sellouts

Why not have the rents stay in a furnished apartment? Mine is full (www.ruenobel.com), but I highly recommend those at
www.kudeta-home.com.
Less expensive than a hotel, and just as good (in fact, better, because it's not so touristy.)

This O'Reilly shit is unbeLIEVEable!!!

I thought most apartments rented by the week? Dad's here one day, and mom three. Tricky. I should keep that in mind for next time, though.

Kari - I KNOW. I thought it was brilliant.

Your hotel vacancy problem reminds me of a similar matter that happened to me in may 2001... in NYC. I was in NJ for business, realized i was close to New York while driving around, decided to visit the place, fell in love with Manhattan, found myself incapable of leaving it to get back to NJ for the night. The only difference with your problem is that there wasnt even a $8,000 suite available. I drove to every quality hotel in Manhattan and they were booked out. So i just kept on driving around the city all night until the next afternoon.

About the O'Reilly appearance on Letterman's i remember it was pretty pathetic... I dont know if you your clip covers the whole segment or not, but Letterman slamming O'Reilly for 20 minutes, and when asked if he had ever watched the Factor, admitting he had never watched it ! i nearly dropped my beer in disbelief. But unfortunately it's the case with most O'Reilly haters.

I've watched maybe 20 minutes of the O'Reilly factor, but I coudn't stomach much more. I know I should give it another go, just to stay up and in-the-know in the O'Reilly department. I see lots of clips online, though, and I have yet to see anything positive in what he says. I am proud to say that I do not like Bill O'Reilly.

I didn't think it was weird that Letterman doesn't watch his show. They were arguing over O'Reilly's war on Christmas and the things he said about Cindy Sheehan. He didn't need to have watched the show in order to think both are absurd.

If you side with Letterman on Cindy Sheehan then i dont think you'll find much to like on O'Reilly's show. Only thing i can say is that i kept hearing all these simplistic assertions about O'Reilly and Fox News in general (especially in France where it doesnt matter if you know what you're talking about, the only thing that does matter is that you have an opinion on it anyway), then i got to watch the show for a while and was surprised by how much more there was to it, how much O'Reilly's views were closer to mine that i imagined, and how much things he says are distorted by the left-wing smear sites. But more importantly, sure sometimes he goes overboard like on the "war on christmas", sometimes i dont know what game he's playing, like when he wants to send the hot female teachers who bang their male students to jail, sometimes even when he's somewhat right he kinda sounds like a crazy uncle who's been on the booze for too long and you just want to pour him another glass of whiskey hoping he'll fall asleep right through it, but all things considered he often makes a lot of sense and he's a lot fairer, open-minded and i'd even say subversive than he's given credit for.

I went online yesterday and made myself sit through some O'Reilly. It was VERY, VERY difficult for me. I agree with you about the crazy uncle thing, above all.

One thing I take SERIOUS issue with about O'Reilly (and many others) is the CONSTANT repetition of things like, "We're at war. It does no good to finger point..." and "We shouldn't waste our time criticizing the president when we have a war to fight..." and so forth. This seems to be O'Reilly's main shtick (as well as The White House's) and I can't help but argue that dismissive thinking like that can get a nation into major trouble. Letting a tyrant run rampant just because he's "at war" (an unnecessary, costly, unjust, and poorly-executed one at that) is not only stupid, it's dangerous.

I side with Letterman on Sheehan in that O'Reilly needs to SHUT UP about it already. I have sympathy for Sheehan, sure. She lost her son and is against the war. My opinion on her more or less stops there. O'Reilly didn't appreciate her saying "freedom fighter" (don't get me started on the semantics of the word "terrorist" vs "freedom fighter") on his program. Fine. And he doesn't like her. Ok. I don't find her particularly well-spoken or charismatic, either. But he was freakin' fixated on her in the same way he was with the damn war on Christmas.

I think what I dislike most about O'Reilly is that he ALWAYS uses negativity and anger to fuel his program. Aggression just oozes out of his pores. And he's been proven (yes, by "left wing extremists" in his words) to have distorted facts and outright LIE on his program. Hell yeah, I take issue with that. I know these shows have fact-checkers, so his "mistakes" don't happen on accident.

