I have no idea who’s right about Bill O’Reilly’s reporting from the Falklands, decades ago. It seems obvious that David Corn and Mother Jones are going after him as some form of revenge for Brian Williams, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. And O’Reilly has been dependably loud and blustery in response, but that doesn’t mean he’s right.
Either way, I don’t watch him and he doesn’t speak for me and I’m fine with whatever happens to him. He’s a hate object to leftists, and I enjoy watching them seethe at him and reveal who they really are, but that’s it. To paraphrase Seth Gecko: I don’t give a rat’s ass about him. He can live forever or die this second and I don’t care which.
That said, he sure does know how to make enemies of all the people I don’t like. Emily Steel and Ravi Somaiya, New York Times:
The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Monday stepped up his defense against reports that he embellished stories about his war reporting earlier in his career, while some former colleagues continued to say he had exaggerated his experiences.
Mr. O’Reilly is contesting an article in the magazine Mother Jones and subsequent interviews with former journalists at CBS News that accuse him of misrepresenting his coverage of the Falklands war in 1982 as a young correspondent for CBS News…
Mr. O’Reilly’s efforts to refute the claims by Mother Jones and some former CBS News colleagues occurred both on the air and off on Monday. During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter’s coverage was inappropriate. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “You can take it as a threat.”
Emily Steel is very proud of this. She’s showing it off to all her friends:
“I am coming after you with everything I have,” Mr. O’Reilly told me. “You can take it as a threat.” http://t.co/gXsH3Zqaig
— Emily Steel (@emilysteel) February 24, 2015
Steel has made it! The Boogeyman was mean to her. She’s now a left-wing heroine.
O’Reilly is a jerk, and he may or may not be a liar. The NYT staff are jerks, and they’re definitely liars. Advantage: O’Reilly.
Of course, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters are up in arms about O’Reilly’s “threat,” just as he intends them to be. And his fans are cheering him on for standing up to the NYT, as he knew they would.
As for the rest of us? I don’t know about you, but I’m content to sit back and watch them hiss and claw at each other. This is the mainstream media in America, 2015. Enjoy the show.