Over the past week, I’ve watched the feud between Daily Kos and O’Reilly with some amusement. It’s almost a symbolic representation of our political discourse these days. No matter how much the David Broders and Broder wannabees of the Beltway media want to return to some imagined era of bipartisan centrism, the truth is that we live in an era of name-calling, ad hominem, nasty political infighting, and have since time immemorial. FDR was reviled beyond measure in the newspapers, Nixon was a McCarthy tag-a-long attack artist, Spiro Agnew threw his verbal spit bombs at anyone to the left of Barry Goldwater, Reagan had an entire litany of fabricated fantasies of hate, Bush I pulled Willie Horton out of Lee Atwater’s ass, and we all remember the enduring saga of Monicagate, do we not?
So what we are witnessing with O’Reilly is nothing new. He’s merely the biggest face on a mountain of right wing hatred. Mock him? Yes. Despise him? Yes. Refute his nonsense? Every chance we get. But drop everything to attack his advertisers and defend the honor of Daily Kos? I’m not so sure that’s a valuable use of our time or efforts.
Much as we like to imagine that the liberal blogosphere is sooo powerful, the truth is that we are a minority of people in this country. We can, it’s true, create buzz for a candidate (Ned Lamont being the best example) but to think we can truly effect O’Reilly’s popularity is ludicrous. His hard-core, liberal hating audience is not going to be affected by what we do, nor are enough advertisers going to abandon him to make a difference. And even if he loses a few, there will be others to take their place. Until his core audience starts to die off (and they will, since the majority of them are over 55), there’s very little that we can do to change that in my view. When O’Reilly finally falls from grace, it won’t be because of anything the Kossacks or other liberal bloggers do. It will be because, like his hero McCarthy, he will have done the dirty deed himself. That is always how demagogues are taken down, by self inflicted wounds. Not by picking fights with their ideological enemies.
The only thing the Kos-O’Reilly contretemps creates is a distraction. Sure, it generates a lot of publicity, but that benefits O’Reilly as much (or more) as it benefits Daily Kos and the liberal blogosphere. And let’s face it. There are better things we can and should be doing right now. An organized campaign to get Pelosi and Reid to consider impeachment, for example. I’m sure you can think of a few dozen other issues that better deserve our attention than a pie fight between Markos and Billo.
So, take the poll below, please. Tell me if you think I’m right or wrong and why. Because I think defending Markos against the Falafel Boy is a tremendous waste of our time and energy. Especially now, in the throes of a Constitutional crisis with a President just itching to pull his trigger finger on Iran.
(Poll below the fold)
Sounds like a single-issue from the sanctimonious computer studies set.
Indeed.
I said pretty much exactly the same thing privately.
On a positive note, Loew’s has discontinued their sponsorship of The Factor. Other sponsors may follow.
The one key here is protecting our brand so that advertisers don’t abandon us. We’re already woefully underfunded.
i’ve said exactly the same thing publicly.
i agree w/the blogging curmudgeon at mlw, who sez the whole kerfluffle is like the trump-o’donnell feud heating up to manufacture ratings for the apprentice & the view.
as to the lowe’s discontinuation, i have yet to hear about it on any other source than the blog of the person who wrote a letter.
when i see it on the multi-millionaire media, then i know it will have made a difference.
I’ll just pop in and reproduce my comment from the frontpage diary where Thereisnospoon tried to convince MyLeftWingers that O’Reilly was after “us”:
Just substitute “Booman Tribune” for “MyLeftWing” and “Booman” for “Maryscott” and the comment works just as well here as it does there.
And yes, I find it a very interesting coincidence that Kos just happened to have this feud with O’Reilly right before YearlyKos…gosh, a more cynical person than me might believe it’s all just a stunt to whip the troops into line and raise interest in YearlyKos on one side, and in O’Reilly’s flagging ratings on the other side.
The Kos-O’Reilly pillow fight is a lower-rent version of the Donald Trump-Rosie O’Donnell feud: a cynical ploy to get themselves noticed.
Ha. Sure does.
Wow! Best one-line reply ever.
Can I take this to mean you voted for “pie?” 😉
Very good tactic to rally peeps around the orange flag and knock impeachment off of the table. Getting everyone all patriotic before their conevention so no one will be mean to puppet masters in Chicago.
O’Reilly is a self-inflated pompous shit of a bag of offal. Responding to him excessively exaggerates the influence of offal in American public life.
Actually, I think that they desreve each other.
Two sides of the same pie.
AG
Yah.
Desreve.
A good-sounding word, even if it is a typo.
