the left and the MSM's weak attempt to smear O'Reilly and Rush

unable to compete with FOXNews on cable, and unable to get any listeners on talk radio, what can the left (and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media) do to constrict the influence of "conservative" voices in the "new media"? take them on philosophically? nah, that usually doesn't work...liberal's arguments are too "nuanced"...or, as Mario Cuomo said (i'm paraphrasing): conservatives write with crayons, liberals with fine-tipped quill pens.

it's so much easier and effective to just take things out of context and blow them all out of proportion.

in the past 10 days or so we've had a couple of classic examples, the first being left-wing "media watchdog" media matters' (mediamatters.org) lame "outrage" directed toward cable TV giant Bill O'Reilly, where they accuse him of being a "racist" for comments he made during a radio conversation with liberal author/commentator/journalist Juan Williams. Williams, to his credit, has rebutted this pathetic smear attempt in a column on Time.com:

So, O'Reilly says to me that the reality to black life is very different from the lowlife behavior glorified by the rappers. He told me he was at a restaurant in Harlem recently and there was no one shouting profanity, no one threatening people. Then he mentioned going to an Anita Baker concert with an audience that was half black, and in sharp contrast to the corrosive images on TV, well dressed and well behaved.

The context being that there was a difference between the self-destructive images which have become the dominant images of the African American community and the reality of what he (O'Reilly) saw in these particular events. only the most prickly, thin-skinned people in the world could consider these comments "racist". Williams continues:

So imagine how totally astounded I was when I heard O'Reilly was attacked on the basis of that radio conversation as a "racist." He was slammed for saying he went to a restaurant in Harlem and had a good time. He was slammed for saying the audience at the concert was nicely dressed. The suggestion was that O'Reilly had racist preconceptions about the restaurant and the concert crowd.

That twisted assumption led me to say publicly that the attacks on O'Reilly amounted to an effort to take what he said totally out of context in an attempt to brand him a racist by a liberal group that disagrees with much of his politics. But the out-of-context attacks on O'Reilly picked up speed and ended up on CNN, where one commentator branded me a "Happy Negro" for allowing O'Reilly to get by with making racist comments without objection.

i was watching CNN the other night, and the host of whatever show it is that is opposite the O'Reilly factor was going APESHIT about this. at the same time, on FOX, Laura Ingraham and O'Reilly were discussing the ruckus as well. and i'm sure Olby was, too, but his show is such a media matters echo chamber that it's hard to watch..

Juan Williams almost puts his finger on the real motivation...but he stops short of saying that the left just wants to shut O'Reilly up, to "Imus" him, so to speak.

which leads to the newest media matters "scandal": Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers". this was quickly picked up by the left wing bloggers at daily kos, huffington post, et. al...

anyone who was listening to the show in question knows that this is taken WAY out of context. Rush was talking about one "PHONY SOLDIER"...Jesse Macbeth, who is now going to jail...and, he WAS phony, btw...

he could have easily expanded this to include the recent tall tales of Scott Beauchamp, who wrote a series of "diaries" for The New Republic, , exposing the dehumanizing effects which the Iraq war was having on American soldiers such as himself, which the bloggers on the right exposed as fraudulent, eventually causing TNR to release a statement, which included this interesting tidbit:

Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a U.S. Army private serving in Iraq. He came to THE NEW REPUBLIC's attention through Elspeth Reeve, a TNR reporter-researcher, whom he later married.

amazing stuff. how the left media has any credibility left at all is beyond me.

on a side note, it didn't dawn on me until today how pathetic mediamatters.org really is...their links all link back to their past posts, hardly ever to a primary source. i guess they feel that their filtered version "cuts to the chase", so to speak. it sure makes it easier to prevent liberals from actually hearing conservatives speak in their own words....

update: a link to The Influence Peddler, who has an excellent post with many links that demonstrate how vast and pernicious this "phony soldier" problem is...