TBT: The Brutal Truth

Lefty Blogs & Neil Gabler Scares The Shit Out Of O'Reilly

John Amato at C&L has a video of that's a must-see -- Rupert Murdoch's Falafel Djinn wants Neil Gabler shitcanned and jumps Eric Burn's ass on it:

O'Reilly: Hey Eric, you gotta come down on this Gabler guy, I mean he's just out of control ... you have Gabler picking up a far left blog conspiracy theory-spitting it out there and you guys sit there---like humpty dumpty.---I'd fire him in a heartbeat.

As you'll see in the clip, Gabler railed on the media's coverage of Veep Fudd shooting a crony because it took attention away from the new Abu Ghraib photos, Jack Abramoff, Chertoff, the NSA spying scandal, and a host of other warts and oozing cankersores that the Bush Administration and the Republican "ownership society" are responsible for:

Gabler: This could be a conspiracy in this very sense: Look at what this did. This got Abu Ghraib off the front pages, it got Chertoff off the front pages. While we're here talking about the idiocy of him shooting his friend, we're not talking about the major -- MAJOR -- problems this administration is having. That's clever PR. That's not bad PR.

Gabler, once again, smacked a grandslam right out of the park because what he describes with his "Clever PR" conspiracy is not a conspiracy at all -- Karl Fuckin' Rove has been the mastermind behind the "Use The Media's Own Ingrained Sense Of Post 9/11 Stockholm Syndrome & Penchant For Sensationalism" conspiracy for the past 5 years and it has worked. It has created the biggest streak of positive PR and undeserved luck no presidential administration has ever had. Tricky Dick Nixon would literally eat one of his own arms off to have Karl Rove in his day. Recently, Karl Rove didn't have to use this strategy because media shills did it for him as evidenced by Chris Matthews's "He Sounds Like A Michael Moore" response to a new Bin Laden tape. Viola -- attention is diverted away from somebody Bush can't find (i.e. Bin Laden) and unto someone he can find (i.e. Moore).

But Falafel Boy won't have any of that and smears Gabler for accurately describing Rove's "Clever PR" strategy to FOX viewers by accusing Gabler of lifting it from a "far-left blog" that he conveniently doesn't mention and then demands Eric Burns to fire him. Of course, by doing so, he lets us all in on how O'Rielly and FNC operates:

O'Rielly: "But you got a guy like Gabler and this is the second time he did this. The first time, he smeared me about the Christmas controversy. I called him up and he's too cowardly to come on. You let him slide with that. And now you got him coming in here with this insane conspiracy thing and ... I'm watching Fox News because I think Fox News is tough on these things. It's not a leftwing blog, alright. And you let this guy get away with it and you shouldn't."

Burns: "No ... *snorts* ... You're telling me I let him get away with it, Bill, and he's not my responsibility."

O'Rielly: "But you're the host!"

Burns: "No, no, what's different between my show and your show is I've got 4 people on my program and I will tell that in both cases -- both of the cases you refer to -- at least 2 of the others and maybe 3 were ready to jump in. As a matter of fact, on the comment he made about you being a demogogue ..."

O'Reilly: "Yeah, the usual personal attacks. It's what they traffic in all the time."

Burns: "I forget who it was but somebody jumped in there. There was no way to jump in in this case and, in fact, we have a produced open that second segment. I can't come back to the topic."

O'Reilly: "Don't you understand? Don't you understand -- I would've edited it. To tell you the truth. I would've edited that out because ... "

Burns: *snorts*

O'Reilly: "Here's the danger: this guy Gabler whom you shouldn't have on the program, by the way, but I don't run Fox News. I'd fire him in a heartbeat and bring in a responsible person. He traffics in personal attacks, this guy. He brings in insane stuff ... you know, your show is supposed to be the watchdog of the media and you have a rabid dog in there. And it's just not playing."

As clear as water, Bill O'Reilly ambushes Eric Burns (a conservative shill but a reasonable shill by FOX's standards, no less) by "playing politics" hoping that it forces the more honest and reasonable voices -- whose sole credential of liberalism is by simply being liberal and unapologetic with the truth -- to either know their place within Rupert Murdoch's plantation, or a hostile working environment will be created by the loudmouth complainers and whiners as a means of encouraging those people to resign if they don't play ball and kowtow to the status-quo.

The very fact that Bill O'Reilly performs this ambush on his show in complete view of the public (as opposed to playing this game behind the scenes) shows you exactly what Fox News Channel's agenda really is -- to be nothing more than a rabid rightwing political PR network; not a news network. Since O'Rielly has declared that he would've edited Gabler out that News Watch segment only goes to shows that Gabler is not being "cowardly" but justified as all hell for refusing to go on The Factor -- O'Rielly will edit the segment to make himself look good. Neil Gabler sure as hell won't fall for that dirty trick and Bill knows it, hence the slime.