To his credit, I will say that he reads the teleprompter pretty well and speaks clearly. I know his show is successful so there's gotta be something there that people like about him. But I can't handle his condescending tone, nor the obvious agenda he is trying to push. I have yet to find him "open-minded" as you suggest.

You don't think teachers should be punished for sleeping with their students (if they're minors)?

---- Update ----

One big thing that irked me about the Letterman exchange was when O'Reilly said:

"There is a movement in this country by politically correct people to erode traditions, and this Christmas tradition is the most cherished in the country..."

and later

"... the protection of cultures is important in this country."

First, I argue with the idea that being politically correct "erodes" any traditions whatsoever. I always thought the idea was to protect all traditions and cultures equally. However, while Christmas might be O'Reilly's most cherished tradition, there are millions of Americans who don't celebrate Christmas in any way. Christmas is a RELIGIOUS holiday, not an American one, and I don't see how taking references towards Christmas out of the public sphere in any way prevents people from celebrating the holiday in the comfort of their own home. I also don't see O'Reilly freaking out about the protection of other traditions such as Ramadam, Diwali or Purim.

Also, curious about how O'Reilly feels about removing the words "under God" in the Pledge of allegiance, I came upon this article which had this gem of a quote from O'Reilly:

Okay, I'm going to bring you up to date on the latest Christmas stuff. And again, this isn't about saying "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." It's about the culture war, a concentrated effort by the secular progressive movement to diminish any kind of spirituality in a public marketplace. Now, they're never going to admit that, but that is the agenda. And this stems back to "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" on the coinage, swearing in to say the truth in a court of law, the Ten Commandments displayed in courthouses, and on, and on, and on, and on. OK. That's what this is all about.

And the secular progressives made great inroads over the past five years in demanding that stores, other commercial enterprises, towns, villages not say "Merry Christmas" or permit Christmas displays of any kind. And look, if you don't know that, if you don't believe that, don't listen to this program. You're a moron, and I don't say it with all due respect. If you don't know what's in play, you're never gonna know, because I have proven it, and others have proven it over and over and over again. You know, the Christians and the Jews are not the ones that started the lawsuits, you know. The people who celebrate Judeo-Christian tradition were fine with putting up menorahs and cr�ches and everything. The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] started the lawsuits. OK? Got it? Everybody, got it?

So, a couple comments:

1. See how agressive he is?

2. I've always been of the opinon that "Under God" should be removed from the Pledge. Even when I was a little kid, I thought so. But O'Reilly obviously disagrees. However, those words were added in 1954, and I'm wondering how much of an "erosion" of culture it was to ADD the words to the original text (written in the late 1800's). I'm sure he's fine with THOSE kinds of changes...

3. A link on that page led me to read about his false claims about the Silent Night song as mentioned in the Letterman clip. Turns out, the song's lyrics had been changed, true. But it was featured in a Christmas play in which a "scraggly Christmas tree is informed it may not be sold and will instead become firewood, prompting it to croon the revised version of "Silent Night" while lamenting its situation." Honestly? I don't see how in any way changing the lyrics demonstrates the "erosion" of Christian values in this example. He took the situation out of context - and used it in an inflammatory way - to prove his point. I have a hard time believing the fact-checkers weren't aware of situation in which the song appeared. That didn't keep them from using this "example" to convey O'Reilly's message.

Fabrice, you mentioned that the things he says are "distorted by the left-wing smear sites," but I'd argue that facts are facts. Pointing out inaccuracies in O'Reilly's program is not the same as "distorting" the things he says. O'Reilly's followers don't have time to check up on everything he says, and they believe him because he says it so convincingly. Plus, he's a member of the press, so he must be telling the truth, right? I mean, he won a "Peabody," remember? Reilly's use of his version of the truth is a false representation of reality, as seen funnelled through O'Reilly's agressive agenda-pushing lens. What bothers me about this is that his viewers take what he says at face value (I'm not blaming them) which leads to some seriously misled minds out there.

For more O'Reilly fun facts, check out mediamatters.org. They have a list of inaccurate O'Reilly claims. Pages and pages.

