On his show this Wednesday night, Bill O'Reilly once again showed just how hypocritical Fox News is with this bit where he was complaining about MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell taking Mitt Romney out of context and carrying on about how terrible it was that nothing could be done about cable news organizations showing their biases. Then he turns right around and does the same thing himself to Melissa Harris-Perry.
O'Reilly brought in Fox Democrat Lanny Davis, who calls himself a liberal and a progressive when he's neither, who has teamed up with former RNC chair Michael Steele in forming some new lobbying/media/consulting shop, Purple Nation Solutions, and who have apparently already achieved half of their goal, which is to get as much air time as possible and spout more Villager conventional wisdom, fake centrist, can't we all get along, inside the Beltway clap trap about "both sides" being equally at fault for the gridlock in Washington and to give the Republican Party cover for losing its damned mind and being taken over by the Grover Norquist, Libertarian, birther, Evangelical, teabagger, extremist wings of the party, which now controls all of them and their agenda.
O'Reilly started out the segment complaining about MSNBC taking Mitt Romney out of context on Andrea Mitchell's show which we posted as well. As I noted in an update to the post, Romney was taken out of context by Mitchell and her staff, but I don't think the editing necessarily did him any great favors, since the part that was left out didn't make him look much better than them trying to paint him as out-of-touch for his comments. Lanny Davis took up for Mitchell, saying he didn't think she realized the clip was edited and I actually have to agree with him. I've got issues with Mrs. Greenspan and her reporting, but making a habit out of showing highly edited videos on a regular basis is not one of them. In all of the time I've been monitoring media for this site and her show, I have never seen another incident where they did something like Mitchell did this week. We made the mistake of trusting her staff with the video used in the post and I expect she did as well. I can't say the same, however, for Fox. They do this sort of thing day in and day out.
Just to prove our point, that's exactly what Bill O'Reilly did immediately after he got done complaining to fake liberal Lanny Davis about Mitchell, then moved on to taking MSNBC weekend host, Melissa Harris-Perry out of context when he showed part of her speech at Campaign for America's Future's conference this week.
Media Matters has more on that: O'Reilly Tries To Grasp Complex Argument From Melissa Harris-Perry, Fails:
Every year, the progressive group Campaign for America's Future hosts a conference called Take Back the American Dream. At this year's event, held this week in Washington, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry gave a speech about the "choices that we, as ordinary citizens and Americans, made" over the past decade. One part of the speech dealt with the effects of the September 11 attacks on policymaking and how fear motivated many of the actions that the government took.
On his June 20 Fox News show, Bill O'Reilly attacked Harris-Perry over this section of the speech, claiming she said that "we, the United States, are racists because we defended ourselves against radical Islam after 9/11."
It is a huge stretch to read that into what she said.
Just go read the rest since I don't want to just re-post it here. Bottom line is O'Reilly left out the next portion of her speech which would have put it in context for his viewers. Apparently, he was too busy complaining about Andrea Mitchell and her staff doing the same thing to notice, or he's a huge flaming hypocrite. We report, you decide.
And if Bill-O and the rest of our media wants to bring someone on who pretends he's a liberal or anyone that most rank and file members of the Democratic Party want representing them, he's got a lot of better choices out there than Lanny Davis who Rachel Maddow slammed here: American Politicos Sell Clout to Scuzzy Dictators and who as she noted The New York Times reported on here: Lobbyist’s Client List Puts Him on the Defensive:
After decades of work for some of this country’s most powerful lobbying firms, Lanny J. Davis, the lawyer who once helped defend President Bill Clinton from impeachment, is suddenly scrambling to defend himself.
Since leaving the White House, Mr. Davis has built a client list that now includes coup supporters in Honduras, a dictator in Equatorial Guinea, for-profit colleges accused of exploiting students, and a company that dominates the manufacture of additives for infant formula. This month, he agreed to represent the Ivory Coast strongman whose claims to that country’s presidency have been condemned by the international community and may even set off a civil war.
Mr. Davis withdrew from his $100,000-a-month contract with the Ivory Coast on Wednesday night, saying that the embattled government refused to accept his suggestion to talk to President Obama. Still, his role in West Africa has stoked growing criticism that Mr. Davis has become a kind of front man for the dark side, willing to take on some of the world’s least noble companies and causes.
Many lobbying firms have clients with checkered records. Indeed, those are the people who need help the most in Washington. But many activists — and even some government officials — said the list of clients in Mr. Davis’s firm stood out.
“You look at who he represents, and the list is just almost unseemly, tawdry,” said Meredith McGehee, a lobbyist for California WIC Association, which represents agencies that serve poor women with infant children, and who faced off against Mr. Davis this year in the fight over baby formula, which his client won. “It is an illustration of what most of the American people think of as wrong with Washington.”
Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the media can leave this sleazebag off of the list of "liberals" or "progressives" or anyone else that's supposed to speak for the left, thank you. He's an opportunist of the highest order looking to line his pockets and he does not speak for me or the majority of the party. That won't stop the media from constantly putting him on the air as though he does now that he's teamed up with Steele, who I'd also happily go without seeing another single interview with him for as long as I live. Steele has just as much now to add to any political discussion as he did as an empty suit for the RNC.