To properly understand why O'Rielly is singling out Neil Gabler, though, one must look at Gabler's own consistancy and continuity when he offers his own analysis of the media. In other words, who is he usually firing off at? The answer is simple: Conservatives. It all started almost a year ago to the very day and his target wasn't O'Rielly but it sure put him on the Falafel Djinn's shitlist. Take a trip down TBT memory lane with another Fox News Watch segment -- Gannon-Gate:

ERIC BURNS: The dust has settled, some time has passed, and the daily press credential will be issued no more. So, it's time to look back at the amazing adventures of Jim Guckert -- AKA Jeff Gannon -- a right wing political operative who dreamed of being a $200 a night gay escort. Everyone should have a dream ... [dryly]

JIM PINKERTON: Right, although I think you were unfair calling him 'right-wing' in your intro.

ERIC BURNS: Really?!?

JIM PINKERTON: I do ...

NEIL GABLER: I think you were unfair calling him a 'journalist'.

ERIC BURNS: So, is that what this is about then, Neil? Is this about the softball questions because of the political orientation of the person ...

NEIL GABLER: Absolutely not.

ERIC BURNS: What is it, then?

NEIL GABLER: There are many many journalists - and we know alot of them - who ACT like partisan hacks. This guy WAS a partisan hack. And there's a difference.

CAL THOMAS: I'm not a partisan hack, but I play one on TV. Is that it, right?

NEIL GABLER: Yes. He worked for a GOP operative. He would not have been credentialed and was NOT credentialed by Congress for precisely that reason. Among other things, they have a rule that if you're a lobbiest for an organization, you can not be credentialed. So, this issue here is that this person should have NEVER been credentialed, was not credentialed by Congress, and we know the ... I know there's some Democrats that disingenously are trying to investigate how he got credentialed. We KNOW how he got credentialed -- the White House wanted him there. They wanted him to ask softball questions and ...

ERIC BURNS: What about the guy Jim mentioned asking hardball questions? They certainly didn't want that, did they, Neil?

NEIL GABLER: Well, then he shouldn't even be there. But the point of the fact is I don't know whether or not he got a daily credential every single day as Guckert did. Every day for ... for years ...

CAL THOMAS: I agree with that and there's another point to be made. The Congressional press galleries, as Jim says, for years, has credentialed and decided who is a ligitimate journalist and who is not. They're really behind the times on this Internet stuff. Slate, for example, and some other conservative websites. Who IS a journalist? I think that is something that needs to be looked into again and new rules established.

NEIL GABLER: Guckert, by the way, thanks among other people Karl Rove for his insistance, encouragement, and guidance. I think that is very, very interesting.

Gabler has had a hotstreak over the last year bulldozing the most unforgetable piles of bullshit peddled out into realm of public discourse by the GOP, Bush Administration, and their press flaks. He not only smacked the media senseless with Gannon-Gate, but his accurate portrayal of the Rovian "Clever PR" conspiracy that O'Reilly is bitching about in this clip and the kicking the legs out from under the Falafel Djinn's demogogic "War On Christmas" barstool together round out the other two strikes against him with Batshit Bill. Therefore, in his eyes, both Neil Gabler and left blogistan are threats -- threats because they possess the only thing that can destroy Republican lives, Republican careers, and Republican families: the truth.

Some thanks are to be given to Batshit Bill, however, by his repeated smearing of blogs and his accusation that Gabler's "Clever PR" conspiracy came from a "leftwing blog" instead of watching Karl Rove's fat ass in action. Whenever blogs are mentioned within the mainstream media -- whether it's praise or damnation -- it's a bonus to the blogosphere because it's an open admittence that blogs are being a hell of lot more interesting than they are. They wouldn't be talking about us -- and therefore granting us free publicity to turn into positive relevancy -- if we weren't being interesting.

Bill's lack of citing the "leftwing blog" that he alledges Gabler lifting the conspiracy theory from was a disengenous way for Bill to not give that blog publicity since the last thing O'Rielly wants is his viewers (what remains of them) to visit the "leftwing blog" and see for themselves if O'Rielly's jargon is either spot-on accurate or bullshit. Doesn't matter though -- by mentioning blogs and attacking them, his viewers might just find out what we're all cracked up to be anyway.

Keep those smears coming, Bill, you sanctimonious slapass. Pretty soon, you'll be spinning so fast, you'll be throwing yourself off your own barstool, saving us the trouble. Not that we're complaining -- letting you run headlong to crash tin-hat first into the brick wall of reality is hardly any trouble at all.

posted by Sizemore at 6:13 AM

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