Bill O’Reilly vs. Alan Colmes Family Spat Shows Why There’s Fox News…And There’s Everyone Else

Mediaite.com:

George W. Bush wins the 2000 Presidential Election by (in essence) 537 votes; Fox News goes to #1 in the cable news race a few months later. 

Bush narrowly beats John Kerry in 2004. Not surprisingly, Fox is still #1, and by a wider margin. 

Barack Obama soundly defeats John McCain in 2008; Fox is still #1 by a Secretariat-esque margin. 

Mr. Obama decisively beats Mitt Romney four months ago; Regardless of which party holds executive power, Fox is still decimating the competition, albeit by a slightly smaller-than-usual margin. Sure, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell are periodically beating Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren in the demo, but for 22 other hours out of the day, it’s not even a fair fight. 

So why does this keep happening? 

Why, for the better part of 12 years, can’t anyone seriously challenge Fox News? 

The country IS becoming more socially progressive, whether it be gay rights, legal pot or its attitude toward illegal immigrants. 

So why isn’t the country—of which 51.1 percent of its registered voters went for Mr. Obama last fall—moving away from a network that many of its critics call an extension of the Republican Party? 

The answer played itself out again this week starting on Tuesday’s night O’Reilly Factor: Bill O’Reilly is speaking with his usual Tuesday night guests in the form of Monica Crowley (conservative) and Alan Colmes (liberal). This is a segment that has existed for years. Colmes is married to Crowley’s sister, bringing a Carville-Matalin element (sort of) to the show. The topic is sequester, who’s to blame, and particularly if the President has any inclination to ever cut anything given his record over his first 50 months in office. 

Part I: O’Reilly claims that Mr. Obama has no inclination to reduce spending, wants Colmes to specifically list what the President is willing to eliminate. 

Part II: Colmes claims that Mr. Obama has been receptive to Medicare and other entitlement cuts, but is speaking in general terms and therefore isn’t as specific as O’Reilly wants…

Part III: O’Reilly (clearly frustrated), calls Colmes a liar, and comes close to dropping an s-bomb on the air, characterizing Colmes’ argument is “bull-blank” and “jack”. The 63-year-old host proceeds to point his finger at his longtime co-worker no less than a half-dozen times, but later apologizes for calling Colmes a liar (while still maintaining he wasn’t being specific in terms of exact cuts). 

But it doesn’t end there on Tuesday’s show: John Stossel, longtime ABC News reporter now Fox News libertarian, doesn’t stick with the original segment topic he was invited on The Factor to talk about. Instead, he tells O’Reilly to his face that he was “obnoxious” and “out of line.” 

The next day, there is no memorandum from Roger Ailes or Bill Shine (Senior VP of Programming) stating that no one else at the network should talk about the incidents. Instead, the other opinion shows—knowing that they’ve got a hot story—use that freedom to run with it, give it legs. 

The hosts of The Five predictably support O’Reilly in his argument that the President doesn’t have the ability or courage to cut spending. Juan Williams, filling in for the show’s lone liberal, Bob Beckel, gamely defends Colmes. 

Three hours later, Kirsten Powers—the “female Colmes” who progressives loathe for actually having the audacity to occasionally go against the usual talking points of her party—confronts O’Reilly directly on his show, says he’s “100 percent wrong” in his argument against the President. She goes on to detail $400 billion in cuts toward federal healthcare spending Mr. Obama proposed, even tweeting out the PDF she used after the segment to drive home her point. 

Remember, O’Reilly is the LeBron James at Fox News: He’s the network’s highest-paid, most influential, most revered player on the team. He’s authored multiple best-sellers, he’s host of a program that destroys everything in the ratings and has since 2001, and is such an influential personality that he receives regular guest invites on CBS, NBC, ABC, The View, Letterman and Leno. 

Yet here’s Kirsten Powers, a liberal contributor, a fellow employee at Fox News who gets infinite crap on a daily basis from fellow liberals for sleeping with the enemy, telling him he’s full of it on his own program. 

You want to know why Fox is #1? 

Let me answer a question with a question: Could you ever picture this scenario happening at MSNBC or CNN? 

