If you’ve been wondering why you’re having trouble understanding Quantum Mechanics, or conjugating Spanish verbs, or following Sarah Palin’s logic, Bill O’Reilly has the explanation: You’re just a stupid American.
That’s right. According to the Sage of Fox News, “Many Americans are simply dumb.” And that’s not some lefty mischaracterization, or a soundbite taken out of context. It’s a direct quote (video below). O’Reilly was discussing a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that showed that 62% of respondents believe the nation is on the wrong track. Not surprisingly, O’Reilly agreed because, in his view, the economy is soft (it’s booming) and earnings are stagnant (they’re at record highs).
What O’Reilly was dumbfounded by was that, despite the public’s dissatisfaction with the nation’s direction, the poll also showed that Vice-President Joe Biden, if he were to run for president, would beat every Republican he was matched against. While he didn’t bring it up, the same is true in most cases for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in many polls. But O’Reilly just couldn’t grasp how this could happen. He thinks that if polls show that Americans express an affinity for Democrats like Biden then “Americans are losing it.” He laughingly asked “Why would you vote for him?” And then he provided the answer:
“Talking Points believes the answer to that question is kind of cruel. Many Americans are simply dumb. They don’t know what’s going on. They don’t pay attention. They don’t care.”
So there you have it. If you don’t have the same electoral preferences as Bill O’Reilly, you are obviously a lazy, uncaring, idiot. And especially if you have a positive impression of President Obama, or anything associated with his administration, you’re probably crazy. It’s a viewpoint that exposes the shallowness of O’Reilly’s thinking. He apparently is incapable of entertaining the notion that Americans think the country is on the wrong track at least in part because of Republican obstructionism in Congress rather than any dissatisfaction with the President. And that’s a more likely scenario since most polls show that Obama and the Democrats are held in higher esteem than the GOP. It’s not even close. Obama currently has a 48 percent approval rating, compared to 14 percent for Congress.
This isn’t the first time that O’Reilly has put his contempt for the American people on display. Last year, in a similar response to a poll that he couldn’t comprehend, O’Reilly complained that…
“The harsh truth is that many of us are blatantly ignorant and lazy. We simply will not pay attention to the world around us. We get our information from other people, who may be as dumb as we are.”
Once again, O’Reilly’s definition of ignorant was tied to support for our president. Actually, since he used the inclusive pronouns “we” and “us” he isn’t far off from the truth. So long as he’s referring to himself, the terms “ignorant, lazy” and “dumb.” are entirely appropriate. But he shouldn’t lump the rest of America into the same group. He did much the same thing when he demeaned American voters saying that…
“Informed voters will not be swayed by media coverage, but millions of Americans are simply uninformed.”
This pattern of disrespect for the intelligence of the American people is unmistakable. But it’s even more galling coming from one of the most flagrantly ignorant pundits, with a long record of being a pathological liar. However, his audience won’t hold any of this against him because they believe that they are part of a privileged class of knowledge holders in whom the future depends. A tenet of the right contends that conservatives have a unique intelligence that escapes the rest of society. Only they have access to the universal truths that are being suppressed by the so-called “liberal” media. And, consequently, they are not stupid, they are special. And they are the disciples of America’s saviors. God help us all.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
Don’t forget Neil Cavuto explained recently how he presents the news:
*** September 30 edition of Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto
So, we can interpret this to mean that Cavuto just admitted to just making it up and that he has no idea?
There’s your new slogan for Fox News. And we got it the same way the FoxPods do it: taking something completely out of context to turn it into total b***ls***t. Stupid is as stupid does. What do you think?
Does O’Reilly know of John Cleese’s take on FOX? Cleese said in 2014 that FOX viewers are too stupid to know that they’re stupid. You have to have some intellect to know that you’re stupid. They don’t have any.
