Bill O'Reilly Compares Progressive Bloggers to Nazis and KKK

This post, written by Jeffrey Feldman, originally appeared on Frameshop

In case anyone missed it, Bill O'Reilly opened his show, yesterday, with a smear of JetBlue for sponsoring the YearlyKos convention. O'Reilly accused JetBlue of supporting "hate," defined by O'Reilly as the presence of 9/11 conspiracy theories and occasionally caustic language--not by the YearlyKos staff, but on The DailyKos website--a blog that shares philosophical roots with the YearlyKos, but is a separate organization.

Because Bill O'Reilly is a make-believe journalist with the research skills of a Pop-Tart, everything he discussed in his gotcha piece on JetBlue was false and misleading.

Moreover--and this is something everyone should note--Bill O'Reilly not only supports a 9/11 conspiracy theory, but as recently as January 2007, he used his TV show to hype the violent language and ideas of one such theory.

On The DailyKos, 9/11 Conspiracy Gets Banned, Foul Language Gets Bleeped

Stepping past the obvious point that YearlyKos and DailyKos are two different things, the first think O'Reilly got wrong was the place o f 9/11 conspiracy theories on The DailyKos. According too O'Reilly, the site promotes them. In truth, 9/11 conspiracy theories are strictly forbidden on The DailyKos.

According to the FAQ free and open for every human being and Bill O'Reilly to read, The DailyKos adheres to a strict editorial policy whereby posting a 9/11 conspiracy diaries results not only in the deletion of the diary, but the banning of the offending writers from the site. Write a 9/11 conspiracy diary on DailyKos and within hours, your diary,and every other diary you ever wrote, is deleted and your a free account is canceled.

More importantly, O'Reilly failed to report how a volunteer team of DailyKos "trusted users" constantly sifts through every diary posted to make sure the site does not step across that murky line dividing civil debate from violent rhetoric. They accomplish this through a combination of requests to writers to clean up foul language and--occasionally--by "bleeping out" offensive words (e.g., O'Reilly is full of ***t). If nasty words do make are kept in a post, it is typically because they are a key to the story (e.g., the story of Bill O'Reilly's viewers sending Frameshop