Glenn Greenwald waves a cranky goodbye to Jennifer Rubin.

Given Jen Rubin finally quit the WashPost -- to start a blog called "The Contrarian" with @NormEisen, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, totally known for contrarianism -- here's my absolute favorite TV clip from the Queen of Partisan Dreck:👑pic.twitter.com/s4QtI1mHnd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 13, 2025

"Asked about his high points as [NYT] executive editor, Baquet cited the [Harvey] Weinstein investigation and the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project."

"Both efforts, said Baquet in an interview, became 'bigger than newspaper stories. They changed the whole conversation'.... Another high point for Baquet was the [Bill] O’Reilly exposé.... O’Reilly was dethroned as king of cable news.... Routine political coverage in Baquet’s Times occasionally showered undue respectability upon false and authoritarian pro-Trump talking points.... A Harvard study found that coverage in the final months of the 2016 campaign was a feast of false equivalency in which Trump’s controversies received slightly less attention than Hillary Clinton’s controversies...."

Writes Erik Wemple in "Dean Baquet’s hands-on Times run is coming to a close" (WaPo).

Betrayed by dogface.

"Pretty sure there was a better photo of me," thinks the dog, wistfully. https://t.co/RhHoJanw98

— GregGutfeld (@greggutfeld) November 29, 2019

"O'Reilly: Where Pinhead Jim Acosta Went Wrong."

I just stumbled into that as I was poking around on YouTube. I'd entirely forgotten about Bill O'Reilly, and even now, reminded of him, I can't remember why he got kicked off Fox News. Just to show you how random my encounter was, the YouTube video I had on was something with 908 views, "semolina pilchard." I'd googled "semolina pilchard," because I'd seen the word "pilchard" in the context of looking up the word "mennard" in the OED. "Mennard" is an English variation on "minnow." Minnow was probably originally spelled "minnot," with the "-ot" ending like "turbot" added to a root that means small. The alternate ending "-ard" makes sense as another way to say "small fish," because the ending "-ard" is used in other fish names like "pollard" and "pilchard." I got interested in "mennard" in the first place, because it appeared on an interesting list of suggestions when I was looking for Fennario?



Have you ever gone looking for Fennario? Why were you looking? Did you find it? Or did you stumble on out of your reveries and land in one of the microsquabbles of the Trump era, like where Pinhead Jim Acosta Went Wrong?

Anyway. O'Reilly presents himself as the world's biggest expert on interviewing U.S. Presidents. He lists all the interviews he's done with them, and he talks about getting criticized for interrupting the President. "But I was never disrespectful. And I always couched my questions around facts.... I had a respect for the office. And once he [the President] answered it, I moved on to another question. Jim Acosta has no respect for the office. He hates President Trump...." Acosta didn't ask a question, but "immediately starts a debate." "He wants to debate and demean Donald Trump.... His intent isn't to seek information. If it was, he would ask 'Why do you consider it an invasion?'... but, no, he says, 'The caravan is not an invasion.'"

ADDED: Via Genius:

Semolina is a kind of wheat paste. A pilchard is small fish.

It has been speculated that “Semolina Pilchard” was Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, head of the Scotland Yard Drugs Unit. He led the arrests of several 60s rock stars, including Lennon, on drugs charges, before being investigated himself for blackmail and bribery in the ‘70s.

"Bill should be aware that not everyone is bound by a non-disclosure … I am not."

Writes Michael Panter, whose ex-girlfriend has settled a case against Bill O'Reilly. He describes phone calls he was in a position to overhear:

The first call came from a woman at Fox who I believe was the HEAD of HR (or Fox’s chief corporate counsel). She stated that she had met with O’Reilly and Bill Shine, who was the Co-President of Fox News. She said there was a sensitive matter that they wanted my ex to speak with O’Reilly about, confidentially. I don’t think anyone would decline when the head of their company made such a "request"....

[O'Reilly] explained that a new accuser was suing him for sexual harassment. This latest victim was someone my ex knew, and lived in the same complex. He got to the point immediately: give me anything you have on this woman, which we “can use against her.”

He asked if anything was known about her sex life. He asked if she used any illegal drugs. He also asked if anything was known about her financial situation and marriage. In essence, the leadership of Fox, including their “HR” head/counsel and O’Reilly, who held my ex’s career in their hands (and whom O’Reilly was also harassing) was demanding information to attack another victim.

