O'Rielly "less nuanced" than Father Charles Couglin

Bill O'Rielly makes me snicker uncontrollably whenever he says he's "fair and balanced" or refers to his show as "The No-Spin Zone." Fact is, he's a hack and a mouthpiece, anyone who'd ever seen him on the trash-tv show, "Hard Copy" knows that his journalistic standards are short of that tolerated by the "National Enquirer."

But it's nice to have real data to expose the lazy, lying slug for what he is, using actual data based on his actual content.

When the data show you to be "less nuanced" than Father Charles Coughlin, you are not "fair and balanced," you are in fact fairly unbalanced. Perhaps even in a clinical sense!

Content analysis of O'Reilly's rhetoric finds spin to be a 'factor': "Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.

The seven propaganda devices include:

• Name calling -- giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
• Glittering generalities -- the opposite of name calling;
• Card stacking -- the selective use of facts and half-truths;
• Bandwagon -- appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
• Plain folks -- an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are 'of the people';
• Transfer -- carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
• Testimonials -- involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.

The same techniques were used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini. In this study, O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin."

tag: Hate Speech, Hate Radio, conservative radio, Authoritarianism, integrety. Bill O'Rielly, Fair and Balanced

To Those Who Have Jumped The Shark

Have you noticed how much conservative repositioning sounds like whining? Here's Bill O'Rielly, with a Hail-Mary attempt to save his credibility, with this grouchy (and unfactual) contradiction of his guest, Marvin Kalb.

From the April 24 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

KALB: What was true was that, when the war was being set up, and in the first year or even two after the war got started, Fox and many other people associated with Fox or the Fox point of view -- let's put it that way -- said all kinds of things in support of the war, which were not being borne out by the facts that the two of us --

O'REILLY: No, I didn't. I went on facts and facts alone.

Cue Laugh Track, as once again, Media Matters pounces upon his facticious disorder and mocks him publicly. He really, really REALLY hates Media Matters!

But leave it to Kieth Olbermann to deliver the killer quote: O'Reilly's "real anger and real fear rests in the dread that someone is quoting him correctly"

Of course, this is the sum of all their fears; the fear that some "damned liberal" will grit their teeth and take audio clips for later use.

You know, it's really not that hard to be a conservative, or even to be a talk-show host. Lots of folks have even managed to do both at once. It used to be that the fellows spewing nonsense were geetting their talking points from Comintern, and some days, I swear to Goddess, they sound just like those angry old Commies ranting about the oppressed masses and the evils of Capitalism.

They weren't funny either.


Attention: Ben Ferguson, Lars Larson, Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Larry Elder, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Ken Hamblin, Anthony Harper, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved.

Image credit: Funnysign.jpg (JPEG Image, 600x399 pixels)

Beware the Jelllyfish of Doom!

Following up What if they grew teeth: I created this gallery at Zazzle so I could have an image to go with the post. I mean, face it, it needs illustration!

You're in Today's Best!

Hi rapexsa,

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Congratulations! Your product, Beware the Jellyfish of Doom!, has been selected as one of Today's Best on Zazzle! This means it will appear on the Zazzle homepage for the rest of today and it will also be added to the Todays Best Awards Showcase. Keep up the great work! Bask. Glow. The honor is yours to enjoy. -Zazzle

Well, this morning I was inspired by the schaudenfreud of it all, thinking about the excuses men willl make to explain their new "track marks" to loved ones after returning from the ER in Joberg. And I'd already been struck by it's appearance - frankly, it looks a lot like a jellyfish. So I started playing, and I got a today's best!

I don't know if you can read the tentacles, but here's what they say:

Really, darling, It's true! I was bitten by a jellyfish! Why don't you believe I was bitten by a jellyfish?

tag: zazzle, bob king, rapex, jellyfish of doom