O'Reilly Mines Daily Kos Comments for Controversy
Oct. 27 2008, Published 7:07 a.m. ET
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the KKK, Daily Kos—all the same, basically, says Fox bloviator Bill O'Reilly. During a recent segment, O'Reilly steamed over what he said were endorsements of attacks on U.S. troops, the celebration of the return of White House spokesman Tony Snow's cancer, and the recent assassination attempt on Dick Cheney. Daily Kos, a progressive politics website run by former soldier Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, was the hatemonger to blame for these inflammatory statements, O'Reilly said. "This is hate of the worst order. It's like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi Party. There's no difference here. People should die. They want Tony Snow to die ... Cheney to die."
The Fox segment included a gotcha interview with Jetblue's CEO—the airline company is sponsoring Kos's annual convention.
The comments about the troops, Snow, and Cheney, though, didn't come from Zúniga or any of his staff of writers. Rather, they were unedited quips cherry-picked from thousands of others in the site's open forum. (Daily Kos, it should be noted, is one of he highest trafficked political sites on the Web.) Worse still, the views in question are the complete opposite of the ones actually espoused by the official writers on Daily Kos. (Proof after the jump.)
O'Reilly declined a request for comment.
So was he cherry-picking comments? After the jump, we report, you decide ...
