Time Magazine Takes On Bill O'Reilly

Fox News right-wing commentator Bill O'Reilly's lie to beat all lies (that no one on Fox News has said you will go to jail if you do not buy into the new health care insurance reform) has been challenged by Time Magazine.

Time goes to the Fox News Web site and gets the transcripts of O'Reilly's ridiculous lie as he attacked Sen. Tom Coburn for his criticism of Fox News (Fox is with Republicans unless or until they say anything negative about Fox News).

Here is an excerpt:

Then, last night Fox News's Bill O'Reilly raked Coburn over the coals for his comment about the network. O'Reilly said no one had ever appeared on Fox News and told viewers they would go to jail if they didn't buy health insurance. “We researched on Fox News if anybody had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it.”

Like Coburn, I was pretty sure I'd heard exactly this assertion numerous times on Fox News, so I did a quick search of their transcripts.

You can check out the rest of the story for the transcripts and analysis, here. It's too bad Coburn didn't have his facts in order or simply felt too overwhelmed to defend his accurate comments about health care fearmongering by Fox News.

Coburn To Sotomayor: You’ll Have Some ‘Splainin’ To Do’

I suspect most people will smile when they read about what Sen. Tom Coburn (probably in an effort to inject a bit of humor) had to say to Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is from Yahoo News:

Sen. Tom Coburn evoked a 1950s TV show in a quip responding to Sonia Sotomayor’s scenario about what he might do if she — hypothetically, of course — attacked him.

“You’ll have a lot of ’splainin’ to do,” Coburn said, to laughter from the crowd and Sotomayor. What he said – and how he said it – was a riff on a Hispanic television character, Ricky Ricardo, whose accent is now widely considered a broad parody.

In the famous 1950s TV show “I Love Lucy,” the Cuban-American bandleader Ricardo (played by the equally Cuban-American bandleader Desi Arnaz) would often admonish his scatterbrained wife, Lucy, by saying she’d have some “’splainin’” to do. The phrase, “Lucy, you have some ’splainin’ to do,” has become part of the popular culture.

My take:We live in such a politically-correct society and I could go into a lot of the reasons why we are in such a politically-correct society. But, I won’t. Coburn needs to be smarter (as, to some extent, we all do). I will say that while some people will make something out of this I will not. I did find it a bit interesting that there was no party affiliation mentioned in the story (though there was a mention in the photo cutline which identified Coburn as a Republican). In some stories the part affiliation is mentioned, but not in others. I am more interested as to why that is the case.