It’d be easy, right here, to write “It’s a sad day when Bill O’Reilly has a more nuanced approach to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell than President Barack Obama,” but it’s not a sad day. It’s a great day when even right-wing extremists who traffic in destructive ideology can, sometimes, make reasonable judgment calls even when fierce advocates cannot.
this guy
Bill O’Reilly: Obama ‘Must Stop This Nonsense’ About DADT
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reason
It’s bright and clear what Bill O is trying to do, which is create a civil war in the democratic party. Notice the two things he hit on, the executive order that can be repealed when the next Republican enters office but he is aware that he can rile the left by bring that up, next he brings up Hillary Clinton granted the GOP would like nothing more then a democratic knife fight between a sitting president and a former first lady and popular SOS. It is so obvious to anyone with half a brain, look how Bill talks about the gays on his show bring up video of a bunch of raunchy men from the 80’s dancing provocatively to scare the daylights out of his following. As one of the founders of the culture war pick up one of his books and read what he writes about GBLT and the agenda to brainwash the adolescent and prepubescent boys. Bill O is an intelligent Harvard grad that is adroit at snookering people, especially those that are to gullible to do even a minuscule amount of reasoning. The only reason they backed off the USDA story is because they know they can use it against the president when the time is right, suddenly they will have an interest in African Americans as they explain to them how Obama has done absolutely nothing for them and will throw them under the bus at the snap of a finger. Bill, take your elementary tricks back to your deception filled T.V. show.
mk
@reason: Bill also goes out of his way to say things on these mainstream talk shows that will make him sound like a reasonable, nice guy. He knows he has a public image of a raving bully (because he IS a raving bully) so when he’s on these shows he tries to change that impression to entice new fans.
Michael
@reason: truth truth truth.
jason
It’s refreshing to hear Bill O’Reilly say this. I’m not a great supporter of his but, on this issue, he does have a clear mind.
Cam
@reason:
Even though I am no fan of Bill O’Reilly but there is a few problems with your comment.
You claim that he backed off the USDA story so they can bring it up later. You can’t bring up a story later, when your attack dogs have all said that they made a mistake and were wrong.
You claim that with DADT he is merely trying to formet war in the Democratic party to use later etc… But O’Reilly, aside from other issues, was advocating years ago for a civil partnership bill at around the same time that GAy Inc. was more infavor of that than marrige. I remember being shocked that he was in support of it, even though I dissagreed and was a supporter of Full marriage.
We should absolutly keep our eye on people like O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and Fox news etc… But don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and don’t be so loyal to a political party that you are willing to attack somebody advocating for our rights on an issue because you think it could be damaging to that party later.
christopher di spirito
At first, I thought, what is Bill O doing on the Tonight show? Then I remembered: Jay Leno is the host.
Tallskin
Whoaaaa! This is amazing, if a right wing nutjob like Bill O is in support of repealing DADT then that is a massive sea change in general attitudes!
We dont get much news of BO over here in the UK, but we do know he’s an arse.
He’s right though, why doesn’t that useless waste of space Obama simply get rid of DADT with one signature? Obama is fucking useless.
reason
@Cam: The thing you missed is they said they made a mistake and are wrong about Mrs. Sherrod being a racist, then they pivoted toward calling the Obama administration incompetent for firing there “own employee” with out the facts. They are trying to spin it into a story about a weak, afraid, and rudderless White House. When the President is on the ticket in 2012 I can guaranty that they will be searching for ways to turn the presidents base against him including doing an extensive amount of research on African Americans to try to paint a portrait that there worse off under this president and he could care less about them; then old stories about them throwing Sherrod under the bus first and asking questions latter will become more potent.
I did not say anything about DADT being used later, reread the post. DADT is something they want to piss the liberal base off about now, granted there is an election around the corner with a lot of democrat seat up for grabs. They are going to be searching for a host of reasons to piss off the liberal base including the fact that DADT is not completed, clean energy bill has failed, and I wouldn’t put it past them to bring up the public option. They obviously don’t care about those issues but they know the presidents base does, and what better way to suppress the liberal vote then to make them feel demoralized about their own party boss. Then the democrats don’t just have to worry about an anti-incumbent fever but a referendum on their president as well. After they loose seats they will frame the whole thing as a referendum on the president, not mentioning anti-incumbent fever, to weaken the president to the point that he can’t get anything done in the last two years making 2012 reelection more difficult. It is all about messaging, the republicans have ruled at it for several decades, and Fox has no problem using several contradictory and/or hypocritical messages at the same time. They can make the democrats most successful accomplishments look like complete catastrophes before the truth and the benefits come to fruition ex. Social Security, Medicare, New Deal, Family leave, etc.
