Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not, you have to admire his agreeing to be interviewed by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News last Sunday. O’Reilly was his usual arrogant, classless, and disrespectful self, while Obama displayed elegance and enormous dignity and succeeded in making it look like he didn’t notice O'Reilly's...um...shortcomings. Personally, I wouldn’t have had the patience to sit politely by while Bill O’Reilly attempted to publicly insult my intelligence but then again, I'm never going to run for an elected office.
By far, my favorite moment was when O’Reilly asked the President if it bothered him that so many people hate him (although he should have added “…simply because you’re black”), the President’s reply was priceless:
"The people who dislike you don't know you. The folks who hate you, they don't know you." He also added, "What they hate is whatever funhouse mirror image of you that's out there. They don't know you. And so, you don't take it personally."
How many of us were told the same thing by our parents while growing up? (and I can see the President and First Lady saying the same thing to their kids). That’s one of the reasons I admire our President so much, he’s REAL and not afraid to show it. Yes, there are many things I’m upset with him about at the moment but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s pretty much unflappable, a genuine person to the core.
And perhaps, for the first time ever, Bill O’Reilly told the truth about something when he went on to say that extreme rhetoric would continue to thrive, because "there's a lot of money to be made if you can polarize people." So that means that he (and Beck & Limbaugh & Coulter & Hannity) know exactly what they are doing. Not surprisingly, there lies the big problem: it's always been about money, not what's necessarily best for the country - or what the real truth is, for that matter. It's about lining your pockets. I think it was Frank Zappa who said the US would be destroyed by Americans only too happy to sell their country down the road for a profit.
In the end, O'Reilly wasn't trying to get knowledge to share with his audience. He was trying to "get" the President and the President refused to play the game. To say the President was the better man doesn't even begin to cover it.
5 comments:
Spot on itsmecissy! You’re right about Obama. He’s a good man ...I just wish he had a little more Harry Truman in him, but then again could America handle it if he did?
As for the folks at Faux News:
Joseph Goebbels famously said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Hermann Goering said “Education is dangerous – Every educated person is a future enemy.
If these guys were alive today they would be very at home working for FOX, which makes me wonder which is worse – lying, and feeding public ignorance for ideological reasons like Hitler’s minions did, or lying, and feeding public ignorance for profit like Rupert Murdoch’s minions are doing? …Both are crimes in my mind.
Fox is, IMHO, why Sarah Palin did not disappear after the election. (sigh)
If he decides to run, I will vote for Obama again, with great pride and confidence in his abilities. The man inherited a mess. As the saying goes, he graduated from Harvard, not Hogwarts.
Did not mean to delete your comments - I am still learning how this whole "comment approval" thing works, but since Asians tried to hijack my comments section, I'm trying to monitor them.
Phil sends his best to Olive. :-) The selkie story made me cry.
It's OK, many of us have had the same problem.
There's no doubt I'd vote for Obama again. It's the local politicians who I worry about. We have yet another newly elected, upstate NY politician who has breached personal ethics by sending a half nude picture of himself to a craiglist babe who is not his wife.
As far as Hitler's hit men are concerned, there is little difference between them and the current negative dissenters out there.
Yes, it's all about money. The general population loves sensationalism especially the doom & gloom kind. It's the Glen Becks of the world who manipulate society into this de-humanizing thinking.
TRUTH prevails.
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