James Joyce woulda liked it in this context.
They deserve each other, too.
AG
My mom was a scrappy fighter when she was alive. She fought, unlike me, with laser like focus and her eye always on her goal. Just after she died, her spirit (can’t think of a better word) visited all the family members. Each had a story. For me, I was fighting a nasty legal battle and showing the strains. She came down the hallway of my house, stood at the doorway and said quite succinctly, “stop trying to catch all the arrows”. Then she turned on her heel and floated away.
I have to say, that pretty much sums this all up.
And good advice it was. Thanks, I enjoyed the story.
I am however standing up against the kind of bullying O’Reilly likes to use against anyone he disagrees with. To paraphrase Franklin, in a much different context than I did earlier:
“We must all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.”
His attack wasn’t on dailykos itself: it was on progressives, using dailykos, the yearlykos convention, and corporate sponsorship thereof as a vehicle. It’s about painting the entire left blogosphere as extremists, and kos is just a stand-in for any number of blogs. It could just as easily be BMT.
I was happy to be part of the o’reilly counterattack. Why should corporations be dissuaded and terrorized away from dealing with the left, and why should we let them get away with demonizing us? I spend money too, and it’s just as good as any right-wing fucktard’s. if someone’s going to sponsor what they KNOW is a divisive, dishonest, hate-spewing program I have a responsibility to tell them I’m taking my business elsewhere, and to let like-minded people know.
Corporations need to know that that kind of programming brings a backlash: notice I don’t say “speech”. O’Reilly has a right to say whatever he wants, but a broadcasting license is a privilege with responsibilities.
it’s not about kos.
The issue for me is that no one could really give a shit until last week. He is just an old kook until he messes with Kossolini. Then he must be taken down! I might have more sympothy if the demo-sphere had taken up arms to defend any of the other 100s of people, causes and institutions O’Reilly has railed against over the years. But Kos doesnt care unless it effects him. Do you think Kos would have started to form a coalition of the willing if that logo had not been removed? Do you think anyone will suggest Clinton give back her Murdoch money?
O’Reilly is also not the worst or the worst. If the conern is to take down lying hate-mongers, lets start with Michael Savage. I have actually been offended when I have caught his show. Billo just makes me chuckle.
Kos is a misogynist. He has proven that time and time again. His constant atacks on women are an embarassment on the left. I couldn’t care less if he or his money-making blog gets attacked.
Like they say: Not my blog, not my problem!
There is a disconnect about O’Reilly. On the one hand he is seen as being influential and having a big following, while on the other he is seen as appealing only to an older viewership.
Now we know that advertisers prefer the 18-54 demographic. These are the people who are still in their prime spending years. So, if the stats are true, O’Reilly should not be a prime destination for advertisers.
It’s sort of like the old Yogi Berra remark: “No one goes to that restaurant anymore, its too crowded”.
Now if O’Reilly is being kept on the air because of political aims rather than economic ones then the idea of discouraging advertisers won’t affect things. There is ample evidence that Murdoch uses some of his properties to curry support for his empire from politicians. He has been running the NY Post at a loss for years because it provides him a good platform from which to launch political attacks (and support friends).
As to what should be done. The answer is everything. The blogosphere is big enough that those who want to go after O’Reilly can specialize in that, those who want to parse Gonzo’s testimony can do that and those who want to discuss global warming can do that. Let’s not try to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm. People can start on one issue and later move on to more central ones. We need all the help we can get.
O’leilly didn’t care for the Indiana University study about his frequent (mis)use of insulting language on the air and even less about a columnist’s opinion on the study.
I agree with you, Steven. The man is only a buffoon who will eventually die penniless and horribly lonely – heh.
O’Reilly is trying to make the issue about the “rudeness” of Kos rather than address acutual substantive issues raised by Kos writers. This is simply a classic deflecting manouvre.
The best answer is to not follow him down that path and intead maintain a laser focus on the substantive issues.
Except that until recently, Kos discouraged pro-impeachment diaries as “impeachment porn”…until the clamor in his “community” became so overwhelming he finally relented.
And at the height of the pillow fight, DailyKos had 5 of 14 frontpage stories devoted solely to its “feud” with O’Reilly. Kos dialed that back after receiving a good deal of richly deserved ridicule for the narcissistic focus of his “community” on itself and its Rules.
Gotta focus on the “important shit”. Once all the “trolls” (real liberals) are purged from the Big Orange and the evil O’Reilly is at last relegated to hosting a show on drivetime AM radio can the Kossacks focus on the One True Enemy: Democratic politicians who don’t have enough money to pay for ads!
the truth is that we live in an era of name-calling, ad hominem, nasty political infighting, and have since time immemorial.