Think about that in light of him stating that very few women ever went to HR to complain about him, and how hollow those words ring....

"Mr. O’Reilly spoke on the record to my colleagues Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt..."

"... addressing the latest reporting on a $32 million settlement he reached with a longtime network analyst."

This morning's podcast from Michael Barbaro (NYT).

Steel and Schmidt wrote the article that went up on Saturday, "O’Reilly Settled New Harassment Claim, Then Fox Renewed His Contract In January, the Fox News host was said to have agreed to a $32 million settlement with a former network analyst, the largest of his known payouts."

What's in the podcast that's not in the article?  1. The sound of Bill O'Reilly's voice pleading victimhood, 2. The gay pornography O'Reilly allegedly sent to Lis Wiehl, the Fox News legal analyst who got $32 million, was gay male pornography, 3. O'Reilly's assertion that he'd do anything to protect his children and that he has knowledge that Eric Bolling's son is dead because of the news story that drove Eric Bolling off Fox News, 4. O'Reilly frames his victimhood in terms of harm to his children, and Steel and Schmidt observe that the Harvey Weinstein story has undercut O'Reilly's ability to characterize his problem as a liberal vendetta.

Why didn't Bill Maher — on his show last night — mention Harvey Weinstein?

I just watched the whole thing, because I was interested in what he would say, and the answer is nothing. He even had Billy Crystal as his main celebrity guest, and Crystal didn't have political topics, so there was plenty of time to talk about what's wrong in the movie business. Crystal and Maher ended up talking about how they were getting old and how it seems to still be acceptable to stereotype old people. (At the end of the show, Maher nevertheless made a joke that was nothing more than a stereotype about old people.)

I did a search to try to figure out if Maher has some connection to Weinstein, and stumbled into a Page Six piece: "Sanctum, a members-only sex club in Los Angeles, with celebrity clients like Bill Maher, is donating 100 percent of the proceeds for its next event to the victims of the Las Vegas shooting." Nothing about Weinstein there (except in teasers in the side bar).

Maybe Weinstein's problems hit close to home for Maher, but he was happy going after Bill O'Reilly last April...

"Stop the hammering"/"We'll do it live."

Well, I mashed up Lawrence O'Donnell and Bill O'Reilly because it just had to be done https://t.co/9LLxb1sOIy pic.twitter.com/eSpox7gbhI

— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) September 20, 2017

The NYT profile of Rupert Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, seems to have spurred talk about starting a new conservative cable news channel.

"The piece struck fear into the minds of some Fox News’ hardcore conservatives with talk of the sons wanting to rid the company 'of the old-guard culture on which their father built his empire' and bringing 'a warmer and fuzzier workplace' that would move away from an 'anti-politically correct environment,'" Mediaite reports.

Could the new channel include stars like the ousted Bill O’Reilly, who didn’t waste much time hitting the podcast waves after he was fired amid a sexual harassment scandal? Could Tomi Lahren, the conservative mega star, who was recently sidelined at The Blaze also take on a prominent role?...

“I just don’t see Fox News and Sean [Hannity] aving a long relationship. If Sean becomes available, you have 100 percent turnover in primetime and a huge opportunity,” a television executive, who didn’t want to be identified, but is involved in some of the talks, told Mediaite.

“I’m working on it (the new conservative channel) hot and heavy,” the source said. “It’s live, it’s real.” The new channel could come to fruition within the next 10 to 12 months, the executive said.

Would you like to see this new cable channel happen?

Yes, because I want something more staunchly conservative than squishy Fox News.

Yes, because I like seeing things that hurt the loathsome Fox News.

No, because I support Fox News and it's better to have sole possession of the conservative niche.

No, because Fox News is tamed and I don't want an aggressive upstart conservative channel.

I don't care. I wouldn't watch it, but if there's a market for it, let it provide whatever option people feel they want.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Can Bill O'Reilly succeed as a podcaster?

Here, you can listen to his first episode. Key word: Listen. How much of Bill O'Reilly's performance came though the face and the hand gestures? And it wasn't just him, it was all the glitter and noise surrounding him — the crazy moving shapes and words and flashing lights that the opening sequence of "The Colbert Report" had such hilarious fun with.

