Bill O'Reilly Is Being Called Out For His Lies (Finally)

(This caricature of Fox News analyst Bill O'Reilly is by DonkeyHotey.)

It has been interesting to see the mainstream media going crazy over a mistruth by NBC's Brian Williams on a talk show. Especially since Williams has not been accused on telling untruths on his news program -- while the talking heads over at Fox News lie repeatedly on their own "news" programs.

And perhaps the most egregious of the Fox liars is Bill O'Reilly -- a narcissist who doesn't hesitate to stretch the truth to make himself look good, or to embarrass a guest he doesn't like. But if there is one thing good about the Williams mini-scandal, it is that others are now being looked at for what they have said on the air -- and the first to have his feet held to the fire is Bill O'Reilly.

Bill had claimed that he knew what it was like to be under fire in a combat situation, since he had been in the Falkland Islands during the war there between Argentina and Great Britain. That was a lie. The closest O'Reilly got to the fighting was Buenos Aires -- about 1200 miles from the fighting.

And that wasn't his only lie. He also claimed to have been outside the home of a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, and to have heard the shot when the man committed suicide. It turns out that he was not even in the same city when that happened.

Now a third lie has been exposed. O'Reilly said he saw nuns being shot in the back of the head in El Salvador. It turns out he couldn't have been there, and there was no video of that happening. The most he could have done is see still photos of the dead nuns  which were shown by many media outlets.

Fox News has been very vocal in demonizing Brian Williams (and I don't defend him for his silly remark), saying he should be terminated. What then are they going to do about Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly's comments weren't an off-hand remark on an entertainment talk show, but were told on his own "news" show -- and that makes them even worse. I doubt that Fox News will fire O'Reilly (or even punish him in any way), but they should.

Now it's time for the major media to examine some of the claims made by other Fox News personalities.

Ratings Drop Sharply For Hannity At Fox

The two most popular commentators on Fox News, by far, are Bill O'Reilly (who gets about 4.1 million viewers) and Sean Hannity (who gets slightly less than 4 million viewers). Fox already had O'Reilly locked into a long-term contract, and last April they moved to do the same for Hannity. Although the salary numbers were not released, it is known that Hannity has been signed through the 2016 campaign season at least. This had the Fox News executives feeling pretty smug -- at least until the election debacle that was totally misjudged by Fox commentators.

For months before the election, Hannity preached to his viewers that Willard Mitt Romney was a lock to win the election, and he brought on a whole cadre of right-wingers to back up his perception. Even when polls began to show that Romney was falling short of expectations, especially in the critical swing states, Hannity keep up his misguided prediction (saying the polls were skewed and Romney was really ahead). It is because of this total misreading of the American electorate by Hannity and his Fox News cohorts, that right-wingers (who depend exclusively on Fox for their "news") were so shocked at the real thumping the Republicans received on election night.

Now Fox News might be regretting the long contract they gave Hannity, because it looks like a large part of his audience has abandoned him (perhaps angry because he was so badly wrong about the election). Hannity's December numbers have dropped from nearly 4 million viewers to around 1.95 million viewers. That's a drop in his rating of nearly 50%. And that's not all of the bad news. In the 25 to 54 age demographic (the group most coveted by advertisers), the drop was even more -- falling more than 50%.

In addition, for the first time at least two of the MSNBC commentators have received ratings higher than Hannity's. Those commentators are Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell. A few months ago, most people would not have thought that was possible.

O'Reilly fared a little better than Hannity did. His viewership only dropped by about 30%. The December ratings show he lost about 1.1 million viewers. It's starting to look like even right-wingers don't appreciate being lied to and told that things are going their way when the opposite is true.

Obama Was Telling The Truth (Sadly)

President Obama seems to have a strange desire to keep beating his head on a brick wall -- metaphorically speaking. He keeps going on Fox News, in spite of the fact that the people at Fox have not even tried to be fair toward him. After all their lies and name-calling toward the president they somehow keep getting interviews with him.

I hope the president is not silly enough to believe he can get the fringe right-wingers at Fox to change and start doing real "fair and balanced" news. If he does, then he has gone as far from rational thinking as the talking heads at Fox -- and that would not be good for the country.

