That’s Bill, under the engine…
“The media despises Donald Trump and here’s why. He has no fear. He could not care less about censoring himself and the press does not intimidate him. So because of that approach the media believe they must punish Trump for being disrespectful and not cowering before them. Plus, they don’t like his politics, generally speaking. The press is a very powerful force in America given special privilege by the Founding Fathers. And, if the press deems someone unworthy they will try to destroy that person. That’s where Donald Trump finds himself today.”
–—Bill O’Reilly on Fox’s “The Factor”
Donald Trump is a human ethics train wreck.
Now boarding is Bill O’Reilly, who followed the equally rash and misguided Rush Limbaugh into being fooled by that sneaky ol’ cognitive dissonance scale. They both detest the left-biased news media so much that the fact that it is properly pointing out Trump’s numerous flaws seems like proof of Trump’s virtue to them. After all, the same people attacking Trump attack Rush and Bill, too.
Gotcha! They fell right into the media’s trap! Standing up for Trump himself, as opposed to defending the occasional instances when he, like the proverbial blind squirrel, stumbles upon the nut of a valid point, marks any defender as an ethics dunce, and a real dunce too. This is terrific for the unethically slanted media, because then it can then discount the justified criticism from Rush and O’Reilly—and others foolish enough to board this wreck—of mainstream journalism’s outrageous bias as just typical right wing delusion.
But, boy, O’Reilly’s rant is idiotic:
1. “Despises?”The media LOVES Donald Trump! He’s great copy! He’s a clown! He’s a walking reality show! He insults Republicans! He’ll talk to anyone! He makes it easy to attack Republicans using guilt by association! They will weep when and if he leaves the race.
2. Yes, he has no fear. Not being afraid to make an ass of yourself, insult people for no reason, foul the political process and make citizens ashamed of their political system is not a virtue. “No fear” is this case means no manners, no respect, no sense of responsibility, no prudence, no dignity, no civility. Everyone should despise any adult who acts like that.
3. “He could not care less about censoring himself “ is the description of a six-year-old child. What O’Reilly calls “censoring” is otherwise known as being civil, respectful, fair and responsible. Adults learn not to shout, fart, swear, throw tantrums, hurl insults and be rude in public. Failing to learn this is nothing to be proud of, and is hardly the mark of a leader.
4. “So because of that approach the media believe they must punish Trump for being disrespectful and not cowering before them.” No, Bill. The news media who have any sense of how responsible public figures and aspiring leaders ought to behave, as well as the character any trustworthy leader must possess, are calling Trump exactly what he is: a destructive, narcissistic jerk. They aren’t punishing him; they are exposing him. (As a narcissistic jerk himself, though a smarter and less destructive one, I can see why Bill empathizes with Trump.)
5. “Plus, they don’t like his politics.” Anyone who thinks the news media would be defending someone calling John McCain an accidental war hero who deserves no more respect soldiers who were not captured and tortured, and giving out critics’ phone messages, if they agreed with his politics is deluded. The only pundits who would be that foolish are…well, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, I guess.
6. “And, if the press deems someone unworthy they will try to destroy that person.” Back to school, Bill. Your illogical argument is that if a public figure acts like a complete fool, insults everyone he can, talks like a thug, displays nothing but arrogance and contempt for basic manners, and generally befouls the political landscape like a dog with projectile diarrhea, the news media will only criticize him if he’s a conservative. Even if this is true, and it isn’t, you have the argument backwards. That some hypothetical progressive jerk would escape deserved criticism from the mainstream media only means that the media’s failing to attack him would be a breach of journalistic responsibility. It certainly doesn’t indicate that the attacks on Trump were not fair and warranted.
Ethical analysis has never been one of Bill O’Reilly’s strengths,
Ethics Alarms 
1. You give the media too much credit. They don’t see Trump as an opportunity to gain viewers; they honestly hate and despise him.
2. He who shows no signs of fear is either a hero or a fool, guess which one’s Trump.
3. Can’t say it any better.
4. An honest news media would expose Trump for the real person he is, and that should be enough to end his candidacy. The real media is taking it personally (see your previous post) and probably does hate the guy because he does not give then their due deference. Media bias is giving Trump and Co. an out, just like O’Reilly is giving the media one.