In the podcast, all we have is the voice. The banging, bonging Fox News music is stripped away. It's just one man's voice, all alone. And it's a TV-trained voice. Whatever it is that works on television, O'Reilly had it. His TV show was phenomenally successful, and his voice was important, but there were many other elements in play as we listened to that voice.

Now, you are invited to take O'Reilly's voice straight — just the talking. I found it fascinating to experience O'Reilly as just a voice. It makes you wonder where the magic was, but you can easily tell that it was not in the voice alone. The voice is familiar but you notice how different it sounds from a professional radio voice. The pronunciation isn't crisp. There's a downbeat quality. O'Reilly may have special reason to be sad right now, but a depressive voice doesn't draw you in and energize you.

Naturally, I compare him to Rush Limbaugh, who developed his style on the radio and figured out what works when you are only a voice. There's so much energy and forward drive in Rush's monologues. You get the feeling that it's fun and funny and you're drawn in and propelled along. It's very different. It's radio. (And that's all podcasting is: Radio.) And Rush doesn't rely only on his fabulous radio voice. Exciting music begins each segment, and he has a line-up of well-chosen and edited audio clips to play to change the pace and give him something to bounce off of.

Has O'Reilly even thought about what it takes to be a radio commentator? Well, the answer must be yes, because he did have a radio spin-off of his TV show for a little while. He was on a thing called "The Radio Factor" from 2002 to 2008. I don't think it did very well, and that was with the assistance of Fox News.

"Fire Spicer and hire O'Reilly. It would be the most fun ever."

Surfed wrote in the comments to the post about the Trump interview transcript.

Meade wrote:

I said that very thing just a few days ago. So great minds think alike. A least I've heard they do. I don't know. Maybe great minds don't think alike. But I've heard it. From great scholars. The greatest. So I'm pleased either way.

I can vouch for Meade. He really did say that. About Spicer and O'Reilly. Not about great minds thinking alike. I don't think they do. See?

By the way, recently Trump said: "I’m not firing Sean Spicer. That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in."

Trump even likened Spicer’s daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers....

During an intimate lunch recently with a key outside ally in a small West Wing dining room, for instance, Trump repeatedly paused the conversation to make the group watch a particularly combative Spicer briefing....

ADDED: Also in the comments on that other post and before Surfed made his proposal, EDH wrote:

Here's what I propose: Trump hires Bill O'Reilly. They set up a fake "old school" cathode ray tube TV cabinet in the Oval Office. Bill O'Reilly then does The O'Reilly Factor show live in person from inside the hollowed-out TV cabinet while Trump watches the program.

"Did what Bill supposedly did really amount to a firing offense or were his accusers just looking for money or fame, as O'Reilly himself has implied?"

"Or was it just a political hatchet job by the seemingly endless legions who spend all their waking hours and seemingly most of their sleeping ones doing their best to oppose, discredit, and destroy all things Trump?"

Asks Roger L. Simon.

"Bill O’Reilly has been forced out of his position as a prime-time host on Fox News..."

"... the company said on Wednesday, after the disclosure of multiple settlements involving sexual harassment allegations against him. His ouster brings an abrupt and embarrassing end to his two-decade reign as one of the most popular and influential commentators in television," the NYT reports.

ADDED: The NYT takes — and probably deserves — credit:

Mr. O’Reilly’s departure comes two and a half weeks after an investigation by The New York Times revealed how Fox News and 21st Century Fox had repeatedly stood by Mr. O’Reilly even as sexual harassment allegations piled up against him. The Times found that the company and Mr. O’Reilly reached settlements with five women who had complained about sexual harassment or other inappropriate behavior by him. The agreements totaled about $13 million.

Donald Trump is "fine" with the "low road" if that's the road Hillary wants to take — "I can handle the low road if I have to do it."

I noticed this little dialogue on Bill O'Reilly's show last night:

BILL O'REILLY (HOST): Now, tone, tone. If history is any barometer, the Clinton campaign will go after you through surrogates. MoveOn, these sleazy left-wing websites are going to tear you up. Are you going to respond to that if Hillary Clinton takes the high road and doesn't do any of that?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I'm going to be able to figure it out. We had 17 people just now and I figured that out and I will be able to figure it out with Hillary. It depends on where she is coming from. If she wants to go the low road, I'm fine with that. And if she wants to go the high road, which probably I would prefer, I would be fine with that.