If you believe Bill is suddenly so caring about gays and doesn’t have something up his sleeve just read his own quotes:
O’Reilly: In his lie about a districts sex education he says they “want to teach little public school kids about homosexuality in kindergarten.”
O’Reilly: “Obama should arrest Rep. Barney Frank.”
Miller: laughed and said, “Barney might want to be arrested.”
O’Reilly: laughed and then acts disgusted by the idea of homosexuality.
O’Reilly: Speaking about the NY parade ban of gay groups, “I don’t want gay people intruding on a parade where little children are standing there, watching.”
O’Reilly: “Clustering gays near children is insane, dumb and inappropriate.”
O’Reilly: “This crazy gay marriage insanity — is gonna lead to all kinds of things like this; like somebody coming in and saying, I wanna marry the goat.”
O’Reilly: Referring to the McDonald’s gay French ad “does that make you hungry after watching that…do you want a hamburger after that…would you eat fries after watching that.” He is clearly asking would you be hungry after hearing about homosexuals and thinking about the nasty sex they have. He then goes on to say “do they have an Al Qaeda ad, come as you are?”
O’Reilly: Dismissing claims of persecution based on sexual orientation in Mexico “if you go to any of the resort areas, Cancun or Acapulco, as I mentioned, Puerto Vallarta, any of them — come on it’s gay parade time. Don’t tell me they are being persecuted.” His guest says I didn’t recall that but O’Reilly goes on “Theres gay bars; there’s gay restaurants; there’s gay everything.”
O’Reilly: On gay parenting “why wouldn’t nature then make it that anybody could get pregnant by eating a cupcake?”
I could go on for hours; do you still think that Bill O true motivations are concern about gays being able to serve openly and be treated fairly in the military?
reason
@Tallskin: Keep your crooked teeth in your own affairs, because you clearly don’t know anything about our laws and what the president can and can’t do. You should be focused on getting your government and you other union partners to send more troops to Afghanistan then having our taxpayers and the blood of our citizens pay for your protection. After all your country is responsible for most of the destruction in the middle east and around the world. If yall hadn’t colonized Iraq we would have never had to go there spending over half a trillion and losing countless lives.
Chuck
Somebody tell O’Reily he’s not on a Seniors Bigot Cruise.
Kieran
The fact is Bill O’Reilly regularly whips the ass of Keith Oberman and CNN each and every night in the ratings. His opinions reach more of the American people each night then just about anybody else on American TV. Them’s just the facts. I think it’s great that O’Reilly has said publicly that it’s nonsense not to allow gay Americans to serve openly in the military. He’s right. He deserves praise for this, not the usual partisan vitriol.
PopSnap
Are you kidding me? This is great coming from him. He’s basically America’s “My Smart and Rich Conservative Dad” and yes he does say ignorant things- it’s part of his character. He needs to uphold a character just like Olbermann must be the Enraged Old Liberal Smartypants and Rachel must be the Young Sarcastic Liberal With Statistics. Glenn Beck is the Stark Raving Conspiracy Nut. Nobody would watch their shows unless they acted entertaining & represented large swaths of American political stereotypes.
My grandfather is a big O’Reilly fan & has said basically the same thing about DADT: it’s silly and it needs to be gotten rid of. He also tends to laugh at the religious lunatics and has donated money to the freedom rider. You could say he is a rich white moderate conservative. They run America. They are also different from the Tea Party nutjobs, whom they tend to look down upon as reactionary rednecks. This is a very good thing coming from the one who is the single focal point of all of their views. It means that the millions of moderate conservative white guys who watch his show are also warming up in their views toward gay people.
I mean, he could have come on there & said he doesn’t support repealing it, right?
reason
@PopSnap: I don’t know what your talking about, he is just a smart demagogue. Americas dad? I think not. Let me tell you rich white guys don’t follow Bill O it’s more like poor white guys that are brainless.
Tallskin
@reason Lol you’re a fucking dumb arse !
You know nothing of history, but that’s what I’d expect from a nation that thinks cheeze comes out of a spray can!