Let’s use MSNBC as an example since it’s more opinion-based (hell, it’s ALL opinion-based now): 

Rachel Maddow invites Michael Steele (former head of the RNC and current MSNBC contributor) on her program. They get into an argument over whatever, things get heated. Maddow calls Steele a liar, saying his perspective is complete BS. 

Could you ever, EVER, see O’Donnell calling out Maddow for her treatment of Steele? How about The Cycle? Would S.E. Cupp rush to Steele’s defense while Touré mocked him while defending Maddow? 

Would, say, Steve Schmidt (MSNBC contributor, former McCain campaign manager) come on Maddow’s show the next night and say to her face that she was totally out of line?

The answer, from what we’ve seen, is no. Sure, there is disagreement between guests, small-time players on the network…but not to this degree, not to this level of candor.

Hardball has its share of yelling (mainly from the host) but does that disagreement carry into other shows?

Not on your life. 

Note: This isn’t a moral argument based on good behavior or a better code of ethics. Rather, it is simply one that focuses on which network is more compelling in terms of its personalities and the manner by which they interact with each other. 

And that’s why there’s Fox, and there’s everyone else. It is much like the dynamic of the Howard Stern Show: A mix of characters all willing to take on Howard and each other, and in the most honest of ways.

There simply is no filter on Howard’s show, and the audience revels in being able to witness a family fight on an almost-daily basis. Most importantly, none of the fights are planned or scripted. 

It just happens, just like it does in homes every day across the country. People can relate and therefore can appreciate what they’re hearing. 

Lawrence O’Donnell sat in judgment of the O’Reilly-Colmes brawl just hours after it happened, mocking the former for losing his cool. 

What O’Donnell doesn’t get, what his network will never understand, is that this is the kind of stuff that makes O’Reilly and Fox untouchable: They’re willing to attack each other based on their opinions and principles, all while his brethren at MSNBC wouldn’t dare call out its own in a similar situation. 

Debate and strong opinions are what cable news is all about, even when those opinions are directed at those you may run into at the company cafeteria. 

Fox News gets that. 

Everyone else…well…just look at the numbers.

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Jon Stewart Applauds Rand Paul For Using Filibuster Over Drones Issue ‘Worth Kicking Up A Fuss For’

Mediaite.com:

Jon Stewart tonight briefly addressed today’s filibuster by Senator Rand Paul, acknowledging that while he doesn’t see eye-to-eye on much with the Kentucky senator, he credited his attempt to make a very public fuss over whether the government can order drone strikes on American citizens on U.S. soil. The rest of the segment was devoted to Head Start and conservative opposition to President Obama calling for universal pre-school, with Stewart asking what, if not children’s education, the country should invest in.

Stewart was stunned to find that Paul was actually doing a “good old-fashioned actual talkie filibuster” like the kind our grandparents used to see, highlighting how attorney general Eric Holder basically said in a letter to Paul that technically speaking, they would necessarily rule it out. Stewart praised Paul for using the filibuster “the way it’s meant to be used” and said that “drone oversight is one [issue] certainly worth kicking up a fuss for.”

Stewart then moved on to conservatives raising questions about Obama’s proposal of universal pre-school. Stewart mocked objections ranging from the rising amount of paperwork to how pre-school is “not effective after the third grade,” dryly saying that “at that point you’re supposed to go to the fourth grade!”

Stewart said that one could either suggest that Head Start could be applied to the third grade, or that the “benefits of the program only last a few years, so fuck it!” Stewart marveled at how people were objecting to how much money it would cost, suggesting that children should just “get jobs and pay for it themselves!” He pointed out how the military wants more people to have basic early child development, suggesting a few military division: “SEAL Team Actually 6.”

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Joe Scarborough Scolds Paul Krugman For Being a Pompous Jerk and Sighing Like Al Gore

Newsbusters.org:

As NewsBusters reported earlier, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had quite a heated discussion about the budget, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

Near its conclusion, Scarborough actually scolded Krugman for pompously behaving like a sighing Al Gore (video follows with transcript and commentary)

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How (White) Feminism is Failing Quvenzhane Wallis

PopularCritic.com:

As if the Onion’s use of the c-word to describe nine-year old Quvenzhane Wallis wasn’t humiliating enough, now we have self proclaimed feminists encouraging us (society) to let it go because the word ‘cunt’ shouldn’t be a bad word.

