In this diary, I share a few thoughts on "Papa Bear" and his run-in with DailyKos. They are organized around three observations.
- He is influential. As a fixture of the conservative media, O’Reilly has an important agenda setting function, choosing what to cover and how to cover it. He has access to not only powerful government and other officials, but also to a legion of disposable talking heads willing to say almost anything. A large and often devoted audience somehow actually listens to him.
- He is dangerous. O’Reilly is an effective propagandist. That the show is broadcast from the “no-spin zone” is only one element of his masterful spin. When his guests disagree with him (and they often do-- a favorite tactic of his is to find someone to very incompetently articulate a position he wants to oppose) he manages to win a lot of arguments. By design, he does so by bullying or manipulating his guests. If all else fails, he’ll not hesitate to cut the mic of an unruly guest. When he manages to convince through his actual argumentation, it seems incidental. He rarely deals in facts and is tough to pin down. He’ll even happily deny having said absolutely anything he’s ever said if it suits his momentary purpose. Perhaps this is why a poll found Fox News listeners displayed the least accurate factual knowledge about the War in Iraq but reported the highest confidence about their responses.
- Despite #1 and #2, he still managed to do good for Daily Kos in his bizarre tirades against the site. O’Reilly pushed too hard, distorting the site incredibly and hyperbolically making comparisons to the Nazis and KKK. In doing so, his garnered ridicule from the likes of Stephen Colbert and defense from Democratic Party heavyweights. To anyone but the very gullible, he sounded crazy. I believe what he has done will have effects opposite those he intended. Predictably, O’Reilly and similar pundits have mimicked (as they so often do) the Whitehouse in their outright rejection of a conciliatory direction in the face of disapproving public and reinvigorated Democratic party. Does it seem to others that the media hasn’t changed much since the midterm elections? Like the Whitehouse, they don’t seem willing to embrace even the more centrist elements outside their base. At least for O’Reilly, it doesn’t seem to be working. It seems to me O’Reilly has lost credibility and this website has gained it.