He’s the dumb one. And he has a new pulp non-fiction book on St. Ronnie. We can imagine how it panders to the Republican icon whom they choose to forget raised taxes, exponentially increased the deficit, and led us into an arms scandal with the Iran-Contra fiasco. But it will be a delightful sequel to his “Finding Jesus.” His co-authors, I suspect, are well-paid as he wouldn’t know the first thing about research and documentation. He can’t even document his own reportage which has proven to be falsified. I suspect he’s suffering from early onset dementia. But on FOX, how would we know?
Yup.
What a complete and utter idiot O’Reilly is! And he is so smug and full of himself it’d hard to watch him without laughing. One thing is certain he sure hates all that newfangled technology. He went on and on about how “them smart-phones and computers sure do make people dumb”. What a clueless Neanderthal he is! It’s pretty amazing that someone from the network that actually makes people less informed and therefore dumber is spouting this nonsense. The comedy just keeps writing itself with these clueless twits. He and Fox make me weep for my country.
“So there you have it. If you don’t have the same electoral preferences as Bill O’Reilly, you are obviously a lazy, uncaring, idiot. And especially if you have a positive impression of President Obama, or anything associated with his administration, you’re probably crazy”
Looks like you and Bill O have something in common – just the political preferences are different. You both are blind followers of your “team” and think any other belief is nonsense and/or stupid. He was much more general with the “stupid” label, but you both use it in similar ways.
However Mark hasn’t called all of America dumb here nor has he said they are just because they don’t follow his views.
You asserted that statement yourself.
How dare you point out logical facts to Steve. What’s more, if I call anyone stupid I back it up. Case in point, this article that shows specifically how O’Reilly is stupid for calling people stupid.
Many people are aware of the polls showing that FoxNewz viewers are less well informed than even people who don’t watch or read news at all… but none of the people who know that are actually FoxNewz viewers! There’s that Dunning-Kruger Effect again.
How many of O’Really‘s regular viewers know that he is a shameless liar who lies for a living? What TV pundits do is not very different from what politicians do nowadays. Politicians influence legislation and pundits influence voters, so essentially they’re all politicians… and all politicians lie.
As a registered Green and a card-carrying anarcho-radical, I really hate defending Democrats, but… I will explain why I can coexist with them. Democrats (politicians, that is) are Situational Liars, whereas Republicans are Pathological Liars. Situational Liars are good at spin and misdirection, but only to benefit what they see as a “greater good” and usually don’t take great pleasure in lying.
But the Pathological Liars of the TeaParty/GOP axis lie constantly. Their whole agenda is based on huge, evil lies (endless war, reaganomics, religion, the domestic police-state, etc) that are so entrenched in Uh’merican culture that the lies have become a self-contained ideology and they literally don’t know they are lying anymore! They used to know. They knew they were lying about the Southern Strategy, Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc… but by the time Newt Gingrich came to power the pathology was taking hold, and when Tom DeLay took over the lies and corruption became Business As Usual.
So when do we stop Thinking Liberal and start Acting Radical?
The agenda you note is only applicable to the GOP – Tea Party is not anything like that. It’s why the Tea Party came to exist – that is what the GOP came to represent, which isn’t what conservatism is about. Don’t fall for the leftist propaganda – leave that to Mark.
I know some TeaPartiers personally – I’ll stand by my comment.
How many? a few? Are you generalizing based on your limited experience?
Are the Tea Party that same party that put in power and support a man called Ted Cruz who is trying to shut down the government based on what a series of fraudulant and deceptive videos say?
If they have withdrawn their support of him I haven’t heard of it.
Actually, there is no Tea Party. It is just a subset of the Republican Party. Every single Person in Congress who associates with the Tea Party is a Republican. And just about every voter who associates with the Tea Party votes Republican. The whole thing is a sham.
