The O’Reilly Factor is showing an interiew Bill O’Reilly had with Senator Obama in a four part series starting today and ending on Wednesday. I will comb through some of the finer points and add some much needed rationale and perspective.
0:28 Both are aware of what’s about to go down and Obama is all smiles. Take your best shot.
1:07 First attempt to knock Obama off his horse by tieing Iran with Al Qaeda. Obama knows better to commit the same foible as his opponent and makes a point of demarkating Iran as a Shia state and Al Qaeda as a Sunni stronghold.
1:31 And it doesn’t take long for O’Reilly to rudely interrupt his guest, who is making his point. And you wonder why it took so long for Obama to agree to an interview? The fact that this man is on the air is an insult to the intelligence of Americans.
2:30 O’Reilly asks Obama if he considers Iran to be a real threat and whether he would “prepare for a [military option],” reinforcing with “that is the real question though Senator. Anybody can say option, would you prepare for it?” What the fuck is preparing for a military option? Mobilizing our already overstretched armed forces? Deploying battleships and carriers? Let us not forget that our actions in the region are carefully monitored by the increasingly hostile, Iran-friendly Russians. An unprovoked, and disproportionate show of force would be incredibly dangerous. Obama answers by saying “it is sufficient to say that I would not take the military option off the table,” which is the perfect answer. Sabre-rattling has always been the modus operandi of the Republican party and while they strike down Democrats for being weak on defense, they readily risk the lives of tens of thousands of American soliders to sort out their geopolitical pissing contest.
3:31 True to form, O’Reilly’s douchebaggery comes out in full force as he shoehorns his last word into the discussion and ends the conversation.
3:43 O’Reilly had to dig deep into this thesaurus, calling Obama’s prescience to the difficulties of the Iraqi War “perspicacious,” to demonstrate the “fair and balanced” nature of his judgement. Obama smirks. He’s thinking the same thing . But on this show, no compliment is left unpaired without harsh disapproval calling him “desperately wrong” on the surge. Obama defends himself as having made a well measured decision given five years of seemlingly no progress and general mismangement of the war.
“It worked, c’mon!” O’Reilly goads. There is so much false reasoning its ridiculous. It’s like saying, let’s burn a trillion dollars to appease the war fairies, and if “successful”, claim the decision to burn a trillion dollars correct. How do viewers stand for this?
6:38 O’Reilly attacks with allusions to confrontational, controversial remarks Obama made about Pakistan a few months back and when the Senator offers a substantial rebuttal, he completely switches gears and asks “so you’re going to allow the Islamic fundamentalist take over?” Talks about extremes. You’re right Bill, people only operate in a binary fashion. And that whole ‘let’s appease Pakistan’ thing went up in flames when Musharref was basically thrown out of office last week. Man I’m glad we had his support!
Good god, this is only a seven minute interview and I’m already all worked up.