You're right � that does make for interesting television...

I'm glad to know I'm not crazy, I have family in town this week too and could not find a place for them FOR THE LIFE OF ME. And there are FIVE of them. I even resorted to spamming - I collected e-mail addresses for 30 hotels and sent out my request. Finally their travel agent was able to get them two rooms at the Waldorf Madeleine....Thank goodness my aunt, uncle and his 3 boys didn't have to stay at my place!

I was going through some docs when i found my incomplete answer to your long post. I know it's old but if only as a matter of courtesy, i finished it and here it is.

When you say you've been sitting through some O'Reilly stuff, what kind exactly ? full shows or just heavily edited clips on Media Matters ? Judging by what you write about O'Reilly, i would go with the latter. The only problem is that there's a world of difference between what the clips, headlines and commentaries on MM show and reality. I should know because i have checked MM regularly after watching the Factor in order to compare what my eyes and ears witnessed and what MM made of it. Media Matters is not an impartial, non-partisan watchdog fighting for integrity in reporting. They're a spin-off of an ultra left-wing think tank, are lavished with millions of dollars by George Soros and other prominent liberal hard-liners (remember moveon.org ? yes the same crowd). Frankly i had no pre-determined opinion about them when i first checked their site a few years ago but i quickly felt ill-at-ease with the obvious leftist attack dog tone in their reporting. But i still visit this site, part of the reason is i have an independent mind so i always check the various sides of a same story before forming my own opinion, the other part being that their PC hysteria is so pathetic it makes for good entertainment, especially when their followers lash out on the forums (and it's quite a spectacle). It's obvious MM caters to the self-hating, bleeding heart liberal loons of the worst sort and are more concerned with attacking right-wingers on their lack of Political Correctness than with reporting real errors with real consequences. And what takes the cake is what amounts to easily half of their "news" coverage : the "worst person awards" by Keith Olbermann. It definitely takes away any credibility they might have had in my eyes. They cover these irrelevent non-events like they are equal in importance to the
Pulitzer or Nobel prizes. What kind of serious media outlet would ever do that ? It's totally surreal and it proves they're
willing to support any buffoonery to feed their obsessive hatred of Bill O'Reilly.

But enough about MM. One of the reasons i dont think you've watched full installments of the Factor is what you write at the
beginning about O'Reilly vetoing any criticism of Pres. Bush. The only problem with that is the fact that O'Reilly has criticized George Bush and the whole administration many times, vehemently on a few occasions. So i guess his statement was
made in a particular context and you can only get the context if you watch the whole show over a certain period of time. He probably was referring to a certain type of criticism, at a particular time, in a particular context. It's all a matter of
context. Without it, you can take anything out of a segment and turn it into whatever you want. That's the danger with MM and other hate-mongering left-wing activists. It's what they specialize into. And it works because the vast majority of their readers will never watch the real thing. Showing them a picture of O'Reilly, Gibson, Limbaugh, Bennett, is like showing a crucifix to a possessed linda Blair in the Exorcist : their heads do 360s until they explode.

There's one thing that disturbs me in your post : when you call Pres. Bush a tyrant. And i single that out because it allows me to pinpoint exactly what Bill O'Reilly stands up against and why people like me consider his show as crucial. I can understand that some people think George Bush is an idiot, i have had my own moments of doubt on a few... okay more than a few occasions. But i try to keep a balanced perspective. I can understand when people call him and his admin incompetent, i dont think i could argue for the opposite with a straight face. But a tyrant ? have left-wing pundits been snatched from
their home at night and thrown in a jail cell after writing an unfavorable piece about him ? Did he send political opponents
to a dungeon to be tortured and/or killed ? Have any late-night talk-show hosts been forced to praise him, prohibited from mocking him on their programs or face incarceration ? Did he dissolve Congress ? Did he go to war without consulting anybody ? Did he seize the country's financial reserve so he could spend the country's money to his liking and divert billions to offshore bank accounts in his name ? Do you know of any expat whose family back home has been sent to a labor camp because of something he wrote on his blog about the US ? Do you have any idea of what a tyrant is and how far George Bush is from being one ? Do you have so little faith in your country and its system of checks and balance ? And was Bill Clinton a tyrant too ? He launched a similar war to distract public attention from his personal conduct with laughable justifications but
except for Paul Krugman and Charley Reese i dont remember anybody from the mainstream media trying to bring a bit of reason, and all went well, everybody was on board, nobody made a fuss. The Clinton administration had established Saddam was a great threat to the world and wanted to take him out too... Of course they had to stop short of doing that because the french and germans had demanded that Saddam be kept in power as a condition to their involvement (sense a pattern here ?) but otherwise... so George Bush is a dangerous tyrant running rampant because he decided to finish the job ?

