Friday, May 11, 2007

O'Reilly doesn't like Soros

Bill O'Reilly, like many conservative pundits, likes to elevate George Soros to boogieman. They seek to make him a drug pusher, communist, power mad villain, etc. With Wesley Clark in the studio, he made another run at throwing at Soros. To his surprise much of it stuck to him. Video included.

O'Reilly admits he's character assassin to Wes Clark , quickly backtracks

After a cordial disagreement over the correctness of Army General John Batiste (who retired SO he could speak out against Bush's handling of the Iraq war) making a commercial for VoteVets.org, things got heated as Bill O'Reilly attacked Wes Clark for accepting $75 thousand (WesPAC, actually) from O'Reilly's current number one enemy and target, George Soros. Clark was magnificent as usual.With video.

Clark, who is on the Board of votevets.org, of course supports the commercial and Batiste, who was there in Iraq and tried to implement the Bush administration policies. After concluding it was not the troops but the policies which were failing, he retired and spoke out. O'Reilly believes this hurts the troops morale (gives them a little shout-out because he knows they're watching FOX News) and thinks Batiste is looking out for politics, not "the guys." He capitulates a little, saying the General is a patriot and braver than he is, but he (O'Reilly) would not have done it - makes him queazy.

Turning to Clark and pointing a finger, O'Reilly declared he had a bone to pick - about Soros making a donation to WesPAC. Clark smiled and reminded BOR he brought that up last time, and BOR asked him if he had any clue how radical left this guy is? Clark defended him as the embodiment of the American dream and began to enumerate his democratizing works in Eastern Europe, but O'Reilly interrupted to bring up Soros' conviction in France and his trading in British pounds - memes which we are hearing repeated, but never fully explained, bumpersticker smears.

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Soros is "undermining the country abroad, wants a one-world government, as radical..there isn't a person in the country more radical than him. You took 75K from the most radical individual in the United States of America!"

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Comment: Clark was so cool, and when O'Reilly started shouting on several occassions, Clark seemed to deliberately lower his voice, which brought O'Reilly back down to a low roar. He seems to think that a conglomeration of unflattering "facts" about someone compiled to paint a negative picture, to further an agenda or create a false impression, is journalism and not character assassination. Yet he thinks that MoveOn.org, for example, are assassins (all 3.2 million of us) because of, well, he didn't give any examples.

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