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Fox's Bill O'Reilly opened up his show this Tuesday evening by using the death of former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello to opine over whether America was somehow "a better country" back in those days when, as Media Matters noted, white America was "kind of unified" and if that "made it easier for society to function."

I'm fairly sure that it did make it "easier for society to function" if you were a white male, like Bill-O. If you were a woman, or a minority... well... maybe not so much.

O'Reilly was also opining during the segment for the days back when America was "more wholesome." Pardon me if I have a little bit of trouble hearing from someone who is apparently in the middle of a divorce right now and can't control his temper because of it on that topic.

I don't want to hear about the "need to be more wholesome" from someone who had to settle a sexual harrassment suit with one of their former employees.

I don't want to hear about the "need to be more wholesome" from someone who was accused of harassing his ex-wife's boyfriend.

I don't want to hear about the "need to be more wholesome" from someone who is capable of visiting Sylvia's restaurant with the Rev. Al and making the ridiculous statement he did about the patrons and their so-called m-f**king iced tea.

Sadly, we're not likely to see O'Reilly off the air any time soon, along with his fellow Nixon-loving cheerleader here, Monica Crowley who was ready to take up his cause and argue with Alan Colmes. It's sad that the two of them here just literally proved what many of us have known all along about Fox and that is, they'd be more than happy to take most of the country back to the '50's socially and rolling back civil rights. Just don't bring back those tax rates. That would be treasonous!

h/t Media Matters

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I'm not sure how much of this is just political theater. Has Bill O'Reilly decided it's good television to act like a raving maniac in the hope of increasing his viewership over at Fox? Or is Bill-O just not unable to keep his temper in check because he's mad that he might have to fork out some more money in taxes? O'Reilly lost it with Alan Colmes, one of his regulars, last night. It was bad enough that even the generally mild-mannered Colmes, who put up with years of abuse as Hannity's sidekick on the same network, expressed his disgust at O'Reilly's over-the-top attack.

My fellow contributor here at C&L, Ellen has more here: O’Reilly Loses It Big Time With Alan Colmes:

Bill O’Reilly had a major meltdown tonight with Alan Colmes. It has to be seen to be believed but let’s just say that O’Reilly was screaming at Colmes that he’s a liar and Colmes respectfully but firmly shot back, “Don’t you call me a liar.” Later, O’Reilly seethed, “It’s jack what you’re saying. There’s another word for it but it’s an obscenity.” In a subsequent segment, John Stossel told O’Reilly he had been out of line and “obnoxious.”

O’Reilly started out with a vicious chip on his shoulder in his Talking Points commentary immediately preceding the discussion. Then he said:

It’s almost like Mr. Obama is sabotaging the country so he can reshape it. There comes a point where every nation in history gets what it deserves. Rome, Japan, Germany and Russia all were destroyed by venal leaders exploiting an apathetic population. I pray that doesn’t happen to us but we the people need to wise up fast.

Colmes came on and, as usual, did an excellent job holding up his end. And O’Reilly apologized to Colmes at the end. But not before he came off looking one big bloviating, bullying blowhard. It was a worse outburst than O’Reilly’s famous “Just shut up!” temper tantrum made famous in Outfoxed. And he kept simmering with rage afterward. Read on...

And as she noted, Media Matters took on Bill-O on as well: Confronted With Facts, O'Reilly Screams "Bullshit":

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Fresh off of the heels of the media complaining about their lack of access to President Obama and his golf outing with Tiger Woods and with Chris Wallace complaining that his was the only Sunday show where the new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough refused to make an appearance last week, the panel on their Saturday joke of a media watchdog show, Fox News Watch, decided to continue on with the carping with a good portion of the jeering done by one of their faux Democrats, Kirsten Powers.

It appears that this is just a rerun of the what the viewers were treated to on the same show last week, where, as News Corpse took note of, we were hearing some very similar complaints out of the same culprits:

Fox earned a ninth place showing by having been called on for questions fourteen times. That is only two fewer nods than CNN and the New York Times received. And if Fox can be described as having been shunned, then the Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR were victims of blatant and deliberate neglect since they came in even lower than Fox at tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth.