Sure Pres. Bush has been on a longer leash than Clinton had, but that's because whatever you think of the right, at least they did their job as an opposition, unlike the people whom Cornel West (one of the PC movement's most eminent sacred cows no less !!) referred to once as the "Milquetoast democrats" on Bill Maher's show. Sure, as a strictly secular guy i'm worried about George Bush's religiosity and the extent to which it influences his presidency. On the one hand i think that at least he believes in something, which is more than we can say about the actual dnc leadership. On the other hand, i'm open to the possibility that he maybe become more of a dangerously stubborn Jesus Freak.

However, i try to stay grounded in common sense and never lose sight of the need for perspective. And i see the radical left's double standard when it comes to religiosity. Forget the atrocities carried out continuously by islamic extremists, most hardcore liberals never run out of good sentiments, justifications, understanding, even admiration for these people. These guys will defend the worst sleazeballs, the most abject actions and behaviours as long as they are anti-christian, anti-west, anti-wasp, anti-American, anti-Israel minorities or foreigners, especially third-worlders who, according to the left's weird system of values would be at the forefront of human evolution if not for the genocidal white man. Because of that i think it's only fair to give Pres. Bush the benefit of the doubt. And this is Bill O'Reilly for you. You noted rightly that his show seemed fueled by anger for the most part. This is so very true. But this anger is directed against the kind of people i mentioned above. You're right when you say he doesnt speak out for the protection of other cultures and religion, because the context in which he positions himself and his show is one where the ultra left romanticizes, idolizes, praises backwards, worthless cultures but denigrates, belittles, condemns the "white" (wasp being a bit too
restrictive) American culture, and the whole Western culture to a lesser extent at every turn. Whether you agree with that or not will decide whether you love or hate O'Reilly. I was born in France, i grew up here. I was 10 years old when Mitterrand was elected president of France. I was extremely curious about the world surrounding me, so i listened to my family's political views (God-fearing, law abiding, hard working rural people who had a lot more in common with puritan wasp red-staters than with fancy parisians), i listened to my teachers, my classmates (especially the views passed down to them by their parents). I watched political debates on tv, read newspapers, books, magazines with social and political commentary, on both sides of the political spectrum. So i am more than familiar with the subtle socialist indoctrinment, through the mainstream media and a heavily politicized education system as well as political demagoguery and moral corruption can lead a generation, over the course of two decades, to stuff like : Bush = Hitler, Sharon = Hitler while Whatshisname of Iran seems to be a decent guy in his own right, Chavez a great leftist democratically elected leader on his way to a Fidel Castro-like level of greatness, Bin Laden a misunderstood Che Guevara-like rebel. And i see that the same mecanisms seem to have been in full play in the US as well, especially in the education system.