No. ‘Cunt’ should be empowering and freeing. It should be used to describe sexual passion and women (and men perhaps too) should be able to use the word liberally; at least that’s the message from Jezebel. In their most recent article about why the insult, which was hurled at a child, should not be cause for concern, they had this to say:

“Basically, empowered women are dangerous women” and “there are no other truly empowering words for the female genitalia” besides the c-word.”Cunt” isn’t scientific, it’s erotic. “Cunt” doesn’t refer to a baby cat or a treasure chest. It conveys purposeful sexual power, not submission. It’s mature. Women get called cunts when they reject sexual advances and assert themselves in the workplace; in other words, when they don’t play nice.”

So, by the online magazine’s definition, the word ‘cunt’ is sexual in nature and is only used when a woman doesn’t “stay in her place.” If that’s the case, then we collectively should be even more outraged that the Onion called Quvenzhane Wallis the c-word. Because little Miss Wallis has a sense of humor beyond her years, seems completely at ease in interviews as she would be in school and is radiant and, god forbid, confident, she was called out of her name in a most horrendous fashion. Because this sexualized word should be empowering, society should just let it go? Never mind that a child was called a sexually demeaning term. Never mind that it was a completely inappropriate way to describe how one feels about the way someone presents themselves publicly. Let’s just let it go…because ‘cunt’ shouldn’t be a bad word. Right?

One commenter on the site suggested that people might be less sensitive to how ridiculous, sexist and demeaning that insult was because the target of it is an African American girl. In her comment, she compared this incident with Wallis to Kanye West’s infamous interruption of Taylor Swift’s MTV video music award acceptance speech in 2009 and the outcry of response to it.

“Even after he (West) issued a public apology, I don’t recall anyone saying, “well let’s move on he apologized” as I have seen with Miss. Wallis. Calls to boycott his music, the story was covered on major news outlets for weeks, months and even for about a year or a blurb would pop up. It took quite some time for his career to bounce back. Will the Onion lose some readership, some sponsorship, maybe, but I have a feeling that it will be business as usual soon enough.”

The commenter went on to say, “There was also a tidal wave of out pouring, love and support for Taylor. Not that she didn’t deserve it, but could you imagine if at the time how millions could rush to the defense of America’s Sweetheart/Girl Next Door for being humiliated and rudely interrupted what would have happened if the C word was applied to her or the next popular child star/It girl.”

Indeed, the reaction to Miss Wallis being called a ‘cunt’ is business at usual. The powerful women over at Jezebel are encouraging people to focus on the big picture and forget the ‘distractions’ that detract from the real issues. They write, “Focusing on the word “cunt” is a distraction; for example, the Onion debacle kinda overshadowed how sexist the Oscars were overall. And that’s the goal, right? If we’re busy being outraged over how “cunt” is the nastiest nasty thing to ever nasty, we’ll waste the energy we need to fight against a system that denigrates women for wanting to be treated as equals.”

Clutch magazine must have read the Jezebel article and had the same reaction that we at Popular Critic did. In their latest piece on this issue, they wrote, “They (white feminists) encourage us to shrug off our Blackness for the greater feminist good…” It certainly seems as though that’s what the writer at Jezebel was implying in the statement above.

If decrying an online publication for calling a nine-year old a cunt is a waste of energy, then it’s unclear what issues feminists should be wasting energy on. As far as this feminist is concerned, this issue is certainly worthy to be tackled…and publicly at that. In a culture of routine slut-shaming, turning a blind eye to the targets of such sexist comments being pre-pubescent girls would be a colossal failure in feminism. In fact, by not tackling this issue and actually advocating for people to ‘move on’ from Academy Award nominee Quvenzhane being called a ‘cunt’ is empowering those who think it’s okay to insult women and girls based on nothing more than their disdain for how they carry themselves.

RELATED:  Where Were White Feminists Speaking Out For Quvenzhané Wallis?

Ann Romney Quote of the Day!

"I Am Happy To Blame The Media For Mitt’s 2012 Loss"

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