For some background, Bill O'Reilly wrote a syndicated column Friday in which he chastized Maddow and David Letterman for "without a shred of evidence" claiming on CBS's "Late Show" Tuesday that FNC intentionally runs stories about "scary black people" in order to frighten white folks into voting for conservatives.
Maddow responded by calling this "bullpucky," and presented video "evidence" from "Factor" programs to prove that this indeed is what Fox does.
Unfortunately, in the most damning clip, Maddow's minions conveniently edited out that O'Reilly was referring to a recent Gallup poll about how blacks and whites have differing views of President Obama.
Ironically, this came moments after Maddow scolded O'Reilly for airing the edited version of former USDA official Shirley Sherrod on his July 19 program (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: This time, the case against me is in his nationally syndicated column which I`m sure is read by millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people. The headline is, quote, "Only far-left loons scared of Fox News." Guess who the loon is?
Yes. Talking about me on David Letterman`s show this week, Mr. O`Reilly says, quote, "Speaking with far-left MSNBC news commentator, Rachel Maddow on his program, Dave listened as she put forth the preposterous theory that wants to frighten white Americans by reporting negatively about black Americans."
"In the past, paranoid, dishonest rants like that would have been dismissed as fringe-speak. But not anymore. Without a shred of evidence, a guest on Letterman`s "Late Show," which by the way, gets trounced in the ratings by Fox News Channel every night, defines an entire news organization as a racist enterprise and Letterman goes along."
Mr. O`Reilly`s repeated insistence that must be right because Fox has high ratings is a many-splendored thing particularly because this week - if you believe Mr. O`Reilly, this week means we`re all wrong and only sharksploitation(ph) is right.
But there is something else going on here that isn`t just an ad populum fallacy about ratings or an ad hominem collateral swipe at the lovely creature that is the loon. It is something stupid, something stupid enough that it doesn`t even get dressed up in Latin phrasing.
It`s him saying that there`s no evidence to back up my claim that Fox News consistently runs stories it says are news, but that nobody else really covers, stories that are ginned-up, exaggerated, caricatured, in some cases, just flat-out made-up scare stories designed to make white people feel afraid of black people, designed to make it seem like black people, or in some cases, immigrants are threatening white people and taking what is rightfully theirs.
You may not like that diagnosis of what Fox has been up to, but to say there`s no evidence, not a shred of evidence, as he said, that`s bullpucky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O`REILLY: Speaking at an NAACP event in March, Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod was caught on tape saying something very disturbing. Seems a white farmer in Georgia had requested government assistance from Ms. Sherrod. Wow. Well, that is simply unacceptable and Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Of course, the Shirley Sherrod story ended up being exposed as total bullpucky, manufactured by nifty video editing. Mr. O`Reilly had to apologize for that statement. But it`s not like the Shirley Sherrod story stands alone.
Readers are encouraged to remember her comment "exposed as total bullpucky, manufactured by nifty video editing."
Also, if this was an example of Fox trying to scare white people, why did O'Reilly apologize the next day? Not every member of the news media that broadcast the original Sherrod video clip issued an on air apology like O'Reilly, but I digress:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O`REILLY: The collapse of ACORN - that is the subject of this evening`s "Talking Points Memo." Here`s the latest scandal. You`re not going to believe it. Because federal authorities have not done much policing of ACORN, two private citizens, James O`Keefe and Hannah Giles, launch an undercover sting investigation themselves.
The two pose as a prostitute and a pimp and asked a number of ACORN officials to help them get housing for a prostitution enterprise. The latest sting was in California, where an ACORN employee engaged the young woman posing as a prostitute.
ACORN is a tax-exempt organization that should immediately lose that status. And Attorney General Holder should begin an intense investigation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Of course, the ACORN story ended up being exposed as total bullpucky, too, also manufactured by nifty video editing. Remember after the California attorney general looked into the full tapes and then arrested all those ACORN folks for those crimes that Bill O`Reilly showed them committing on tape?
Yes, you don`t remember that? Me, neither, because it never happened. Bullpucky again. But still, very scary.
Readers are encouraged to once again remember Maddow's phrase here "total bullpucky, too, also manufactured by nifty video editing."
Secondly, that the far-left Jerry Brown chose not to prosecute ACORN employees by no means invalidates the corruption that was exposed at this organization or vindicates it. A Democrat-controlled Congress and a Democrat President have still not lifted the government ban on ACORN funding.
Beyond this, the notion that O'Reilly reporting this matter was racially motivated is in itself racist. But Maddow and her ilk seem to miss this irony when they point such fingers at others:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O`REILLY: A guy like Van Jones who is a friend of the president, and he comes in and he`s a hardcore Marxist.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He`s not a hardcore Marxist.
O`REILLY: He is. He admits it. All I keep hearing is from people like Eugene Robinson who traffics in racism every time you turn around.