O'REILLY: But wait. You're fine with the low road? Most people don't want to go on the low road?

TRUMP: No, I can handle the low road if I have to do it. I mean, we've had some low roads over the last few months.

O'REILLY: Really?

TRUMP: I'm fine with it if we have to go that direction. Maybe you haven't noticed.

O'REILLY: You know what? I hope you don't have to go it. I would like to see you and Mrs. Clinton in a spirited campaign about issues without the low road. I know the media likes it. I know they like all that stuff but I don't. I would like to see you, you know, you guys just fight it out over issues.

That was kind of brilliant, now, wasn't it? He's not saying he likes the low road or that he'd choose the low road, just: If she or her people take the low road, they'll be on the low road with him and he knows how to handle it. He had 17 people in the primary, taking whichever roads they were taking on any given day for nearly a year, and he dealt with it. So he's warning the Hillary people: You do not want to take the low road with me. That can't possibly warn Hillary and all her proxies off the low road, but he's staked out his position: It won't faze me — "I'm fine with that" — and you will lose. 

My link goes to Media Matters, which mangles the meaning in its headline: "Trump Tells O'Reilly He's Ready To Take The 'Low Road' Against Hillary Clinton In The General Election/Bill O'Reilly: 'You're Fine With The Low Road? ... I Hope You Don't Have To Go To It.'" They completely omitted the main idea, that he wouldn't choose the low road, but he's prepared to operate on that level if his opponents choose it.

What was so striking about the rhetoric — and I almost don't blame Media Matters for screwing up the interpretation — is that Trump seemed to enjoy saying "low road" and exhibiting his comfort with that place. Also Trump avoided the original question, which specified that Hillary herself would take the high road and those sleazy proxies would do the dirty work. Trump declined to see Hillary standing apart from her surrogates.

"Fist from Heaven" and Donald Trump owes Bill O'Reilly milkshakes.

The view from Drudge right now:



I watched the O'Reilly thing last night, so I know what that refers to. Trump — who's not doing the Fox News debate (have you heard?) — went on O'Reilly's Fox News show only to have a desperate and weird O'Reilly badger and interrupt him for 15 minutes over his already perfectly well understood decision not to do the debate, including some incoherent references to O'Reilly's have purchased a number of vanilla milkshakes for Trump... which did get a smile out of Trump... as if, yes, indeed, he does love his vanilla milkshakes. I'm taking that literally. It's not some code, is it? I know "milkshake" is a slang term, but I'd have to bend my mind to find it relevant.

As for the "fist from Heaven"... who knows? Surprised people aren't saying it's Trump's hair. Everything's Trump now, you know.

The link Drudge gives for the O'Reilly interview only has a minute of video and no "milkshake" in the text. Here's complete video:



ADDED: The milkshakes part begins at 13:39: "Would you do me a favor? Look, you owe me a, 'cause I bought you so many vanilla milkshakes, I bought you so many vanilla milkshakes, you owe me. Would you just consider, I want you to consider, all right, think about it, say, look, I [unintelligible] back, forgive, go forward, answer the questions, look out for the folks, just want you to consider it. You owe me milkshakes. I'll take them off the ledger, if you consider it."

Trump's response is: "Well, even though you and I had an agreement that you wouldn't ask me that, which we did, I will therefore forget that you asked me that... because it's an embarrassing question for you and I don't want to embarrass you."

O'Reilly admits that they had an agreement and he broke it, but he's not going to listen to "any political person" telling him not to ask something. "But," O'Reilly says, "You're absolutely an honest person, that I said 'I'll try not to do it,' but the milkshake thing just overwhelmed me."

Trump's all: "It's true. A lotta milkshakes."

Now, I guess all of today will be consumed with the nonsubject of milkshakes. Hard to add that to the "Trump's a media genius" theory. O'Reilly brought it up and belabored it. Maybe the 2 men are in league with each other. In the end, O'Reilly praises Trump for coming on the show. Nobody else would do the show under these circumstances, he says. And Trump repays the compliment and leverages himself by saying that the O'Reilly show is tougher than doing a debate with Megyn Kelly.

"I’ve got to see a man about a dog."

