How Many Lies Did Bill O'Reilly Just Put Into His Own On-Air Correction?
So there has been a late August GOP whineathon about how liberals were co-opting noted Republican Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by pretending he was some sort of liberal like them, when everyone knows Martin Luther King believed in the free market and race-blindness, because Republicans are the real not-racists.
Then they were all waah waah waah, why are you being so partisan, black people, by not inviting any of us to celebrate this great Republican, and then they were all, oh, you did invite a whole bunch of us, but we were taking care of the people's business in Jackson Hole and meeting with the oil industry.
(Really, Eric Cantor and John Boehner should have just lied about it. Fox would have run their side of the story, and half the country would believe it to be so.)
Then a funny thing happened: Bill O'Reilly corrected himself, on air, and apologized for being wrong in asserting that no Republicans had been invited to speak at the March on Washington OFA rally. And that is when a monkey flew out of our butt!
But here is the important question: Did Bill O'Reilly lie while he was correcting himself?
SURE WHY NOT.
First, it was probably a lie that Bill O'Reilly just "assssuuuuuuumed" (his emphasis) that no Republicans had been invited to speak at the March on Washington anniversary celebration. It was probably a lie, because that was in fact a conservative talking point all day! Including, oddly, on Fox!
Second, no, we do not watch The O'Reilly Factor "for accuracy." In fact, we do not watch it at all unless someone else has done the yeoman's service of clipping it for us. (In this case, NYMag. Thanks guys!)
There were probably a whole bunch of other lies in there too, as the clip is 45 seconds long.
That counter is perverse, in that it assigns most of the credit to a bill to its weakest, most reluctant supporters. Pshaw! I say.
Most of the Ayes in both chambers for both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights, in every vote (for cloture, for passage, for the conference report) were Democrats. And the thing about Democrats voting in favor at higher rates than Republicans after you control for region also applies to the Civil Rights Act. Zero Republican votes were required to pass the Voting Rights Act in the House - an overall majority of votes were Democratic Ayes.
The Guardian also pointed out that <a href="http:\/\/voteview.com\/blog\/\?p=525" target="_blank">VoteView&#039;s ideological/regional data</a> show that while region was the strongest predictor of voting position for those two Acts, party affiliation didn&#039;t even come in second as a predictor - liberal/conservative ideology did. Which brings us back to the fact that today&#039;s Republican party is not 1964&#039;s - the leftmost, median and mean Republicans are all much further right today than they were back then. The shedding of Dixiecrats also means that the reverse is even more true - the rightmost, median and mean Democrat is hugely further left today than in 1964. Let&#039;s not forget, Strom Thurmond vigorously opposed the Civil Rights Act <em>as a Democrat</em>, but by the time the Voting Rights Act was getting passed he&#039;d already started leading the reddening of the South.
THAT is beautiful!