The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his turn getting his digs in on Bill O'Reilly, but was more concerned about the type of issues our media decides to get outraged over.
Stewart Tears into O’Reilly: ‘No One’s Watching Him for the Actual Truth’:
Jon Stewart, who spent all of last week on vacation, finally dug into the Bill O’Reilly “war zone” story Tuesday night.
“Really? We’re going after O’Reilly for exaggerating being in a war zone?” Stewart asked in disbelief of Mother Jones, which has led the charge against O’Reilly’s alleged mischaracterizations about his time spent in Buenos Aires during the Falkland Islands war. “Misrepresenting the zone he is in is kind of his hook.”
“No one’s watching him for the actual truth,” Stewart said of his old friend O’Reilly.
Stewart added that we should just accept that a certain percentage of the anecdotes told by news figures like O’Reilly and Brian Williams are “bullshit” and “move on.”
I think he gave Bill-O too much of a pass considering the damage he and his propaganda network we like to call GOP-TV do on a daily basis, but I agree with him when it comes to the type of stories our corporate media decides to get outraged over:
While news outlets pored over each anchor’s alleged misrepresentations, Stewart said, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing far less scrutiny for reportedly exaggerating Iran’s nuclear capabilities to the United Nations.
“It seems to me, you know, we might all be just a little better off if the exaggerations about covering a war get less attention than the exaggerations that got us into so many of them,” he argued.
Stewart also accused the media of taxing “world outrage supplies” by focusing less on Netanyahu and more on raking Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald over the coals for telling a homeless man he was also a Special Forces veteran, a claim he had to retract.
“Shouldn’t the shocking scandal on this tape not be the awkward attempt to connect with the homeless Special Forces veterans, but the existence of homeless Special Forces veterans?” he asked.