Says David Corn, blowing off Hugh Hewitt at the end of a long radio conversation about Corn's attack on Bill O'Reilly, a topic I've been avoiding all week and intend to continue to avoid.

I'm just blogging this because I'm interested in the phrase "I’ve got to see a man about a dog," which has its own Wikipedia entry:

To see a man about a dog (or see a man about a horse) is an English language colloquialism, usually used as a way to say one needs to apologize for one's imminent departure or absence – generally euphemistically to conceal one's true purpose, such as going to use the toilet or going to buy a drink.

The original, non-facetious meaning was probably to place or settle a bet on a racing dog.

Some people say "I’ve got to see a man about a horse." Another variation is "I've got to see a dog about a man."

Now, I also find it interesting — and this blog runs on interestingness, you know — that earlier in the Corn-Hewitt conversation, Hewitt used another old expression that has a dog in it: "I’ve got no dog in this fight." Maybe that put the dog image in the Corn's head... the head of Corn... the ear of Corn.

"No dog in this fight" has no page Wikipedia. Some people say "No dog in the hunt," but that's denounced as "a bastardization of two Southern idioms: 'no dog in the fight,' and 'that dog won't hunt.'"

"William O’Reilly Debated Jon Stewart On One Topic — White Privilege. Guess who won?"

Asked The Crack Emcee in the comments to yesterday's race-consciousness post, pointing to a "Daily Show" interview from a couple days ago, which I happened to have already watched. (I watched the show version. He links to the extended version, which I haven't seen.)

I answered (in the comments just now):

Yeah, I watched that yesterday. Thanks for reminding me about that. I thought Stewart acted like a jackass bully and O'Reilly kept his cool. Stewart had his whole audience braying their pleasure at the bullying of O'Reilly. To this home-viewer, O'Reilly won. He won by keeping his dignity, acknowledging all the factual and fair points about race in history, but rejecting the ideological term "white privilege."

As I just said, I did not watch the extended version. I'm going on what the show's people decided would be most amusing to their viewers, which I assume is what presents Jon Stewart as the winner and Bill O'Reilly as the bully who gets his comeuppance, overcome by the sheer force of superior intelligence, information, and virtue.

It's interesting to hear that the entire extended interview stays with the white-privilege topic, because that means:

1. They had a lot of raw footage from which to select the clips that fit the narrative they thought would be so gratifying to their audience of people who believe in their own superior intelligence, information, and virtue.

2. They never got around to the subject of the book O'Reilly had come on the show to pitch — "Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General" — another form of disrespect, which I suspect was deployed to antagonize O'Reilly and increase the likelihood that he'd say something stupid about race.

So, again: O'Reilly won. But what is this candy-ass bullshit about who won and lost a television interview? The name Patton has been invoked. Let's get some proportion and perspective about what winning means.

In case you want to hear an interviewer who feels free to continually interrupt the President of the United States to turn up the heat.

Here's Bill O'Reilly interviewing Barack Obama. Full video and transcript at the link. I'll just excerpt the part about the IRS scandal, and I invite you to consider — in addition to the substance — whether this kind of interruption is unacceptably disrespectful or justifiable to prevent the interviewee from running out the clock with propaganda:

"The toothbrush moustache (also called Hitler moustache, Charlie Chaplin moustache, 1/3 moustache, philtrum moustache, the postage stamp, or soul (mou)stache)..."

"... is a moustache, shaved at the edges, except for three to five centimeters above the centre of the lip. The sides of the moustache are vertical rather than tapered."

I found this Wikipedia article — "Toothbrush moustache" — last night after asserting that Hitler adopted the Hilter mustache to emulate Charlie Chaplin. The topic came up in connection with the array of photographs — Obama/Hitler/Stalin — that we're talking about in the previous post. Meade didn't believe me, and my belief — even if it's wrong — is at least common enough that I could easily do the research. (A couple weeks ago, the roles were reversed: Meade asserted a misconception common enough to have a Snopes article declaring it false.)

"Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?"

Megyn Kelly asked Karl Rove — as hilariously/painfully magnified by Jon Stewart:

[VIEW CLIP HERE.]

As the tags below indicate, there's some other material in that clip too. If you're one of those who find this painful rather than hilarious, I would recommend that you seriously contemplate the meaning underlying the humor. It's important.