This is fading news, but it is notable in that it is the first news cluster the Chris Dodd Presidential Campaign has squeezed itself into.

Bill O’Reilly campaigns against the “extremists” of Dailykos and any corporate who dares sponsor the “Yearly Kos” convention. As an aside, there is something about the convention I find a bit annoying, but the blogger Billmon already covered that one in his first fare-well posting.

After a spell, I can only ask the question “What world does Bill O’Reilly live on?” Bill O’Reilly, you see, is right there in the Center — INDEPENDENT — Fair and Balanced because he takes on people from the extreme Left (the… um… Yearly Kos convention) as well as the extreme Right. (His reference in this case? Fred Phelps, of “God Hates Fags” fame. In previous incarnations of this dichtomoy, his “extreme left” has included Meg Ryan against the “extreme right” of Skinhead neo-nazis.)

What is the lefter-most position he accepts as “responsible” discourse? Joseph Lieberman? What is the righter-most position he accepts? The Minutemen ? It is a strange perversion of the political spectrum.

Regarding the Chris Dodd interview, where Dodd aptly defended the mainstream Democratic politics inherent in dailykos’s ouvre as not being problematic in attending a gathering regarding, I found one thing insulting, something which nobody really seemed to pick up on. To the response that “it’s easy for them to take down those (offensive) comments if dailykos wanted to” — an implication that because dailykos allows a fluttering of off-based posts in its bowels, it is fair to attack it in the main off of them. Commentators have focused largely on the hypocrisy that Bill O’Reilly’s site keeps far more rabid comments up, and that sites such as freerepublic are loaded with them far and away beyond anything dailykos would produce — Rules for Thee but not for me. But more to the point: Why Should kos be expected and prodded to delete anything not in step with what he narrowly deems himself to represent? I understand that he keeps a tight lid and delete every 9/11 conspiracy theorist post — the better not to give the Bill O’Reillys of the world that opening. Beyond that, as this controversy unfolded, he listed the people that he enabled as being “Represntatives of Dailykos”. Beyond that, it is the better tact to allow a wide flow of bloviating and speech-making. That O’Reilly does not get this, that he instructs a more top-down model of operating, serves as a window inside Bill O’Reilly’s mindset.
The other tidbit from the Dodd exchange came when O’Reilly bloviated that “You Got that from the Media Matters Propaganda Swill” — probably true enough — when he misstated that O’Reilly said if al Qaeda were to bomb San Fransciso and nobody should care off his tv show. He said it on the radio show — the mis-representation of source in O’Reilly’s mind proved something. Somehow. The message that Bill O’Reilly parlayed to his viewers, and handful of listeners, was that such a comment was never made by him — and he suggests that by the half-truth inherent in stating that he never made the comment on the television — how outrageous of Chris Dodd to make THAT false accusation!

Actually, throw the ballot my way and I think I’ll vote for Dodd. Sure. Why not? Not based on this item alone, but he does strike me as a man in need of support who deserves more than he’s got.

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