Al Franken disembowels Bill O'Reilly

[Sundog]

Al Franken is my hero.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88364,00.html

[Nie Trink Wasser]

seems the opposite to me, actually.

Ive never understood why al franken is supposed to be funny.

he got spanked by bill.

[Blue Monk]

Atta boy Al!

Newt learned the hard way not to mess with Al.

Looks like it's time for O'Reilly to go to the woodshed, hehe.

[Michael Redman]

I'm going to have to read that book.

[Nie Trink Wasser]

could someone please explain to me how Al won this match ?

seemed more like a frightened child trying really hard to be spanked.

[Genghis Pwn]

Uh, it doesn't sound like Al won anything to me. O'Rielly has a good point. This dude digs for dirt and comes up with Bill saying Inside Edition has won the wrong award. Those awards are public record. I doubt Bill was trying to lie. In a whole career that's all Al could come up with?

Sounds like he's the one who got taken to school.

[Sundog]

Naturally Fox isn't going to evenly cover the event. I wish I had seen it on CSPAN.

It's enough of a kick for me that O'Reilly made a fool of himself with his "shut up's" and Franken nailed him on it.

[Michael Redman]

Considering that he wrote a book on O'Reilly and the others, I'm guessing that that is not all he can come up with. (Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it?) I'm also guessing that O'Reilly knows full well what other criticisms Franken makes of him in the book, and is simply telling yet another lie for sound-bite purposes.

And claiming that you have won a Peabody when you have not is not a simple accident, in my opinion. It's the kind of thing you make sure of before you make the claim, if you have any integrity.

That said, I hardly think Al disembowled him.

[Nie Trink Wasser]

Originally posted by Sundog
Naturally Fox isn't going to evenly cover the event. I wish I had seen it on CSPAN.

It's enough of a kick for me that O'Reilly made a fool of himself with his "shut up's" and Franken nailed him on it.


wait...........so O'Reilly made a fool of himself by telling him to shut up and that he'd gone over 15 minutes (double the time of other speakers) ?

when Al responds with "this isnt your show", I find that hilarious because Al is whining about being spanked and wants it to be his show.

he called out Bill and Bill spanked him. It made him cry because he wants it to be his show.............hardly "nailed" anything besides his his obvious inability to see the irony of his own statement.

[Sundog]

Originally posted by Michael Redman
Considering that he wrote a book on O'Reilly and the others, I'm guessing that that is not all he can come up with. (Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it?) I'm also guessing that O'Reilly knows full well what other criticisms Franken makes of him in the book, and is simply telling yet another lie for sound-bite purposes.

And claiming that you have won a Peabody when you have not is not a simple accident, in my opinion. It's the kind of thing you make sure of before you make the claim, if you have any integrity.

That said, I hardly think Al disembowled him.

By your own logic, I doubt if he was up there all that time - 35 minutes? - expressing his admiration.

[shemp]

As usual, both sides won. Al will sell more books, and Bill's TV ratings will go up. Even bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.

[uneasy]

In summary:

Media event:
Liberal: You are bad.
Conservative: You are a bad.

Commentary:
Liberal: That liberal really made a fool of that conservative.
Conservative: That conservative really made a fool of that liberal.

People hear what they want to hear. If you switched the names Franken and O'Reilly around in that story,
the same people would be arguing the opposite point they are now. We need a double blind test :)

[Nie Trink Wasser]

Originally posted by uneasy
In summary:

Media event:
Liberal: You are bad.
Conservative: You are a bad.

Commentary:
Liberal: That liberal really made a fool of that conservative.
Conservative: That conservative really made a fool of that liberal.

People hear what they want to hear. If you switched the names Franken and O'Reilly around in that story,
the same people would be arguing the opposite point they are now. We need a double blind test :)


bullseye

[Number Six]

I saw some of this on C-SPAN (on tape delay late Saturday night). I turned it on in progress as Franken was talking so I can't say how long he spoke or what happened before I turned it on. As I watched Franken talked maybe 15 minutes or so but as I say I turned it on in progress.

At first I assumed it was a gathering where everyone was on his side because he was ripping pretty hard on others. Then he started on O'Reilly. A couple times as he spoke on the edge of the screen I could see a guy that looked like O'Reilly. What a coinicidence, I thought, he's ripping on O'Reilly and sitting right next to him is a guy that looks like O'Reilly. I was pretty surprised when I finally realized it was O'Reilly.

I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand it's nice to see both sides of the political fence play by the same rules but on the other hand it'd be nice if that were achieved by both sides coming up to a higher level then both going down to a lower level. Aside from pointing O'Reilly's mistake he was also simply taunting O'Reilly. Ironically, the person Franken reminded me of was Rush Limbaugh, who Franken wrote a book about a couple years ago.

Franken definitely got under O'Reilly's skin. O'Reilly was clearly mad. I think O'Reilly would have "won" (in my opinion) the altercation if he could have resisted taking the bait and getting angry. O'Reilly made a good point about being on TV a long time but Franken could only get him on a minor thing and if O'Reilly had pointed that out and stopped their he'd have looked better but instead he stooped to calling Franken an idiot.

Sadly, the O'Reillys and Frankens are becoming more common while the Molly Ivins' (who was also there and speaking in a calm, deliberate, non-attacking manner and who thus was ignored) are becoming less common.

[KillerBob]

Sounds to me like they both came off looking pretty childish.

