Newsweek: O'Reilly Is No Hannity
By Steve Young
Created Jun 30 2008 - 9:53am
Especially in Philly
When Newsweek offered the alternative title [1] for Bill O'Reilly's new
book, "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity," with "A Large Bag of Gas Who's No
Hannity," my first thought was that Newsweek was pointing out that Sean
Hannity, Bill's FoxNews colleague, out draws Bill's Radio Factor,
nationally
by four to one (13 mil to 3.25mil). To make all that more embarrassing,
you
throw out Bill's over-90 demographic, the difference is as wide as the
crack
in the No-Spinster's journalist credibility.
Of course, that could only lead to delicious Fox Fun as Bill, who is never
one to accept bad news graciously (see: Al Franken book sales, Keith
Olbermann emergence, side-kick's questioning the validity of his facts,
homeless vets, phone-*** peccadillos, etc, etc ), could go Factor-muckrake
on Sean, spinning the ratings to make it appear that Sean's numbers
weren't
as good as Newsweek and Talkers Magazine said they were. Figure the whine
to
sound something like "His numbers may look better, but that's only because
at stations like Philadelphia's WPHT air Hannity at 3-6PM, while they air
the Radio Factor from midnight-2AM. The graveyard ****ft is prime time for
the FolksT whose body clocks no longer allows them to sleep past midnight,
but with my name being the only air personality NOT LISTED on the WPHT
website home page, (check the lineup on the left side), how am I supposed
to
get decent ratings when the FolksT don't even know I'm on the station."
But why would Newsweek be so concerned with Bill's lilliputian Philly
audience, after all, why not bring up Wa****ngton, D.C. where no station at
all carries Bill?
Then I realized that Newsweek might not be mocking Bill's lack of
audience,
but instead making a determination based on his lack of candor as compared
to Hannity's frankness. Hannity has never misled his audience as to who he
was - a died in the wool conservative vs Bill, a partisan who hides behind
an Independent facade but says that everyone else in the tank for a
candidate. MSNBC, NBC, The NY Times and on and on, are cheerleading for
Barack Obama, talk radio for McCain, while Bill remains ever the objective
observer.
The best is that Bill still thinks people buy his claim of independence.
Need proof? Read Bill's syndicated column this week [2]. Bill uses the
Gallop poll to demonstrate that despite a large lead in money and with the
media in his pocket, Barack and McCain are virtually tied. Ever the
objective observer, Bill ignores almost every other poll that says
otherwise. Some, double digit otherwise [3].
Bill's objective, even before Obama took charge in the primary, is to slam
all the Dems, with such objectivity as "the Democratic party can easily be
branded as soft on terrorism [4]." Pretty bipartisan, huh?
Now I don't want to ever be accused of being a cheerleader for Hannity,
but
even when he was promoting Hillary in the primaries, he made it pretty
clear
it was an attempt to keep Dems off balance. He never once said, I'm going
to
listen to both sides then decide which party I'd go with. His audience
knows
darn-tootin' well on which side his loyalty's going to land. O'Reilly?
You'd
have to be a blinders-on O'Reilly fan to believe he's giving you a fair
and
balanced look at the campaign. And the mendacity of it all? It's the
FolksT,
his fans, who are the ones O'Reilly continues to play for suckers.
Though I can't be sure exactly why Newsweek thinks O'Reilly is no Hannity,
there are a number of reasons that could play here, which brings us back
to
Philadelphia where fans have sup****ted many a bad team. But when it comes
to
hypocrisy, in s****ts or politics, Philly fans don't care for being played
-
especially after midnight.
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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