And for what it’s worth I would recall our troops from Afghanistan tomorrow. You can fight your expensive wars on your own without our help.
Tallskin
@Reason, are you saying that Bill O is wrong and that Obama cannot simply sign away DADT?
I shall take your silence as indicating you don’t fucking know, but were just blowing steam out of your arse
ewe
Bill Oreilly is an asshole that paid off and silenced his sexually assaulted victim. Never forget that. He says nothing on behalf of gay people. He speaks to manipulate democrats and his only goal is prejudice and bigotry. That show was so rediculous and it was funny to hear him talk as if he was a voice of expertise. He is a joke and his exposure is propaganda by even more ruthless evil haters.
reason
@Tallskin:
To start I will take back that insult which was unnecessary, and while I like Britan it’s undoubtedly responsible for much of the chaos around the world.
Yes I am saying exactly that, DADT is a law that can not be signed away. It takes an act of Congress to make or change exsisting law, U.S. government has never had a monarch.
I don’t know history? What do you mean by that? 1918-1932 the British colonized modern day Iraq laying a brutal siege to the country including shock and awe bombings and chemical weapon attacks for over a decades. Demanding that they cough up the hard earned tax dollars so the British monarchs could dance in gold lined ballrooms. They carved up Mesopotamia with reckless abandon with no regard to long held boarders, splinting several ethnic groups into arbitrary boarders so that greedy oil company now known as BP, that just destroyed large swaths of our coast, had easy access to oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. That recklessness has lead to a long line of problems that have cost the U.S. over a trillion dollars, U.S. lives, and at one point nearly bankrupted the Saudis one of our key alias. The U.S. is paying the coast for British arrogance, while they get to spend your cash providing welfare for their citizens.
David
@Tallskin:
“He’s right though, why doesn’t that useless waste of space Obama simply get rid of DADT with one signature? Obama is fucking useless.”
Sorry, but that’s exactly what Bill Clinton thought he was going to do in 1993. The conservatives and fundamentalists went ballistic and told him that if he did, they’d not only undo his executive order with legislation (more or less, hopelessly tie it up) and make the rest of his term in office impossible.
Clinton thought to himself, “Do I want to sacrifice everything I want to accomplish to this one policy change?”
Then he asked for advice from his advisors and 2 openly gay congressmen at the time: Barney Frank and Gerry Studds.
Barney advised to take half a loaf now, and work for more later. He was in favor of DADT, because at the time, it actually was better than was we had.
Gerry Studds wanted the whole loaf. He recommended that Clinton issue his executive order, and then let Congress issue the laws they threatened which would make life tougher on the gays that were already in the military.
This is the Reader’s Digest version of events, a general gist. But in no way can the Commander In Chief just unilaterally issue a blanket Executive Order and expect Congress and the Supreme Court and etc etc etc to say, “Yes, sir” quietly, and live happily ever after. That ain’t how it works. And that blood-sucking leech of a TV Talkshow personality knows that.
Tallskin
@Reason – Honeypie, I know we decadent Europeans laugh at dumb yanks for their total ignorance in most things, particularly history, so I’ll try not to snigger too loudly.
But really blaming the british empire for the US invasion of Iraq is just, well, dumb. It’s too embarrassing for me to want to bother correcting you. I feel a bit like a normal sane individual coming across a creationist at a party – you don’t quite know what to say.
However, I would suggest you look up the Ottoman Empire on Wikkipedia or something to get a long term historical perspective on the region.
@David – thanks for the information. I was obviously wrong in thinking Obama could flourish his pen and get rid of DADT. But my point about him being useless still applies.
reason
@Tallskin: I am sure yall laugh and snigger, after destabilizing much of the third world, and now wish to bluster your way through without mentioning one historical fact. As you call us ignorant, with all of your arrogance, you still landed way beneath us. I would hardly call a POTUS that health care reform that evade every president since Lyndon Johnson in 1965, enacted the greatest regulatory reform since the great depression, stabilized an economy that was shedding 750,000 jobs a month when he was inaugurated, and has posted private sector job growth for the past five months, education reform, student loan reform, plus a host of other things that include the most a president has ever done for the GBLT community only a little over half way through his second year and dealing with a congress were one of the parties goal is to bring the government to a screeching halt. One of the most productive administrations in history. As you demonstrated earlier you don’t understand the most basic thing about the U.S. government, so any judgment you make on Obama is worthless.