Re: The Free Exchange Of Ideas

1

If we're this angry as the richest and most powerful country in the world, what happens if things really start going downhill? No way we could take a Great Depression now, the streets would run red with blood.


Posted by: MQ | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 12:49 AM
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2

You know it's a topsy-tuvy world when Rivera is the sane-looking man in the room.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 2:38 AM
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3

It's a mystery to me why someone doesn't just knock seven shades of shite out of O'Reilly. Every clip I've seen of him is a clip of a man begging for a kicking.

Ditto Cheney's 'fuck yourself' comment. The most reasonable response to that would have been to flatten the fucker.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 4:50 AM
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4

O'Reilly's schtick is so tired.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 6:42 AM
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5

Seriously, I think more than a quarter of the country seethed this much during the New Deal. A significant chunk of Republicans really, really hated "that man" Roosevelt.

Of course, you could argue that didn't "end well," what with the Red Scare and all, but in a world-historical sense, the Americans of that era got off pretty lightly.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:08 AM
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6

What pass have we come to, when Rivera is the defender of reason.

And dude, I don't think it's pretend.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:10 AM
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7

And finally, I don't think O'Reilly is seething because he's a Republican. I think he's a Republican because he's a seether. And I don't think he's alone.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:24 AM
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8

I thought O'Reilly identified as an independent.


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:26 AM
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9

Is that an actual independent? or the 'I'm not a Republic but: for all x, if x is a Republican policy I support it, and, for all y, if y is a Republican talking point, I'll repeat it' type of independent?


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:28 AM
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10

RepublicAN ...


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:28 AM
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11

Seriously, I think more than a quarter of the country seethed this much during the New Deal.

Yeah, but to the extent that you're fine with the end outcome (like me), you wonder to what extent that outcome was an accident of fate. IIRC, there were...other countries...that handled the Depression less well.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:33 AM
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12

I think 7 gets it right. The Republican party has turned into the party of angry white men over and above any political ideology, and Bill O'Reilly is just one of the most publicly embarassing examples.

Illegal immigration is one of (many) issues that, try as I might, I can't construct a model of the belief system that would get someone so angry about it. "I want the law enforced, blah blah," but why so vehement?


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:39 AM
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13

why so vehement?

I could unkindly say that he's vehement because this is one of a very few cases in which he can publicly indulge in racism under the respectable cover of law. And he doesn't want that taken away from him.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:47 AM
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14

Tim, I don't think the New Deal as opposed to ... other methods ... was quite an accident. But I would have to put on my professional hat to do that, and we don't want that, this early on a weekend morning.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:48 AM
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15

Hey, Emerson!


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 7:57 AM
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16

I could unkindly say that he's vehement because this is one of a very few cases in which he can publicly indulge in racism under the respectable cover of law.

In O'Reilly's case, I suspect he's vehement because vehemence pays well.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 8:14 AM
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I think 13 gets it right. Daily Mail columnists here in the UK (and the right wing tabloids in general) adopt the same rhetorical stance.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 8:21 AM
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5: And there was plenty of seething during the previous Roosevelt's time, right?

TBH I think it has less to do with political positions than it's the anger generated when Daddy is shown to have feet of clay. The idea that one's leaders don't know what they're doing is profoundly disturbing and so denial takes over. When observing people saying and doing strange things my most reliable guide has been cognitive dissonance theory.


Posted by: Biohazard | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 8:47 AM
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13: That's my suspicion as well.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 9:54 AM
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15: Yeah, I did see that. People do not realize the deep significance of Peretz's ill-got fortune, which traces beack to a stolen patent.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 10:38 AM
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About the New Deal, I'd observe that the country, and particularly its upper classes, were as scared as they ever get, and there was room to maneuver. And the war made completion of the New Deal possible, made it possible for it to become permanent. I'm not sure we want such luck.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 12:05 PM
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22

Only radical societies have that much anger. Russia, most of Africa, the Middle East, lots of Asia, America... wait, I guess that makes most of the world...
anyhoo, we're cool in Australia


Posted by: waldo | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 12:25 PM
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13: I was waiting for O'Reilly to just out and call Rivera a spic, myself.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 3:45 PM
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24

Rivera was once Kurt Vonnegut's son-in-law. Fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Vonnegut


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 04- 7-07 4:25 PM
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25

O'Reilly's voice, body language and rhetoric are straight from the bully boy handbook . . .

Hey Ogged, have you heard of Michelle Shocked?


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04- 9-07 1:34 PM
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26

So has everybody heard the news about M/tch and M/chelle already?


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 04- 9-07 1:41 PM
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27

Crap. I told her not to tell you, Clown.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04- 9-07 2:18 PM
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28

O'Reilly has a masters in public policy from Harvard. He's a smart guy, I suspect.

As others have suggested on this thread, I suspect he is angry because it pays well, very well. Just like a Daily Mail columnist.

Anne Coulter plays the same game: dress in a way to flaunt your attractiveness, and say truly appalling and outrageous things.

The other thing to do is of course attack, attack, attack. So if we call them on it, we are 'racist'.

Maybe Howard Stern is the left's equivalent?

(if you look at the portion of the French electorate that supports Le Pen, and Sarkozy's shameless courting of it, or the far right Flemish party, then this hardly an American-specific phenomenon)

Remembering that 30% of Americans supported Richard Nixon, just before his resignation, I think there is nothing new in any of this. And many of those would have voted for George Wallace had he run as a third party nominee. When Spiro Agnew talking about those 'nattering nabobs' (that's us, people) against the 'Silent Majority' he was representing how a significant group of Americans feel.


Posted by: Valuethinker | Link to this comment | 04-11-07 7:59 AM
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29

Maybe Howard Stern is the left's equivalent?

I don't think of Stern as politically left, or particularly political at all, really.


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30

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