So yes, O'Reilly sometimes makes mistakes... CBS grave ? not quite... NYT grave ? not quite either. Forgot about these ? Compared to them O'Reilly's a small time offender. Yes he was wrong about the Silent Night lyrics change. He and/or his producers went for the best shock-value, the most striking example out of hundreds (around 150 i think it was), they made the wrong choice and ended up providing ammo to progressives. Does that make O'Reilly wrong about the big picture ? Hell no !! And again, i'm a strict secularist and needless to say i'm with you on the "under god" amendment, or at least i would be if it was any of my business, but i dont agree when you say Christmas is a religious celebration. It's been turned into a commercial, pagan celebration the same way it is in France (and that's not a critique, i hated having to go to the midnight mass in freezing temperatures). In fact, the way Christmas is celebrated in the US is so unreligious that it has been emulated in many countries including muslim ones. In the UAE for example it is celebrated ostentatiously, American style times 10, although in private, by the wealthy. The Christmas imagery coming from the US has also had a lot of influence on the french. Many of us have become resolutely secular but remain christian culturally and the french have embraced the commercial American-style Christmas because it takes the religion out but preserves an integral and sensitive part of the cultural identity. But because some people were born in a different culture doesnt mean public edifices and store facades should be forced to print "joyeuses vacances d'hiver" instead of "joyeux noel" and that muslim and jewish items should be displayed in public spaces while christian items couldnt. It's exactly the same. O'Reilly might have been a bit overboard and make the fuss bigger than it should have been, the "silent night" error is unacceptable, but the guy stands in the right nonetheless.

In the same spirit... it is easy to say Cindy Sheehan lost a son so she shouldnt be held accountable for a slip of the tongue. Except it's not an innocent slip... She has made insane statements during several speeches, among other things calling the US a genocidal country, referring to George Bush as a "Fuhrer", made anti-Israel comments... sounds straight from anti-American and antisemite movements in Europe and elsewhere. These group have mastered the use of "moral equivalence" to attack the US and Israel while not using direct anti-american or antisemite rethoric, and Cindy Sheehan has been playing that part for a while now, and i find it hard to believe that she's not been a left-wing extremist for a long time, only the Iraq war seems to have provided her with a good opportunity to pursue her ideological agenda. And icing on the cake, she joined anti-US rallies in Venezuela and made herself a pawn in the hands of madmen like Chavez (the event sponsor), who was acclaimed as a hero while President Bush was called a Nazi. So sure she lost her son and deserves sympathy for that, but i dont like the impression that many people on the ultra left use that as an excuse to quash criticism of her because deep inside they support her behaviour but are wary of doing it openly. Also, as a European i also think about the people who lost sons during WW2. Imagine some of them joining nazi-sympathizers in anti-America rallies, bashing Roosevelt for his unnecessary involvement in ww2. There were many folks at the time who thought that war was a strictly European shenanigan and that the US should never have been involved. Maybe they were right, but i'm glad this woman wasnt around at the time. Oh, and i almost forgot. Guess which organization has supported her from the very beginning, effectively "launching" her into orbit ? MoveOn.org ! Yeah right, Soros and the usual suspects, and unsurprisingly their parent MediaMatters is always looking out for her, going after any right-wing pundit who might have anything to say against her.

So finally yes O'Reilly is angry. You can feel anger from all over his program. But you know, he's carrying the anger of a lot of people. I know : quiet, soft-spoken people are so much more pleasant than agitated ones. But being quiet and soft-spoken doesnt make someone right, and sometimes angry people have respectable reasons in the world to be that way. I'm sure you would say that about Cindy Sheehan who's not the quietest person on earth, so it's only fair to give O'Reilly the benefit of the doubt. He feels strongly about what he perceives are threats to the US, my experience and observations prove to me he's right, so i expect him to be angry. Like millions of others i'm glad that he's angry, i wish there were people in France who could sound just as angry as O'Reilly does, on national television. Except that contrarily to this American "dictature" where a "tyrant is let running rampant", there's more diversity of views in the media (just as in the education system but that's another story) than in this pinnacle of freedom that is France.

Just a precision : I tend to get a bit exalted when touching these subjects however contrarily to what my writing may suggest,i dont hate all liberals, i even was rooting for Wes Clark until the mainstream liberal media chose Kerry. I'm only after those liberals who have crossed the line between reason and destructive ideologies.

I'm glad I have neither a television nor any idea who this O'Reilly is.

But I congratulate you, Lee, on getting people as excited this. I'm sure it must beat some record for comments...

On your allergy, I sympathise.
If my street is allegedly the most polluted in Paris (not because of me being in it), yours can't be far behind with all those petrol fumes wafting up to your perch.
Best of luck with the treatment, whatever it proves to be...

What are the things you do to ensure the longevity can watch yours? Here we try the key elements to at regular intervals, so that you can use your favorite shows of the year to identify.