From start to finish, Lawrence O’Donnell played the corporate fool last night, suggesting that he’s really ready to fill that 8 PM time slot. The second half of his program was nothing but nonsense; the first half was nothing to brag about.
In this way, the liberal world gets dumbed all the way to the ground.
On Fox, they constantly play their viewers for fools. But does this occur on MSNBC too? Just consider the story O’Donnell has pushed all week—the claim that Bill O’Reilly interrupted President Obama an outrageous 43 times in last Sunday’s 15-minute interview.
This was O’Donnell’s first topic on Monday evening’s Last Word, although the tape of this segment has been disappeared. He continued to push the claim on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, building outrage among liberal viewers—and of course dumbing them down.
That said, let’s see how O’Donnell is willing con you. For our money, there was nothing especially inappropriate about the way O’Reilly conducted himself in the interview with Obama. But O’Donnell wanted to keep you angry. And so, he brought the “editors” in.
On Monday night, as he started his show, he played tape of the outrageous interview, counting O’Reilly’s interruptions. But in the process, he played his viewers for fools. Just consider just the way the actual interview started.
When O’Reilly interviewed Obama, he started by thanking the president for interceding on behalf of several Fox journalists who had been under duress in Egypt. This burned about 45 seconds. (O’Reilly: “Those guys could have died, and I just want everybody to know that the State Department saved them.”) After that, O’Reilly posed his first question. Using the Nexis transcript, this is what transpired before the first “interruption:”
Actual interview:In the actual interview, that full exchange occurred before that first “interruption.” But to help us be furious at O’Reilly, O’Donnell edited the exchange for Monday night’s program. Once again according to Nexis, this is the exchange you saw if you watched theLast Word Monday night:
O'REILLY (2/6/11): All right. Mubarak, is he going to leave soon?
OBAMA: Well, he's—only he knows what he's going to do. But here's what we know, is that Egypt is not going to go back to what it was. The Egyptian people want freedom. They want free and fair elections. They want a representative government. They want a responsive government.
And so, what we've said is: you have to start a transition now. Mubarak has already decided he's not running for re-election again. His term is up this year. And what we've said is, Let's make sure that you get all the groups together in Egypt, let Egyptian people make a determination on what's the process for an orderly transition, but one that is a meaningful transition and that leads to a government that's—
O'REILLY: So you don't know when he's going to leave?
Interview as shown on Last Word:How dare he jump in like that! This silly “editing” continued apace as O’Donnell counted the interruptions, helping viewers achieve a pleasing rage about the vile conduct on Fox.
O’REILLY: All right. Mubarak, is he going to leave soon?
OBAMA: You get all the groups together in Egypt.
O’REILLY: So you don’t know when he’s going to leave.
Again, we’d like to refer you to the tape of O’Donnell’s Monday night segment. But how odd! Tape of every other Monday segment is available at the MSNBC web site. But tape of this segment—the program’s opening segment—is mysteriously MIA.
Did O’Reilly interrupt too much? For ourselves, we would say no—but we’d have to say it’s a massively trivial matter. You can judge for yourself, of course, by watching the full tape, available here at the Last Word blog. Please note: In this post from early Monday night, O’Donell’s staff reported this: “O’Reilly interrupted the President more than 70 times (we counted).” Twenty minutes later, O’Donnell himself went on the air. He put the count at 43, then clowned with Howard Fineman.
But then, this whole three-nighter has been a clown show, designed to keep liberals mad and distracted. If you’re truly tribally angry, you’ll like Lawrence even more, thus letting him stuff more dough in his pants. This man is emerging as a nonpareil fool—just the man to keep tribal dumbness alive, thus dooming progressive prospects.
O’Donnell’s show was endlessly foolish last night. Tonight, you can tune in for more. On Fox, they play their viewers for fools.
Is it really so different on the One True Liberal Channel?