In spite of all that, I found one exchange on Sunday between the president and the odious Bill O'Reilly interesting. O'Reilly asked the president about moving toward the center to improve his approval rating with Americans. The inference was that the socialist, big government liberal president is beginning to see the light and moving further to the right.

Obama denied that he has moved to the center saying, "I haven't. I didn't move to the center. I'm the same guy." O'Reilly didn't believe him. He and his cohorts have been calling Obama a leftist for so long that they can't recognize the truth when they hear it. And sadly, President Obama was telling him the truth.

I'm afraid that I was one of those fooled by the president during the 2008 campaign. He talked like a progressive during the primary campaign, and I bought it. I was wrong. President Obama is now, and always has been, a center-right president (in the mold of Carter and Clinton).

He made this crystal clear with his health care reform. Instead of going to a progressive health care program (like government run single-payer insurance), or including progressive ideas in the reform (like a public option), he left the private insurance companies in charge of American's health care (even to the point of them telling doctors what treatments will and won't be paid for). A few needed restraints were instituted to keep the private companies from some of their worst abuses, there is no doubt that the "reform" left Americans at the mercy of those giant private insurance companies.

It was the same with the "re-regulation" of Wall Street financial firms. A real progressive would have gone much further to rein in the abuses of Wall Street, but Obama was happy to make a few relatively minor changes -- and let the giant financial companies go on raping ordinary Americans.

President Obama is not as far to the right as Bush, Reagan, Palin, Bachmann and others, but that does not mean he is a progressive, or that he ever was one. And it's time for us leftists to realize that. Expecting President Obama to make real progressive changes to America (changes that are badly needed) will just result in a lot of disappointment.

Lesbian Gangs And Pink Pistols

For a long time, I've known that Bill O'Reilly likes to play fast and loose with the truth. But it now seems like he's gone even further into his own imaginary world -- a world where truth has no place.

On his June 21st broadcast, O'Reilly brought on an "expert" to claim that lesbian gangs, many of them carrying pink-colored pistols, are terrorizing our country. The expert said these gangs are operating nation-wide, beating men, raping women and indoctrinating young children into the homosexual lifestyle. The expert claimed that there are 150 of these lesbian gangs in the Washington DC area alone.

Of course, these accusations are nothing but outrageous lies. The lies have already been exposed by many gay and feminist blogs, so I won't bore you with more details of O'Reilly's fantasy journey that night (if you haven't read of this, go to SPLC's excellent website).

I was interested in what kind of expert would go on nationwide television and spread such ridiculous lies. His name is Rod Wheeler (pictured above) and he claims to be an expert on crime and criminal justice issues. He has been a guest expert over 500 times on Fox, MSNBC and Court TV.

One would think he must have a pretty impressive resume to have been called upon that many times for his expertise, right? Well let's examine that resume for a moment and see just how much of a criminal justice expert he really is.

Turns out that he has only seven years experience as a police officer, and was suspended from the force for testing positive for marijuana (I knew he had to be smoking something to come up with such outrageous lies). Spending seven years as a police officer is not nearly enough to qualify anyone as an "expert" in crime and criminal justice issues.

Most of the rest of his career was spent in the security department of the McDonald's Corporation, protecting their hamburgers from terrorists. He claims to have identified 250 points where a Big Mac is vulnerable to terrorist attack during production. Who knew the terrorists were after second-rate hamburgers?

Wheeler currently works for the American Institute of Baking, where he identifies himself as a "food defense specialist". I guess that means he's now protecting our sweet rolls and muffins from the terrorists.

Wheeler is also a member of the Jericho City of Praise -- an ultra-fundamentalist church that is openly and rabidly anti-homosexual. This explains where his anti-gay attitude comes from.

Wheeler has not earned and does not deserve to be called an expert on crime and criminal justice issues. He is simply a poser with an agenda, who will say anything to get on TV.

I would say O'Reilly needs to be more careful about the "experts" he chooses, except I believe he was careful in his choice. He carefully chose the person who would tell him what he wanted to hear.

What an evil joke both O'Reilly and Wheeler are!