Nevertheless, Fox seems to be the only news outlet that is complaining about their treatment by the President. They devoted a segment of their Fox News Watch program to whining that they aren’t getting enough attention, poor things. Host Jon Scott started the bitch session by crying “Why does the president not like to call on us?” Jumping in without being recognized was Fox’s fake Democrat Kirsten Powers who shot back “Because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed. When Ed Henry asks questions to Jay Carney, inevitably Jay Carney ends up looking stupid because he doesn’t know how to answer the question. He’s used to pushing people around.” And she’s supposed to be the voice of the left on Fox’s fair and balanced roster.

With friends like Kirsten Powers who needs enemas? And that is a perfect illustration of why Obama ought to start shunning Fox News. It has never been a credible journalistic operation. It is an unabashed agent of the Republican Party whose only purpose is to bash the President and support the right-wing agenda.

Meanwhile, over at Dan Abrams' rag, Mediaite, Fox and Politico, or as Charlie Pierce calls Politico, The Tiger Beat on the Potomac, were being treated as though they actually have any legitimate complaints about lack of access to the White House and that somehow preventing them from acting like journalists, if that's what either of those organizations actually decided to do one of these days.

Fox’s Kirsten Powers To Panel: Chris Wallace ‘Should Be Proud’ Obama Won’t Go On His Show:

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Jon Stewart took the hypocrites over at Fox apart again for their cries of tyranny over President Obama's executive orders on gun violence in America -- which, as Stewart pointed out, somehow the likes of Sean Hannity or Dana Perino had absolutely no problem with when their buddy Bush was issuing them.

He also gave a little history lesson to all of the wingnuts out there who believe that the 2nd Amendment gives them some protection from government tyranny and who are throwing out ridiculous hypotheticals like saying that the Jews having guns would have protected them from Hitler or that we wouldn't have had slavery if African Americans were allowed to have guns.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Jason Jones took a few shots at the media and their obsession with poll watching this Wednesday evening. I don't know about anyone else, but the media's desire to treat politics like a sporting event instead of something which actually has real implications on peoples' lives is really giving me a headache of late, and Stewart just hit one of the reasons squarely on the head here.

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From this Saturday's joke of a media "watchdog" show over at Faux News, the panel members of Fox News Watch spent one of their segments again perpetuating the myth of the so-called "liberal media" and complaining that those "elitists" haven't shown hatchet-man Dinesh D'Souza enough respect. And we got treated to the false equivalency of them comparing D'Souza to the way Michael Moore has been treated by the media and the awards he's won, as opposed to them generally ignoring D'Souza.

Nonny already went through D'Souza's god-awful movie for us here, so just go read the post if you haven't already -- Doing the Right Wing Limbo – How Low Can They Go?. And judging from his terrible interview with Piers Morgan, which was featured in Nonny's post, and with Bill Maher and Cenk Uygur who both just took him apart, I think the best thing D'Souza could do for himself is to avoid doing any more interviews -- unless of course they're at Fox where he's just going to get softballs lobbed at him.

I hate to break it to the hacks at Fox, but D'Souza is being treated with disdain by the media because he deserves to be, not because of some supposed bias against conservatives. Once again rather than having an iota of concern for the truth, the talking heads at Fox are playing the poor, aggrieved victim-card for D'Souza, who supposedly just can't get a break from those liberal snobs who just want to keep him down. Break out the waaammmbulance. There are a whole lot more talented and truthful people out there all over the country who would love to have the money behind them that D'Souza's had to fund his hit pieces on President Obama. Sadly most of them will never be receiving the national attention or the money that D'Souza has been for cranking out his garbage to poison our public and political discourse.

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Poor old Bill-O was terribly upset that the Democrats used Teddy Kennedy to "club Mitt Romney over the head" with the tribute video they played of him at their convention this Tuesday night. We all know Republicans would never do a thing like that, unless of course it involves St. Ronnie. Then as always, IOKIYAR.

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Bill O'Reilly did his best to carry on the Fox mantra of demonizing the poor and the most vulnerable among us in his Talking Points Memo this Tuesday night by portraying anyone who depends on government programs as a bunch of weak, lazy moochers who don't want to work and who are happy to sit around waiting for their next welfare check in yet another edition of Bill O'Reilly really doesn't want to see his tax rate go up.

There are so many things wrong with this segment, it's hard to know where to begin, but Media Matters, who flagged this segment did a nice job here on how anti-poverty programs have actually kept millions out of poverty, countering O'Reilly's nonsense.

