Outside The Spin Zone

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but let me dig into this one while it's still slightly fresh.



Some people are shocked that O'Reilly would defend Obama like this. And at first blush, I was too - then I realized that this is typical O'Reilly.

As of yesterday, conservatives are creating the narrative that Obama was somehow paid off by BP, that less than $80,000 dollars in donations is somehow compensation enough to turn a blind eye to off-shore drilling safety.

How much did BP contribute to Republicans across the board? Fifty-three percent of all donations when to Republican candidates, so this new meme that Obama and his administration were bought off with literally around 2% of all money that BP doled out to politicians is about as believable as Sarah Palin agreeing to pose nude in next month's issue of Hustler.

But back to the O'Reilly bit. He's a completely different creature outside the confines of the editing suite adjacent to his Fox"News" studio. Even on the limited days that his program runs live, you can see the radical shift in character - he's not entirely comfortable with his environment even though he's been there since virtually the beginning. And when he's outside the studio giving interviews, he tries far too hard to portray this image of "fairness" when it comes to political discussions.

To me, this shows the bi-polar nature of Fox"News" and it's employees. There's just enough of them to have some semblance of accountability and half-hearted honesty to make one wonder if they struggle at night with the fact that they work for one of the most dishonest news organizations on the planet. But then again, O'Reilly's been pretty much marginalized since Beck took the spotlight away from him last year. Maybe he's trying to draw attention to himself with this statement. I guess it worked on some level.