In yesterday’s Talking Points Memo, Bill O’Reilly harangued David Barger, the CEO of JetBlue, for being a sponsor of the YearlyKos convention. He had his producer stalk Barger and ask questions that implied that the DailyKos website was a hate-filled enterprise. O’Reilly even compared it to the KKK and the Nazis.
In today’s TPM, O’Reilly announced that Barger sent him a response to his ambush interview that said that the airline’s only connection to YearlyKos was that it provided 10 flight vouchers. He went on to say that JetBlue has requested to be removed as a sponsor.
If true, that would be a cowardly act on the part of JetBlue. Capitulating to bullies like O’Reilly is never a good idea. Not only does it feed their egos, but it suggests agreement with allegations.
Needless to say, O’Reilly’s allegations were absurd. At best they represented a few nutcases that do not speak for the web site, its operators, or its community. On the other hand, O’Reilly himself has said innumerable hateful things like the one at the left. Indiana University published a study that found that:
“O’Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.”
I documented O’Reilly’s unique abuse of language in an interactive portrait:
Bill O’Reilly: Propaganda Pimp.
However, what really makes this interesting is that Markos of the DailyKos denies that JetBlue has pulled their sponsorship. This, of course, would mean that O’Reilly is lying.
Wow. Do ya think?
Update: It appears that JetBlue did in fact bail, but as far as I’m concerned, nothing has changed because, however this settles, these enduring facts remain:
JetBlue are still cowards; O’Reilly is still a liar and he misrepresented DailyKos with his cherry-picked references and comparisons to the KKK and Nazis; O’Reilly is still the biggest hate-monger on television (see Propaganda Pimp above).