In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Post, Bill O’Reilly Compares the website, Daily Kos to the extreme right wingers who call Obama a Muslim and several other false, negative hateful things. He attacked Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for attending the Kos convention, calling it a website that revels in hate.
He sited examples of Daily Kos posting a picture of Joe Lieberman and George Bush about to engage in a sex act and the rumors that started there about Sarah Palin’s daughter actually being her daughter Bristol’s that started there. O’Reilly called Daily Kos character assassins and said that Obama’s visit to their convention was as troubling as anything he’s seen in the Republican precincts.
As someone who frequents the Daily Kos very regularly, I have yet to see the hatred that O’Reilly has talked about. Daily Kos is in many ways a social networking site for politically active people. Most of the information on it is polls and data on the various elections. Any opinion on the website is backed up by legitimate sources and video. There are user submitted diaries as well as content generated by the site itself. Most of these diaries are both opinionated and informative. All diaries and material I have read are of times progressive and opionated but far from hateful.
If someone posts a picture of Joe Lieberman about to engage in a sex act with George Bush. its like someone putting a picture on their myspace page. While some may find a picture of Joe Lieberman about to engage in a sex act with George Bush in a sex act offensive, I can see the symbolism and humor in it. If O’reilly wants so see some offensive pictures he only needs to frequent the many right wing websites and their racist, I’m still not convinced that Dail Kos was wrong about Sarah Palin’s child. It was those rumors that led to Palin revealing that her daughter was pregnant.
O’Reilly can call Daily Kos character assassins but I have yet to see any proof of those allegations. The GOP has presented two dubious characters with questionable pasts and views as their candidates. What Daily Kos does is not assassinate these questionable characters, but reveal the truth about their views, past and associations.
If Daily Kos was assassinating characters they would put their whole focus on calling John McCain a traitor who gave secrets to the russians in Vietnam and had a baby with a black prostitute like the king character assassin, Karl Rove did to him in 2000. O’Reilly is showing how out of touch he is with reality by comparing Daily Kos to the angry mobs on the right who continually regurgitate false hateful information about Obama. Has he seen any of the videos of the McCain/Palin hate mobs? Has he heard about GOP officials calling Obama a muslim socialist and comparing him to Osama bin Laden?
If O’Reilly wants to see a webite that revels in hate he need only got the comments in the Drudge Report or his own site or many of the right wing websites that put up racist pictures of Obama or suggest that he’s a muslim or a socialist. If he wants There is a difference between legitimate reporting and character assassination. I have seen more hate on O’Reilluy’s Fox news than I have seen on Daily Kos.