This is precisely what’s got me wanting to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. This isn’t the sort of game I like, I’m not good at it, and it’s entirely the wrong way to act if we want to bring about any sort of positive change.
I agree Renee. But it is a truth that American political debate has always consisted of a large percentage of this kind of crap.
The advantage of the blogs is that they enable more people to participate and voice their own opinions, rants, facts, etc. We aren’t just stuck with the mighty poohbahs of punditry announcing what they’re own opinions as those of their readers from the rarified air of their perches inside the beltway. The downside is that we will always have a fair number of folks who believe anything goes.
Minority or not most of us possess the logic and the intelligence to counter the propaganda set. I can’t stoop to the OReilly level much anymore as it doesn’t justify the hours of soul cleansing meditation required.
The anti-Illuminati people also view this as a diversion away from the greater good, the impeachment push.
And yes I got banned for life from both sites, therefore both parties suck. Still corporate doesn’t respond until it hits their bottom line.
Does this qualify as a straw man?
I’m still getting clear on the meaning of that term.
I’m not here to defend Daily Kos, I take the good with the bad, but this is not an accurate description of what’s going on there. If it were true, who could possibly defend such madness?
Daily Kos has hardly “dropped everything” to launch a counter-attack on the Fox news disinformation machine. Yes, the counterattack has become part of the agenda, and I’m not sure this is such a bad thing, given the role that the corporate media has chosen to play in the Demise of American Democracy as we know it:
The role of the media in this takedown of representative democracy is exposed at length by Al Gore in his insightful book The Assault on Reason.
Keith Olbermann devotes a significant portion of his airtime to attacks and counter attacks on Bill O’Reilly, who probably gets more “Worst Person in the World” nominations than anyone else.
Will it be because of anything Keith Olbermann did, or is he just wasting our time?
Like I say, I’m not here to defend Daily Kos, but to me this just seem like splitting hairs to enable Kos bashing when all of the issues at stake are issues that are important to us and we should care about.
IMHO.
You make some good points. It’s a walk and chew gum argument.
But this isn’t really about Markos. It’s about Yearly Kos, which is not his baby. And it’s about the netroots more broadly.
O’Reilly is calling this community a bunch of nazis too, and he’s trying to scare the same sponsors away.
But the larger point that Steven is making is valid. The blogosphere would be better served if it focused its energies on more vital issues.
But, sometimes we don’t have the luxury of doing what we would like to be doing.
The role of corporate media monopoly in the takedown of democracy as we know it is a vital issue. In fact, IMHO, it may be the most vital issue that we have to confront at this moment. This is not about walking down the street and chewing gum at the same time, though I appreciate this clever way of trivializing my position.
O’Reilly’s attack on Daily Kos is not about the blogosphere. It’s about the progressive blogosphere. The right wing blogosphere gets conference calls with the White House.
I’m not trying to trivialize your point at all.
It really is a matter of priorities and whether multiple priorities can be carried out simultaneously.
Thanks, Booman. It seems to me that multiple priorities are being carried out simultaneously here as well as on Kaily Dos (LOL), but hopefully they all intersect in promoting our shared progressive agenda.
Agreed. But I’m hoping that this is not being used merely to generate traffic at dkos.
Well, there’s always that possibility!
However, let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Meaning it’s a good thing IMHO if people are actively holding corporations accountable for funding right wing propaganda with their advertising dollars.
And then — lest we forget — there’s always Newton’s Third Law of Motion. LOL
I like the idea of taking a stronger, more activist position against the liars in the media across the board, and not particularly because of the attack on kos, but perhaps inspired by it.
If the media and the other corporations supporting them are taking political action, I think it is time that consumers should take political action to counter that influence. Perhaps we can take them on one at a time, or a few at a time. But I do think we should take them on.
The media is holding up a false reality. It is like they are holding up a precarious fence that is made of lies, and it is keeping an ocean of change from flooding over them. The flood is the seventy percent and the sixty -two percent, and the sixty eight percent we see in the polls.
The lies of the media are holding it back. Big time.
So I think that taking action is good. And that we need to do it. And now is a good time. Not for kos, but for all of us.
O’Reilly is only interested in ratings and will do or say anything to get those ratings higher. He doesn’t really believe what he says; I’m sure that he doesn’t really care about personal beliefs; just ratings! I don’t pay any attention to his ramblings; I never watch fox news; I never even consider any of their commentators as serious sources for any thing.