5. True, but I don’t see O’Reilly defending these assertions from Trump in the quote above. (Not saying it did not happen, but I refuse to watch a full video of him to find that gem)
6. Again true, but the media is so much more vicious against conservatives and deferential towards liberals that the words you quote – taken at face value, which would be stupid knowing O’Reilly – speak the truth.
In summary, the media’s past behavior enabled O’Reilly to make this attack and anyone raising objections to it will likely be dismissed as a partisan. When you write stuff like this I wish you had a broader audience.
“They don’t see Trump as an opportunity to gain viewers; they honestly hate and despise him.”
The “media” is a business: no more, no less. Everything it does is designed to gain viewers. It uses human beings to front for its profit. Human beings are flawed by emotion, hormones, different values and levels of intellect, causing bias to emerge on occasion — well, fairly often, in some cases, regularly. Thus, while some broadcasters (is that still a word?) do indeed “hate and despise” a particular prominent news figure, and that is the bread-and-butter of that particular company, the anthropomorphized media in general do not.
In some humans, perhaps programs, we trust. With care and reservations. In media, we do not.
“When you write stuff like this I wish you had a broader audience.”
Jack does have a broad audience. In spite of his winning smile, however, he seems to scare away commenters.
Hey! All the blogs in this one’s general class end up with about ten regular commenters, another ten periodic ones, and another ten or so who weigh in when the mood strikes. Non-substantive, non-thoughtful, non-literate comments from first timers don’t make it through moderation. There are also a clearly distinct group of one issue commenters who are only roused by their pet topic. I haven’t run off THAT many. (I would like to know where Chris Marschener is, though.)
The dog with projectile diarrhea lured me into this one. I can just picture him launching himself around like a rocket.
Good point. Need to make a distinction between the business suits and the pretty faces/voices in the frontline.
Yeah, the rank-and-file are definitely zealots. I imagine more of a working dog/handler relationship, or maybe something like that lunatic Australian who catches deadly snakes by their tail, and uses them to catch rabbits.
I respectfully disagree SamePenn, that everything the media does is designed to do is gain viewers. They definitely have an agenda to push that is independent from simply a single minded goal to gain viewers. If the sole goal was viewership, MSNBC would throw everybody off the air and start Fox II.
To be fair, they are throwing people off the air right now, in fact. Ed is gone, finally, for example.
Possibly some or even most of the media despise his politics, but they are very happy he is around — except, of course, for right-leaning blogs and on-line magazines, who are sure Trump is going to corrupt the election and make the Republicans lose.
Trump is an easy story that writes itself and gets lots of clicks. When we paint the news media as ideological to the point that we lose sight of the obvious profit motive, we fall victim to our own biases.
Trump is using the media to get himself noticed. Whatever you think of him as a person, you can’t deny that he knows how to get noticed, written, and talked about. Trump and the media feed each other in a kind of feedback loop — he’s the gift that keeps on giving them stories, and they happily suck all the air out of the Republican primary by writing predominantly about him.
The media probably love Trump, taken as a whole and notwithstanding his politics. He makes their lives easier, makes them money, and keeps them from having to write about things they’d rather not write about, like attacks on president Obama’s policies from Republican opponents who aren’t just looking to be a carnival act. It’s what I’d call a symbiotic relationship.
As Jack says, Donald Trump is a human ethics train wreck nobody can look away from. There is no way the media would not love that for all sorts of reasons. In Trump’s case, his politics are probably the only thing they don’t like about him.
uh huh.
I don t see it your way at all. O reilly is *spot on * !!!
I hope you’re kidding. For your sake.
24% of GOP voters agree with her, apparently.
Trump speaks to the assholes that comprise the Republican Base – as opposed to the larger, saner majority of GOP voters who, after rational consideration, see the GOP as the lesser of two evils.
Trump vs Clinton? Oh my sainted aunt.
Those are polls…. After the last few elections, I’m of the belief that polls are of dubious merit, at best. We’ll see how the first few states vote.
See, that’s precisely the dilemma that could keep people up at night.It’s not as if it couldn’t happen.
no I m not ! O reilly makes total sense, for your sake I m sorry that you can t see it, maybe someday those neurons will connect in your brain, we can hope !
OK, Mary: you have 24 hours to give a thourough argument to support that statement. I don’t allow “I disagree” non-substantive comments here—when they are the first ones from someone, they get moderated out. So back up your neuron zing with an exposition that doesn’t make you sound like an idiot, and since you said “total sense,” justify all of his defense of The Donald. That means that there is no legitimate reason to criticize Trump as an unqualified fool without being biased….according to you.
