July 27, 2004
Tonight on Fox News
Check out the transcript of this confrontation between Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore at the Democratic National Convention (via Drudge). Neither man scores a whole lot of points, but in my opinion, O'Reilly may have gotten the better of Moore by sticking to his point of "bad intelligence," and eventually getting Moore to advocate preemptive force (albeit in the context of Nazi Germany). The encounter crumbles to absurdity when the two begin arguing over who would sacrifice himself for what cause.
Thats the funny thing about this convention, maybe it says something about the state of our country, but there seems to be more coverage of the people covering the event than the event itself. I am guilty of enjoying this, but what does it say? Maybe we should just succumb and elect TV as the president.
Don't blame me; I voted for the VCR.
O'Reilly and Moore arguing? Imagine that. I'll get right to reading the transcript... Wouldn't it be better to spend time reading transcripts of more worthwhile fights, like, say, that of two drunken sports fans?
I am with Greg on this: anchors cannot conceal that they want to have more time and more attention than the conventionals.
Furthermore, I found hilarious a comment made by a CNN anchor about Kennedy's talk:
Well, Kennedy made a basic speech based on what every American learns in school about the History of his Country and about the common sayings every American once in his life said before his flag. So Kennedy talked about the very famous 'tea party' episode in Boston and about 'a Country under God, with freedom and justice for all'. He added things like 'providing shelter to the homeless' and 'feeding the hunger', etc. All of these things should in theory be values shared by all Americans.
Then, the CNN anchor comes with the question, something like: 'is Kennedy trying to rise electors, or is he trying to rise Democrats only?' I found this sort of question hilarious. What this CNN guy thinks? That anyone would explicitly defend a society with injustice for all?
The CNN coverage is very antipathetic to the Convention itself and anchors seem to resent the fact that the Democrats are having their own happy festivity and that for a moment they caught most of the attention.
PS:
When one of these Networks anchors has to read a sentence like:
John Kerry/Al Gore is doing well in the polls.
They usually have a very grave and almost husky tone of voice and make a very serious and stern face. That same kind of stern face one makes when there is an impertinent person upsetting him/her in a party.
But if they have to say:
The candidate with more chances to succeed Bill Clinton is Texas Governor, George Bush.
They have a big smile, their eyes shine with satisfaction and their groovy voice say it so clearly and gladly.
The sad thing is the appearance that the best Drudge can do to make the Dems look bad is post a verbal battle between two relatively uninformed and obnoxious guys.
O'Reilly argues as if objective intelligence was simply fed to the president and he made his desicions on that basis. Moore neglects or forgets to mention the role that new, politically oriented centers for intelligence like Cheney's office or the Office of Special Plans had in shaping and morphing intelligence into something they can use--putting pressure on the CIA and the State Department to tow the party line. I think we can all agree that the failure was not intelligence alone--in that case, why did our allies disagree and attack our conclusions so vehemently?