Once again, the idea that reporting on Van Jones was to scare white people is pathetic. Are all reports concerning black people involved in wrong-doing racist?
As such, this was another tremendously weak point by Maddow in no way proving O'Reilly was trying to scare white people.
But here's the best part:
O'REILLY: White Americans don`t like the huge expansion of the federal government. They also oppose the big spending increases that the president has imposed. It`s simple. White Americans fear government control. They don`t want the feds telling them what to do and they don`t want a bankrupt nation.
For decades, African-Americans have supported a bigger federal government so it can impose social justice. The vast majority of blacks want money spent to level the playing field, to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Black people want white people`s money. They want to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts. But remember, Mr. O`Reilly says there is not a shred of evidence that Fox News hypes stories about scary black people taking white people`s stuff.
I am not interested in playing cable news insult ping pong with Mr. O`Reilly. But as much as he keeps insisting that I`m no one worth arguing with, that I`m an uber-leftist - he called me that in his column, and a loon twice now.
And a slightly larger percentage of one percent of the population watches his show than the proportion of one percent of the population that watches my show, for all he complains about how unimportant I am, my criticism scares white people on purpose to politically benefit conservatives, damn the consequences for the country, that criticism appears to have struck a nerve over at Fox. It appears to have gotten under Mr. O`Reilly`s skin. Good.
Well, not so fast, Rach, for why didn't you provide the full context of that last report by O'Reilly?
Here is the unedited "Talking Points Memo" from Thursday. Notice just how much different this really is from the highly-edited version Maddow dishonestly showed her viewers
In fact, Maddow's video began in the middle of a sentence (Maddow's transcribed portions in italics for emphasis):
O'REILLY: Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks for watching us tonight. Black and white Americans differ over President Obama. That is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo".
A new Gallup poll says 88 percent of African-Americans continue to support President Obama, but just 38 percent of white Americans feel the president is doing a good job. That is a 50 point differential in the president's job approval rating, which is stunning. So what is going on?
Let's take the white situation first. According to the polls, most white Americans don't like the huge expansion of the federal government. They also oppose the big spending increases that the president has imposed. It's simple. White Americans fear government control. They don't want the Feds telling them what to do. And they don't want a bankrupt nation.
That attitude was on display in Missouri this week when 71 percent of the voters approved a state statute blocking the federal government from forcing them to buy health insurance. 71 percent said no to that. Since Obamacare is the centerpiece of the president's domestic strategy so far, you can see he's in some trouble.
But black America has a totally different view. For decades, African- Americans have supported a bigger federal government, so it can impose social justice. A vast majority of blacks want money spent to level the playing field, to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts, and to provide better education and health care at government expense. So the African-American voter generally loves what President Obama is doing.
As for Hispanic-Americans, 54 percent now support Mr. Obama but that is down nine points since April. The social justice component is there as well. There's no question that there are now two Americas. The minority community continues to believe that society is not completely fair to them. And they want a huge government apparatus to change that.
And while the white community may sympathize with the minority situation, they apparently believe that more harm than good is being done to the country with the cost of social justice programs.
My own belief is that President Obama is well intentioned, but if the wild spending continues, this country will be gravely damaged. As far as social justice is concerned, strict oversight on fair rules, but not the imposition of expensive entitlements is the answer. The USA is the strongest country on earth because of self reliance and the industry of honest, hard working people, who don't want to be told how to live. Independence and self-reliance is what has made this country great, powerful and generous. And that's the Memo.
As such, O'Reilly was commenting about a Gallup survey just released Tuesday with the title, "Blacks and Whites Continue to Differ Sharply on Obama." By the end of his "Memo," he was even crediting Obama with being "well intentioned."
Sound "scary" to you?
As for Gallup, here's what it reported:
President Obama's job approval rating averaged 88% among blacks and 38% among whites in July, a 50-percentage-point difference that has been consistent in recent months but is much larger than in the initial months of the Obama presidency. Obama's job approval ratings among blacks, whites, and Hispanics in July are all at their lowest levels to date, although the overwhelming majority of blacks still approve.
Maybe Maddow should call the Gallup folks racist, too.
Regardless, Maddow and her minions completely removed this context from the video they edited thereby dramatically altering what O'Reilly said.
Isn't that just as bad as what the anonymous person that sent the excerpted Sherrod video to Andrew Breitbart did?
Maybe more importantly, isn't this actually worse than what Fox and every other news outlet did with the Sherrod video, for none of them were involved in the editing.
In Maddow's case, her own staff edited out major portions of O'Reilly's opening remarks on Thursday completely changing the meaning of his words.
This MSNBC host should certainly not be pointing fingers at others for bullpucky manufactured by nifty video editing when she and her staff are doing the very same thing.
With this in mind, maybe Maddow on Monday should play the entire video for her audience and apologize to O'Reilly.
Readers are advised to not hold their breath.