It’s 9:53. , 7/23. Good luck. You’ll need it.
Bill’s got a big mouth, and he’s not always totally forthcoming, but I hesitate to call him a narcissistic jerk. What I WOULD call him, and Donald as well, is a successful person whose success went to his head. He gets 20 million a year to do the same schtick night after night, and he keeps doing well in the ratings. When he does a live show people come from miles around and the place always sells out (one of these years I have to catch him at the State Theater in Easton) . It’s understandable, if not ethically right, that he might start to think he is above criticism. He IS also in love with the sound of his own voice, and perhaps in need of a setback to remind him that we are all of us human in the end.
Well, he’s got more hair than you and I combined, for starters.
I’m taking bets, now. Will Mary make it? (I’ve just reviewed her comment history. She has never offered a substantive comment about anything. The odds are about 1500 to 1. against.
O’Reilly is cheering Trump on for the same reason a lot of folks all used to cheer on NYPD Blue’s Andy Sipowicz beating up suspects while saying everything racist, sexist, or anti-gay in the book. A lot of folks agreed with what he said and would have loved nothing better than to deal a beat-down to someone who deserved a beat-down, but they couldn’t do that.
A lot of folks do agree with Trump, and he has some valid points, and he states them very openly because he doesn’t have to worry about almost anything. A lot of us, myself included, HATE the fact we have to bite our tongues to avoid offending some hypersensitive idiot. That said, an overly outspoken and unlikable person would make for a TERRIBLE president, which is why Howard “I have a Scream” Dean didn’t go very far, and neither will Trump.
It’s a good comparison: Dean is just as dislikable, arrogant and nasty as Trump.
Pugnacity is OK in a wrestling coach or a tax attorney, but it’s not OK in a president. That’s also, possibly, and we’ll find out in the coming months, Hillary’s biggest weakness, she’s just not likable.
Any media source that truly wants Hillary (or a democrat) to win the next election has this goal.
Re-create the 1992 election that put Bill Clinton in office. They don’t want Trump to have the GOP nomination because they know he’s likely to stay in the race as an independent. They want to bag him, through legitimate arguments, to push him out of the GOP nomination. But as soon as he’s out, they’ll go soft on him and become encouraging and nurturing to try to sway him back into an independent run…. thus dividing the Republican vote.
But I’ll say this: though I won’t consider Trump for the GOP nomination, if he were to win the GOP nomination and the choice was Trump or Hillary…. I’d go Trump.
Scott Walker is my current front-runner. I hope he can toe the line, avoids “misspeaking”, and can sway a great many people with his speaches and ideas.
But seriously… 16 candidates for the nomination? Shouldn’t we be able to have some national run-off elections to narrow this down a bit?
We have primaries, which will whittle it down pretty quickly. And yes, the surest route to a Hillary presidency, probably even more sure than a GOP candidate imploding (because we don’t know that will happen), is to have a semi-conservative third party candidate who will peel votes away from the GOP while attracting almost none from the Dems. However, in 1992 the GOP was incumbent, and the country was annoyed with the GOP for the sagging economy and GHWB breaking his pledge of no new taxes. A lot of fiscal conservatives and independents said “a pox on both their houses” and voted for Perot, while the liberals stayed with Clinton. I don’t think I see Trump getting the same kind of support from the same base, and right now there’s no popular wave against the GOP to ride.
Yeah. I know the primary stuff, but what ticks me off about it is that by the time my state participates, all the good candidates are gone.
Bill O’Reilly is deep into Joe Pyne territory. Like him I have no respect for anyone who would go on his show.
Bill may be somewhat less self-aware than Joe.
He’s much smarter than Joe.
I once went on his show, by the way. He was very nice to me.
You should “sticky” links for your shows and podcasts somewhere. I for one would love to check them out.
Oh, shoot. I do have respect for you, so now I may have to revise my opinion.
Joe was pretty smart, I think of him as a Lenny Bruce of the right. I dislike both of them, but they were able to provoke a lot of cultural soul searching. (At least, for those who are able to soul search.) Bill just makes me want to slap him. He doesn’t do much original thinking.
I remember that. Good job, Daddy Warbucks.
