
On the subject of Democratic Senators admitting they were wrong to vote for the Iraq war, the Prospect reminds us that they can't merely claim that they were snookered--there was plenty of evidence before the vote was taken that the case for war was a sham and the intelligence the administration was selling equaled garbage. Admitting they were wrong to vote the way they did doesn't explain why they ignored that evidence.
The inestimable Juan Cole examines the question of whether He Who Shall Not Be Named wanted to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Qatar. Cole's evidence indicates he most likely did--after all, we've already bombed Al Jazeera's bureaus in Baghdad and Kabul. (But don't tell--those were supposed to be accidents.)
Last of all, the Los Angeles Times published a revealing look at abortion in the red states yesterday, profiling a doctor who runs the clinic in Fayetteville, Arkansas. What's most striking about it are the quotes from patients--the real people dealing with unwanted pregnancy sound a lot different from the breast-beating activists (on both sides) that you see on TV.
OK, that oughta hold you for today.
Boy, am I disappointed. A couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail to Bill O'Reilly explaining why I should be on his list of media enemies. Yesterday, he revealed the list, and I'm not on it. Of course, practically no one else is, either.
I'm thinking maybe that if Bill didn't take time to explain why he picked the three lucky ducks he picked--posting only their names and nothing else--maybe he didn't have time to read my e-mail. He's a busy guy, what with being the general-in-chief defending Jesus against the people who are making war on Christmas--and with his latest gig, analyzing Bush's Iraq speech on the Today show this morning. I kid you not. Out of all the people in the world, he was NBC's chosen "expert," even though MSNBC is one of the entities on his enemies list. Today's producers are so dim that they probably don't know about the enemies list (hey, if they don't know that O'Reilly is a half-crazy ideologue and not an actual journalist . . .), so you have to let them off the hook. But what about Big Bad Bill himself? I don't imagine the contradiction is a problem for him. If his head hasn't exploded from cognitive dissonance in the last five years, it isn't going to explode now.
Recommended Reading: Great loads of it. On the subject of cognitive dissonance, The American Prospect features a quick piece by Robert Reich on the odd spectacle of conservatives dissing Darwin's theory of evolution while wholeheartedly embracing the thoroughly discredited theory of Social Darwinism that arose from it more than 100 years ago.
On the subject of Democratic Senators admitting they were wrong to vote for the Iraq war, the Prospect reminds us that they can't merely claim that they were snookered--there was plenty of evidence before the vote was taken that the case for war was a sham and the intelligence the administration was selling equaled garbage. Admitting they were wrong to vote the way they did doesn't explain why they ignored that evidence.
The inestimable Juan Cole examines the question of whether He Who Shall Not Be Named wanted to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Qatar. Cole's evidence indicates he most likely did--after all, we've already bombed Al Jazeera's bureaus in Baghdad and Kabul. (But don't tell--those were supposed to be accidents.)
Last of all, the Los Angeles Times published a revealing look at abortion in the red states yesterday, profiling a doctor who runs the clinic in Fayetteville, Arkansas. What's most striking about it are the quotes from patients--the real people dealing with unwanted pregnancy sound a lot different from the breast-beating activists (on both sides) that you see on TV.
OK, that oughta hold you for today.
