I look at Joan Walsh as Chris Matthews in drag.
Via Joan Walsh:
. . . In one exchange about a story that has already been widely debunked, O’Reilly asked Obama why IRS head Doug Shulman had visited the White House 157 times, a staple of right-wing fantasizing about that IRS “scandal.” Supposedly Shulman was coming to the White House on the regular to plot with Obama how to take down the Tea Party. Except the Atlantic almost immediately debunked the claim last year: Yes, Shulman was “cleared” to visit 157 times – for meetings on a range of issues from the Affordable Care Act to financial reform – but he only actually attended meetings there 17 times, and never with Obama or anyone high in his administration. That’s what O’Reilly used his 10 precious minutes with the president in prime time to ask about.
You couldn’t help thinking of election night, when Karl Rove wouldn’t let Fox declare Obama the winner over Mitt Romney, because he had convinced himself along with the Fox audience that the incompetent and unpopular president could not possibly win. The folks inside the Fox bubble hurt themselves, because they don’t see reality until it bites them in the ass. That’s what gets you Bill O’Reilly babbling to the president about nonexistent controversies and asking questions that were answered months ago.
And yet I found the whole thing profoundly depressing. Maybe the worst part was when O’Reilly asked a viewer’s question: “Why do you feel it’s necessary to fundamentally transform the nation that has afforded you so much opportunity?” O’Reilly presumably got lots of suggestions from viewers, and I’m sure many were uglier than that. But what does it mean that that’s the question he chose?
It means, again, that O’Reilly and Ailes and their viewers see this president as unqualified and ungrateful, an affirmative action baby who won’t thank us for all we’ve done for him and his cohort. The question was, of course, deeply condescending and borderline racist. Obama has been afforded “so much opportunity”? What about O’Reilly, who pretends he’s a working-class son of Levittown, Long Island, when he’s actually the kid of an accountant who grew up in Westbury and went to private high school and university?