ALERT: Mary Gold is hereby banned. All of her comments in the future will be sent to the SPAM file. She is also banned with PREJUDICE. I won’t let her comment, even if she begs.
She made a general, no specific statement criticizing this post without substance. She has done this before. This time, I gave her 24 hours to back up her nastily expressed “you’re wrong, I’m right” with a substantive argument. She did not. I really don’t care when commenters I don’t know send in their opinion that they ‘disagree’ or that I’m wrong. This isn’t a poll, and there’s no “like” function here. If you say you agree, then I understand: my reasoning has been laid out. If you say you disagree, however, I expect exposition, and I don’t mean a flood of links and an appeal to authority. Make your case: if you make it fairly and civilly, that’s good enough for me.
Mary simply wasn’t smart enough to comment here, to be brutally frank.
Regarding my last comment: Here was the content of “Mary’s” e-mail in response to my banning notice:
Res ipsa loquitur.
How did she last THIS long?
First time – to little time, but here goes first qualm:
“Not being afraid to make an ass of yourself, insult people for no reason, foul the political process and make citizens ashamed of their political system is not a virtue”- really ?? are there many American citizens around today who ARE proud of their political system ? a system which twice elects a president whose whole persona is the antithesis of ethical. a political system in which the progressives have to “marxize” (yup my made up word) the world’s most effective healthcare system, without public support of one single republican.
I could go on and on, but I think I have made my point. A political system which could elect a pompous person, whose personality we all may dislike, but who gives us hope for ethical leadership, is a political system I could be very proud of. This is not a comment on Trumps ethics. This is commentary on our (I hope I speak for many) burning desire for ethical leadership, truth and appreciation for the rule of law.
First time appreciated.
1. Ethical people are not pompous, habitually insulting, rude, reckless, irresponsible, unfair, unkind, mean-spirited, destructive, and in Trump’s case, dumb as a brick. They don’t cheat on their wives; they don’t play to racists, as with Trump’s birther nonsense. I don’t even think ethical people say “I’m a really smart person.”
2. I’m proud of the system. I’m often very proud of the system. I was proud of the resolution of the 2000 election: in most countries, there would have been a revolution. I was proud that the system elected a black President less than a century and a half after slavery was abolished, and less than 50 years after Bull Connor. I’m proud of the system for rejecting the anti-democratic management of Congress under Reid and Pelosi; I’m proud that the system, unlike England, Germany and much of Europe, still protects free speech, the right to own a gun and other rights, even as these continue to be debated. The ecomium that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms is as true as ever. I’m proud we don’t have the other forms.
3. We DID elect a pompous person who gives us hope for ethical leadership, don’t you remember? That was only 7 years ago.
4. If it’s not a comment on Trump’s ethics, 1) GOOD, because he has proven that he has no significantly ethical bones in his body. and 2) then it doesn’t relate to O’Reilly defending him or attacking the press for being repulsed by him.
5. Trump IS repulsive, and is not ethical. Frankly, I think the set of ethical, repulsive people is extremely small, if it exists at all.
2nd qualm:
“No, Bill. The news media who have any sense of how responsible public figures and aspiring leaders ought to behave, as well as the character any trustworthy leader must possess, are calling Trump exactly what he is: a destructive, narcissistic jerk. They aren’t punishing him; they are exposing him.”
-is president Obama trustworthy ?? Do you know what follows everytime he says “let me be clear ?” Does the media expose the fabrications he has foisted upon us ? Do they even get a mention ??
-is the president a narcissist ?? did the media call him out when he took selfies on a stick ?? Does Bill take selfies ?? Does Donald take selfies ?? I don’t know, but its doubtful.
-I am not here to defend Trump or Bill, I am just here to say that with all the forces lined against us, we are simply yearning for the truth. When we see hints of truth, because of what we have lived through lately, we will cling to it. You basically made Bill’s point with your above quote, because they certainly are not calling obaama exactly what he is…
This is really just #22 on the Rationalizations List, “It’s not the worst thing,” with a dollop of the ad hominem fallacy. What does the media’s refusal to be properly critical of the President have to so with it properly calling Trump what he is? Obama doesn’t make Trump better, and the media’s failure to focus on Obama’s conduct doesn’t make its focus on Trump’s idiocy less legitimate, responsible or valid. Obama doesn’t belong in this discussion at all.
Considering President the Donald, one must also consider his First Lady.