Saturday, July 28, 2007

The FOX attack


OK. Just to catch everyone up a bit, it started with Bill O'Reilly deciding to smear Daily Kos and Jet Blue. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Then, via Red Tory, this:



Now, for what it's worth, O'Reilly cherry-picked his Kos quotes from the comments section, and Michelle Malkin's comments moderator admitted it. Kos and most other bloggers have pointed out that there is little control in "open" comments sections, but O'Reilly wasn't having any of that. He has comments at his site and he has control... or at least he has an employee who has control for every $50 per year registrant who might want to leave a comment.

O'Reilly is fully aware that comments in blogs, particularly where they start running into the hundreds per post, are pretty difficult to manage. He also knows they do not represent the author of a post. But that's where he dragged his quotes from.

With that knowledge, a point needs to be made. Anybody could be leaving comments. Most commenters are pseudonymous. Even on a blog requiring registration, a pseudonym, a throw away email address and you're in... commenting to your heart's content.

That's the point. O'Reilly himself could easily have left any one or all of those comments at Daily Kos and then picked them out as fodder for his attack. Yes, that sounds like a ridiculous conspiracy theory... but we're talking about Bill O'Reilly here.

And, as for the rest of the FOX news crowd suddenly going orbital over liberal blogs, it only shows that they are horribly shaken by the emergence of a strong liberal voice. FOX is channeling George Bush with their very own "surge".

So, fight them. Become a Fox Attacker!

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