[Frostbite]

Al Franken rocks on Conan O'Brien.

[Number Six]

Did Franken ever name this decade? The 1980s was the Al Franken Decade. The 1990s was the Joe Franken Decade (Joe being Al's son). I wonder if the 2000's have a name.

[corplinx]

The suspicious side of me says Franken knew exactly what he was doing. His first book sold out of anti-Limbaugh angst. This new book has no real buzz or draw as far as I can see. This manufactured incident however is just what he needs. Kudos to Al for knowing how to promote, it worked for Tyson/Lewis.

[Baker]

Originally posted by Sundog
Al Franken is my hero.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88364,00.html

You claim Al Franken disembowels Bill O'Reilly then post a link to an article showing just the opposite.:rolleyes:

[daredelvis]

Originally posted by Genghis Pwn
Uh, it doesn't sound like Al won anything to me. O'Rielly has a good point. This dude digs for dirt and comes up with Bill saying Inside Edition has won the wrong award. Those awards are public record. I doubt Bill was trying to lie. In a whole career that's all Al could come up with?

Sounds like he's the one who got taken to school.

Al pointed that Bill lied about the award (it was the Polk). but he also pointed out that award was given to the show after O'Reilly left the show. O'Reilly is a blowhard who likes to shut out dissenting views on "his show". It was nice hear about him having to sit there and take it.

Daredelvis

[crackmonkey]

Al Franken, the alleged comedian, is a loose cannon. He had to be dragged away from Alan Colmes' table at the White House media dinner not too long ago. Apparently, Franken was offended that Colmes was too accomodating to Sean Hannity, and proceeded to bellow in drunken rage at the man.

I predict he'll be biting ears off political foes within a year.

[KelvinG]

I think they both looked pretty stupid in this story. Generally, public yelling matches don't make anyone look like the victor. It usually makes both parties appear like buffoons.

[Cain]

from USA TODAY:


LOS ANGELES -- Bill O'Reilly, the conservative talk show host, first decried political commentators who ''call people names.'' Then he called Al Franken, the liberal humorist, an ''idiot.''

''I can't bring people together,'' O'Reilly said. ''My job is to rattle the cages. It's to put the bad guys on alert.''

...

Franken said it's time for liberals ''to stop taking it'' and to call conservatives on their lack of civility.

That set off O'Reilly. ''You write a book called Liar, Liar and you talk about civility. Unbelievable.''

''That's not the title,'' Franken said, ''but it's close.''

As for calling Franken an idiot, O'Reilly told a reporter, ''If I said it, I misspoke.'' Then he said, ''I stand by my description.''

LINK: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030602/en_usatoday/5204299

Transcript from O'Reilly's radio show:

What this guy writes and says does not matter to me, other than, Mike, he insulted me in a forum where I was at a decided disadvantage*, you know, he went over his time limit. It was very, very sneaky, and you know, as I said at the top of the broadcast, somebody calls you a liar to your face, you don't just laugh that off. That's an insult. In the old west, that woulda got you shot. See in the old west, and I woulda loved to have been in the old west, Al and I woulda just had a little, uh, a little shootout. You know? We woulda went out, on Wilshire Avenue, and uh, six shooters, now he's a much smaller target than I am, about four foot eleven, but he's wider, and it woulda been you know, Clint Eastwood time. I woulda had the cheroot, the serape, woulda given my squint, and I woulda put a bullet right between his head. Woulda been wrong, woulda been wrong, but it was the old west, and I would not have known any better, so I wouldn't have been held accountable because I would not have known any--now I do, now in 2003 that would have been wrong.

*In other words, a forum in which O'Reilly could not shout "cut his mic! cut his mic!" [/quote]

LINK: http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2003_06_01.html#000693

Yep, O'Reilly's insane.

[Genghis Pwn]

Franken is just an angry nerd.

[Michael Redman]

Originally posted by Sundog


By your own logic, I doubt if he was up there all that time - 35 minutes? - expressing his admiration. No need for logic; the facts state that he wasn't up there expressing his admiration. I fail to see your point.

[Sundog]

Originally posted by Michael Redman
No need for logic; the facts state that he wasn't up there expressing his admiration. I fail to see your point.

This is getting silly; we're arguing about the definition of "disemboweled".

I admit entirely a selfish, unfair joy in simply seeing someone be as rude to Bill as he routinely is to everyone else on the planet. I guess that's my point.

I meant "disemboweled" in that sense. My point was never that Franken had a lot of evidence.

[Michael Redman]

And here I was thinking that some thought Al stuck Bill with a sharp knife, and opened him up! :p

You're right, this is silly. I have to read that book.

[Cain]

I'm gland Franken publicly exposed O'Reilly's self-inflating flasehood because I've heard Bill ramble on about his precious Peabody Award more than once -- and I don't listen to him often at all. Franken showed that 1) It wasn't a Peabody 2) Inside Edition didn't even win the award while O'Reilly was there.

Franken ran over time because he described his research on the matter, as one commentator put it, "in excruciating detail." It's the best thing to nail someone with in a public forum because it's undenaible. I'm sure Franken can easily consult the archives at FAIR and find many, many dubious claims. But this one is slam-dunk.

[BrianT]

I listened to an MP3 file of this and due to the discussions, checked the time as it ran. Franken started on Bill about 13 minutes into his time. He finished at about 20. So much for "35" or "45" minutes.