Mark’s explanation is mostly right – it is a backlash by republicans against the republican party due to the ridiculously NON conservative GW Bush behavior and the lying by republican candidates – always suggesting they are a small government candidate, but then they get in control and spend like crazy and grow parts of government beyond anything reasonable and run up deficits and debt. Years of this nonsense coming to a head. It’s not a sham in the sense Mark wants to suggest, but it is focused on the republican party as it WAS the home of conservatism but no longer represents it. Where Mark goes wrong is that somehow these people who are disaffected with the GOP would somehow migrate to the democratic party – but the democratic party isn’t an option with their leftist socialist BIG government views being contradictory to the goals of the old republican party that actually represented conservatism. The Tea Party movement is misrepresented as extreme by Mark and any other leftist kook as well as the establishment GOP because it runs counter to the goals of these people – which is to maintain power at all costs. It’s where Mark and the GOP are alike – absolute control by government over all aspects of society – which gives the powers in government the role they want. For the Tea Party to not to be ineffective, an alternative would need to emerge, but hasn’t….so we’re stuck with a bad choice in the GOP and an absolutely horrible choice in the democratic party. divided government is all we have now, so I say let it continue until is destroys itself.
My “limited experience”? Oh no, you don’t wanna go there. I’m not some elite, latte-swilling, big city librul who only sees conservatives on TV. I grew up deep in the bowels of rightwing traditionalism. The TeaPartiers I know are/were close friends from childhood. I know their beliefs & attitudes like the back of my hand. When Democrats wonder aloud what TP heroes like Cruz and Palin are thinking – I don’t wonder – I know all too well. I’ve seen this country from its grimy underbelly and my personal, political & philosophical journey has taken me much farther than most educated, middle class folks could ever comprehend. I’m not gonna tell you what I really think about the Tea Party, just observe their own words & actions since they took over Congress. That should be enough.
Your paragraph suggests you have a very shallow understanding of it. I spent a lot of time too discussing and reading on politics and ideology and have found, from my own interactions with left wingers of many stripes that there is much more in common than different when talking about the actual people who hold these views. What I’ve found, and lefties I talk to agree generally with this assessment, is that people – both left and right – generally want the same things in terms of outcomes – it’s the means to those ends that vary greatly and is where the differences truly come out. You must have grown up around a very unique group of people or your entire group of acquaintances is brainwashed by Fox News. Anyone who actually thinks doesn’t see these things as you note “endless war, reaganomics, religion, the domestic police-state, etc”
I’ll qualify that with respect to reaganomics – but that issue is more about people keeping more of their own hard earned money to do as they please and not have it taken involuntarily as it is for government to piss away on things it shouldn’t. What those things are of course is an area of debate of course.
Maybe you should enlarge your test group and keep an open mind – you will find it isn’t quite as you suggest and your own closed minded attitude influences you more than you realize.
Oh, I may be more open-minded than you think (people who actually know me would likely testify that I’m probably open-minded to a fault) and I do understand that there are many different varieties of conservative with a wide range of ideas. There are some “principled conservatives” that I really admire and have read & listened to, even tho I often disagree with their views, I respect that they tell the truth and are not fulla-shit know-nothings. Andrew J. Bacevich and John W. Dean are two, off the top of my head, that are decent & wise conservatives. In my life I’ve probably met a coupla people like that, but by far, most of the TeaParty/GOP supporters I have talked to tend to fall into the fulla-shit, ignorant & proud, hostile & bigoted, redneck & racist, and bible-thumping varieties. I do wish that those were not the people that took control of the Tea Party, but they did. There just weren’t enough of the thoughtful “armchair libertarians” in that crowd to steer them in a positive direction. That’s too bad. And the harm those flaming assholes are doing to this country is devastating and unforgivable. I might seem “shallow” to you, but a few good apples are not enough to justify a political movement that has done no good for anybody and just inflames the Culture War more every day.
Bill O’Reilly is a big dumb mick who is at best 2nd generation, who has nothing to say except “I’m a big dumb MICK Fathead” & I wish he would get hit by a garbage truck. I have Irish blood, but it is the CORRECT kind of Irish blood. This guy can bite me twice.
With respect, Billdo is not worthy of being called a MICK — his own boss, Roger Ailes, just calls him a book salesman with a TV show.