The Sublime And The Ridiculous

First the sublime: A brilliant Flash animation by the gubernatorial campaign of California State Treasurer Phil Angelides. I got this from, of all places, Free Republic! To the credit of the poster and most of the commenters there, they found it to be quite funny. It's very similar to those Jib Jab animations from last year's presidential election, but decidedly one-sided. Check it out if you want a good chuckle.

Now the ridiculous. During a break in the World Series game, I flipped past the Fox News Channel and saw Bill O'Reilly doing a tease for his upcoming segment about "left wing smear sites." I knew that he was referring to one of my favorite sites, Media Matters for America. O'Reilly has had a hate on for Media Matters for a while, but especially since MM named O'Reilly Misinformer of the Year for 2004. MM is a valuable resource for exposing misinformation in the media, and they usually have their facts well in order. Once in a while they miss the mark, but their record is pretty good. Now, I'll admit that MM is sometimes over the top when it comes to their reporting on O'Reilly - perhaps due to his reaction to them - but the vast majority of the time they are reporting on real misinformation on his part. (Sometimes on the right hand side of their page they include some of his more outrageous remarks that don't fall into the category of misinformation.) He just doesn't like being exposed for the fact that he sometimes spews out "information" that is either misleading or totally made up. Calling MM a "smear site" is right in line with that. I couldn't help but be sucked into seeing what he was going to say, so I tuned back into that segment, even though a crucial at-bat was going on in the ball game. What I am about to relay is based solely on my recollections of what I watched. I have no transcript available yet (I'm sure it'll be on MM tomorrow), but I'll give you the gist of it.

First, O'Reilly talked about how Media Matters and MoveOn.org are funded by "far left" billionaires, like George Soros and Peter Lewis. I really don't see that as relevant information unless you also consider that many Right Wing web sites, think tanks and publishing houses are funded by Richard Mellon Scaife and other wealthy contributors. Recall that Scaife was the benefactor of The Arkansas Project, whose sole purpose was to dig up dirt on President Clinton. Talk about smear merchants. So we can see the beginning of "independent" O'Reilly's Fair and Balanced reporting.

Then, he had two guests on, both conservative journalists. (More balance.) He proceeded to lob them leading questions for them to essentially repeat everything he had to say about the source of MM's funding, and how its objective is to smear their political opponents. He asked if there are similar "smear sites" on the conservative side, and his guests said no. They obviously have too high a regard for sites like NewsMax and hundreds of others to call them smear sites. And yes, there are lots of left wing smear sites as well, but Media Matters isn't one of them. To compare apples to apples, Media Research Center and Accuracy In Media are far closer to that description than MM. (As I've explained in earlier posts, what sets Media Matters apart from them is that MM reports on misinformation, where the other ones report "bias", which is subjective and always according to the perspective of the viewer.) O'Reilly agreed that there are no conservative smear sites, but for pseudo-fairness he added that there was some of that going on during the Clinton years. Thanks for the balance, Bill.

Finally, it is worth noting that despite his constant smearing of Media Matters (which is well documented on MM itself), he steadfastly refuses to have David Brock or another MM representative on his show to answer the charges he makes against them - presumably because he's afraid to be confronted by the truth and embarrassed in front of his audience. And yet, he finished this segment by saying that he will have someone from a conservative site on tomorrow night! Just like the motto of Faux News in Arnold's Neighborhood: We Decide. Then Report.

What a jerk. But the night isn't totally lost. I've finished venting about O'Reilly, and the ball game is still going on. I'll finally get to witness intelligent life on TV.