Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [30]
On February 26, 2001, O’Reilly defended Jeb Bush’s “One Florida” program to State Senator Kendrick Meek. “All right, look, in the university system in Florida right now, 37 percent of the 10 universities are black. Thirty-seven percent.” Black enrollment that year was 18 percent. When Meek tried to correct him, O’Reilly cut Meek off with “I got the numbers and they’re dead on!”
On May 8, 2001, O’Reilly boasted that the United States gives “far and away more tax money to foreign countries than anyone . . . nobody else even comes close.” Japan gives more. Not per capita. More. When his guest, Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies, pointed out that the U.S. gives a smaller fraction of its gross national product than any other developed country, O’Reilly bellowed, “That’s not true.” It is.
Bennis hung in there and said, “It’s absolutely true on a per capita basis.”
Clearly having no idea what he was talking about, O’Reilly flailed away. “Well, we have a three hundred million population base here and Sweden has three million, so that’s skewed out.” Sweden has about nine million people.
Now, like I said, there’s no shame in occasionally messing up an obscure statistic like the population of a major industrialized nation. You probably didn’t know it. I certainly didn’t. But I would never insist that I did.
Even when an obnoxiously persistent guest catches O’Reilly dead to rights, Bill still manages to sow seeds of doubt in the viewers’ minds. As you can see from this 1999 program with popular corporate speaker Al Franken.
FRANKEN: In ’93 [Clinton] passed the budget deficit package with all Republicans voting against him.
O’REILLY: Clinton couldn’t have passed it, Al, if all Republicans voted against him.
FRANKEN: Yes, he could. Well, every Republican voted against it in ’93. Every one of—every single Republican.
O’REILLY: Is that—you—I might stand corrected there. We’ll look it up.
FRANKEN: You might. You do. It is . . .
O’REILLY: I do stand corrected?
FRANKEN: Yeah.
O’REILLY: Are you sure?
FRANKEN: Absolutely. Every Republican . . .
O’REILLY: Okay. All right. We’ve got it on the tape.
Which, of course, they’ll never rerun.
These are only a few examples, a few pearls dredged from the vast oyster bed feeding off the effluent flowing from the sewer of right-wing dishonesty.
This book is not intended to be the definitive account of Bill O’Reilly’s lies and obnoxious behavior. Inevitably, when this book comes out, Bill will employ one of his standard gambits, one which has a certain crude effectiveness. He will say, “Is that all you got, Al? After six and a half years on the air, all you can find is my mistaking a Polk I didn’t win for two Peabodys that never existed and then falsely accused a journalist of lying about it; that I physically intimidated your book publicist; that I freaked out about the splotchy photo; that I compared the Koran to Mein Kampf and then lied about it; that I lied about where I grew up; that I lied about my party affiliation; that I gave phony numbers on welfare moms, black university enrollment in Florida, and foreign aid; that I had no idea how Congress works; and that I threatened to shoot you between the head? Is that all you got, Al? Is that all you got?”
Well, no. Since you ask, there’s also the fact that, every once in a while, you display such a depraved indifference to ordinary standards of decent behavior that it makes me wonder if I really was in danger there on the stage of BookExpo America.
On February 4, 2003, O’Reilly interviewed Jeremy Glick, whose father, a Port Authority worker, died in the World Trade Center attack. Glick had signed an advertisement opposing the war in Iraq, and O’Reilly invited him on the show to explain himself, which he did modestly and eloquently. Until, that is, O’Reilly cut him off.
O’REILLY: I don’t want to debate world politics with you.
GLICK: Well, why not? This is about world politics.
O’REILLY: Because, number one,