The O'Reilly/Malmedy story--I can't take this anymore...

I've just about had it. I'm sorry. But there is something so utterly swinish and imbecilic about this story, and about the fact that a so-called "news" organization--even Fox--could basically try to let this slide, and keep this piece of shit on the air... I dunno. Maybe I'm just tired and over-reacting. But it seems to me that we're about to cross a line, if we haven't already, in which we're openly in a Goebbelsian universe, in which truth and lies don't matter, and no one in the MSM even pretends they do, and regard you as naive of you do. Maybe it's because a close friend of my father was among the victims at Malmedy, but something about this is making me depressed, even despairing, about our country. Everything decent about America is being dishonored and spat on, and no one except us seems to give a damn... I'll feel better tomorrow, I guess...but I had to rant a minute...

In the long run, it's just another nail in the Dildo Really coffin.

No one remembers Morton Downey Junior anymore, but he was one of the early blowhards of TV.

This, too, shall pass.

It is depressing. There is no truth any longer. Everything is a lie. This is what it must have felt like to live in the Soviet Union, knowing you can trust no one and believe nothing.

That's basically what America has become- every major corporate "news" outlet is part and parcel to it. Even science and academia have become afflicted.

Unfortunately, I doubt you or I are going to see that change any time soon- the line's long since been crossed. People have by in large shown that they either fine with it- or just don't care.

Sad, but true-

side show piece of infotainment. Least, I hope so.

worked to defend O'Reilly, the indefensible. They have done everything from lie about what he said ("he apologized") to ridiculing Keith Olbermann's ratings.

There really ARE too many people in this world who think that rhetoric makes right, and that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes true.

and government officials go on that show and discuss serious subjects (however frivolously to us) some people will take him and his show seriously.

Without his credentialed guests, he would, indeed, be a universally regarded laughingstock.

about middle of the page ;
OLBERMANN:The guilty pleasure offered by the existence of Bill O‘Reilly is simple but understandable, 99 times out of 100, when we belly up to the Bill-O bar of bluster, nearly every time we partake of the movable falafel feast he serves us nothing but comedy, farce, slapstick, unconscious self-mutilation, the Sideshow Bob of commentators forever stepping on the same rake, forever muttering the same grunted, inarticulate surrender, forever resuming the circle that will take him back to the same rake. The Sisyphus of morons, if you will. But this is the 100th time out of 100. It is not funny at all. Bill O‘Reilly has, for the second time in under eight months, slandered at least 84 dead American servicemen.

I've felt this way since 2004, but America has been boiling so long, it feels like we're finally cooked. We need the mainstream media to tell the truth in order to change what's corrupt and obscene about our country right now, but they are too cowardly or too sycophantic to do so. Meanwhile, America is disintegrating before our eyes.

I had watched the Keith Olbermann video clip late last night and I was so angry but happy that Keith had responded so forcefully.

This morning I went up to read the transcript of the show, since I wanted to see what else he had reported on. I was reading the transcript from the show and realized O'Reilly was trying to drag the 82nd Airborne into this - I hadn't caught that the night before. Well, my uncle recently died and he was a member of the 82nd. I felt like a big schmuck sitting here at my PC crying, but I was so angry!! How DARE he?!

The callousness and hypocracy make my stomache ache. So I am right there with you, my friend...

the transcript for that show, too. Last night chat_noir posted the discrepancy. These are his actual words:

O'Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1331477&mesg_id=1332376

O'Lielly had been corrected already on this, I think last Oct., but decided to spout the same lies a second time. He has no shame.

I posted this about my uncle too. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1332424&mesg_id=1335986

I think of all the soldiers who were brave, who defended our country, who are still defending our country and my heart hurts. They sacrificed so much, and it pisses me off when I see the slander. Kerry. Clelland. McCain (even though he's become a sellout shill). My uncle. Arkham House's family friend... To see their sacrifice diminished enrages me.

It also enrages me to see the atrocities that were committed in Haditha minimized by a twisted group of talking head morons who will twist words to whatever evil they desire.

To try to say that it's "ok" to kill innocent civilians because "we did it in WWII" - this justifies the crimes?! My husband put it very simply tonite, "Didn't they ever learn in pre-school - two wrongs don't make a right?"

...and thanks for the good words...

And God bless your father's friend. He made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. He died fighting in a real war for freedom, and no one should ever forget that...

I'm being lazy--or tenderhearted here--and I can't bear to watch that guy.

But what was the point of saying this?

Was he trying to say that what happened at Haditha is OK because Americans did the same thing in WWII??

Where did he get this bizarre story anyway? Did he make it up, or is it something that's been percolating on rightwing hate sites for a while? Or did he just get really, really confused?

I just can't figure out why he thinks it would be a GOOD thing to say American troops had slaughtered Nazis--ever if it WERE true.

by saying that war crimes have been committed by the US military in every war, are pretty much customary, and that war crimes have always been absolutely condoned by the US government.
He used Malmedy as an example.

It was obscene.

Didn't conservatives at least try to pretend that the US was supposed to set a moral example?

If we're just as bad as the bad guys--if we shoot innocent people or surrendering soldiers and that's OK, then what's the point? Doesn't that pretty much throw out the whole argument that we were rescuing Iraq?

The Germans massacred American POW's at Malmedy during the Battle of the Bulge. I didn't watch O'Reilly's show but I assume he's got it all wrong. After the incident there are some reports that Americans engaged in "battlefield justice" against the SS and some other German soldiers but there weren't any reports of civilians being killed. O'Reilly is an idiot.

I'm not surprised really.

Still, I share your concern.
Many smart people I know, some are pretty decent too, have passed the point of return and won't see facts that differ from their opinion which is born of corporate propaganda.