Jay Baker

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly recently said that “The reason North Korea is causing trouble is that it wants to influence the November election,” on his show The O’Reilly Factor.

He also claims that Iran is doing the same thing by “order[ing] its killers to up the violence in Iraq for the next month” so that “Americans will hold President Bush responsible and vote in the Democrats, who the Iranians believe are not as aggressive in foreign policy.”
The site Media Matters, covered O’Reilly’s unfounded claims. They provide a video excert of the O’Reilly’s statements here.

This sounds a lot like pre-election noise. O’Reilly, in a very unsurprisingly partisan move, is simply looking for a patsy on which to blaim the current congress and administration’s shortcomings in Iraq.

This is the problem with television: it gives the illusion of legitimacy. Jokes like Bill O’Reilly appear legitimate because he occupies the same black box as anyone else.

Luckily, the latest generation has become very media savvy. People like O’Reilly, I theorize, have sway over generally older people who lack the media literacy to see through his infotainment. Younger viewers know better and tend to stick to, ironically, more reliable sources like The Daily Show.

With Project Patsy in full swing, Repuplicans and conservatives are blaming everything from violence in Iraq to Foley’s follies on anything but themselves. Good luck with that.