O'Reilly brought in Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley for a follow up to his opening segment and Colmes made some good points countering O'Reilly on taxation, who these programs are helping, the number of children and elderly involved and what not, but it wasn't enough to keep Crowley from defending O'Reilly's talking points and pretending that Democrats just want to keep everyone poor so those needing government assistance will vote for them.

What Crowley ignores is that if we had minimum wage keeping up with what anyone needs to earn as a living wage and CEO's not making hundreds of times more than their lowest paid workers, we would not need to be supplementing these people's incomes through the government, because their employers would be doing that instead.

People like Bill O'Reilly and Monica Crowley are much more concerned with trying to demonize the poor as they did here than ever take a look at why so many who are working for a living can barely afford to get by and are looking to the government for assistance.

Someone needs to ask both of these clowns why the taxpayers should be subsidizing Walmart and their ilk because they don't want to pay their employees a living wage or cover their insurance costs and why that corporate welfare on the backs of the taxpayers is acceptable in the United States. Apparently that's alright as long as you're demonizing the people employed who need government assistance and not the company for raking in billions while being too cheap to pay their employees a living wage or for their health insurance.

I'm sure we'd get crickets in response if either Bill-O or his buddy Crowley ever found anything besides a mic at Fox put in front of their face.

Video of the panel segment following Bill-O's talking points memo below the fold.

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Ah yes... another day, another conservative out there on a wingnut welfare book tour, and as always, Fox News happy to promote them. This week it's Monica Crowley who's been making the rounds on Fox with one show after another allowing her to come on for a little fact-free time to smear President Obama.

Media Matters flagged the clip above here: Fox's Monica Crowley: "Kooks" In Democratic Party Have Taken U.S. "On A Socialist Joyride, Starting With" Obama and linked back to her appearance on Fox & Friends spouting similar nonsense unchallenged.

Apparently she got a little bit of push back over her book's accusations from Bill O'Reilly of all people. Addicting Info has more on that here: We’re All Going To Hell Or To Sweden According To Dr. Monica Crowley:

Fox news might not be fair and balanced, but it is definitely hilarious and unbelievable at times, and once again it has delivered with this latest interview between Dr. Monica Crowley and the Factor’s Bill O’Reilly. Crowley was appearing on the Factor to promote her new book called What the (Bleep) Just Happened? [...]

And in typical conservative fashion, Crowley goes after President Obama just in time for the 2012 elections, and she does it with some very interesting, yet somewhat predictable accusations. She starts by telling O’Reilly the usual, conservative talking points of how Obama’s only mission in life is to destroy the goals and principles that made America so great, as evidenced by her discontent with the spiraling, sixteen-trillion-dollar debt and the high unemployment numbers, which she blames wholly on President Obama’s failed (according to her), economic policies.

But the most interesting tidbit of information that Crowley shared with O’Reilly and the Fox News audience in her hot new book is the startling, new revelation that President Obama is not the person that he says he is—basically an imposter, which is a sentiment that has been echoed before, specifically by people like Donald Trump and his Birther brigade.

So are you ready for this? You might want to sit down. According to Dr. Monica Crowley, President Obama is as close to being a card-carrying Communist as one can be without actually living in China or Russia, and it didn’t stop there. Apparently, President Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was part of a socialist organization in Kenya, and his mother, Ann Dunham, was a regular member of a place described by Crowley as the Little Red Church—red meaning communist red and this was the upbringing to which the young Obama subjected and by which he was indoctrinated.

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Jon Stewart returned from vacation this Tuesday night and responded to the article he read at the Huffington Post where Fox News chief Roger Ailes went after Stewart for admitting he's a "Socialist" and wouldn't do well without Fox. What we got in response was Stewart doing a really good job of explaining why being called a Socialist should not be a pejorative.

As far as not having enough material for his show if Fox did not exist, I'm sure Fox existing makes his job as a comedian easier, but as long as we've got wingnut politicians who are on the air either at the other networks or on C-SPAN spouting nonsense from the House or Senate floor, I don't think Stewart is in danger of running out of new material that's ripe for mockery any time soon.

After having a bit of fun with his "scenario" about what actually happened during that meeting with Ailes, Stewart went on to explain just what he meant by his remarks and what he considers "Socialism" such as protecting things like Social Security and Medicare.

He also took some shots at Republicans for pretending the health care law, or "Obamacare" is that dreaded "s- word", Socialism:

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