Bill O’Reilly’s Obama interview showed a nation still divided
By Dana Milbank, WashPost, Published: February 3
Bill O’Reilly’s Super Bowl interview of President Obama was extraordinarily revealing — not because of what the president said but because of what the interviewer did.
The Fox News host and purveyor of anti-Obama sentiment was given 10 minutes to question the man he decries to millions nightly. O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.
Along the way, he interrupted the president 42 times, by my count — although, given the amount O’Reilly spoke, it may be more accurate to say Obama was interrupting him. Sometimes he argued with Obama as though the president were a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Of the 2,500 words uttered during the interview, O’Reilly spoke nearly 1,000 of them.
This was O’Reilly’s third such session with Obama — and as such it served as a milepost on the conservative movement’s road to Obama hysteria. O’Reilly’s first sitdown with Obama, in 2008, was a lengthy and affectionate encounter. The second meeting, another Super Bowl interview in 2011, had its share of interruptions, but there was lighthearted banter and the questions were more neutral (“What is it about the job that has surprised you the most?”).
(More here.)
Bill O’Reilly’s Super Bowl interview of President Obama was extraordinarily revealing — not because of what the president said but because of what the interviewer did.
The Fox News host and purveyor of anti-Obama sentiment was given 10 minutes to question the man he decries to millions nightly. O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.
Along the way, he interrupted the president 42 times, by my count — although, given the amount O’Reilly spoke, it may be more accurate to say Obama was interrupting him. Sometimes he argued with Obama as though the president were a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Of the 2,500 words uttered during the interview, O’Reilly spoke nearly 1,000 of them.
This was O’Reilly’s third such session with Obama — and as such it served as a milepost on the conservative movement’s road to Obama hysteria. O’Reilly’s first sitdown with Obama, in 2008, was a lengthy and affectionate encounter. The second meeting, another Super Bowl interview in 2011, had its share of interruptions, but there was lighthearted banter and the questions were more neutral (“What is it about the job that has surprised you the most?”).
(More here.)
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