What I find funny (and a little scary) is O'Reilly's obsession with the Internet and blogs being unregulated and not "controlled." Why does he feel that free speech should be "controlled" and by whom?

He actually seems jealous that you can do things on the Internet that he isn't allowed to do on cable, never mind on broadcast. But I think he is imagining this to a large degree. Sure, you can use vulgarity. You can post pictures of naughty bits. You can even defy the restraints of time and space that are insurmountable in other media. In the digital universe, there are no limits to your bloviating or images or even movies, depending on your bandwidth budget.

But Bill claims that a blogger would somehow be immune to libel and slander lawsuits, and thus can poison the public information trough. This is somewhat ignorant. Anonymity is no protection from the law. If the RIAA can track down Napster file-swappers, then libeled litigants can drag you into court as well. And as CBS and the NY Times prove again and again, it's the mainstream media that are the most prolific in the "lying liar lies" department.

I agree. I think a lot of "old-media" people feel they're being overtaken somehow, by something that has far less restrictions and far more possibilities. And yes, it is VERY scary that some people would like to see it "controlled" - very reminiscent of totalitarianism.

Well stated.

Next time O'Reilly trots out the "there's no control" line, I hope whoever he's talking to asks him the $64,000 questions: How is controlling blog content consistent with the First Amendment? Who exactly is supposed to be the arbiter of what is or is not acceptable? For that matter, who controls the content of newspapers? Aren't they dangerous too because they're not "controlled"?

He is fighting for the seeBS job. He has to act more stupid than he is in order to compete with Katie. Intellect could disqualify him.

It is such a pleasure to watch the Al Gore-John Kerry crowd degrade themselves. Plus, I get to share it with all my friends on the blogs.

Better than a bar!!

OReilly's hatred of bloggers and the Internet stems from his hatred of Drudge, who he blames for leaking the story of how OReilly tried to muscle in on Rush Limbaugh's radio show when everyone thought Limbaugh was about to go deaf from inner ear disease.
OReilly and Drudge have had an ongoing spat ever since.

Media Matters constantly monitors what he says, so he has it in for them and many others who expose him for the hypocrite that he is.

MojoWire: That's interesting. I had sort of gleaned that there was a Drudge/O'Reilly feud, but honestly, is there anyone those two haven't feuded with? I figured it was only natural they'd feud with each other. I didn't realize that there was a specific incident to blame.

However, Drudge is not a blog.

And neither is Media Matters, not in any commonly used sense of the word.

FOX needs to get some patient, even-tempered, web-savvy summer intern to spend a few hours showing O'Reilly what a mouse is, how to surf the web, and just what the differences are between network news sites, privately run sites like Drudge's, organization sites like Media Matters, and true blogs like, oh, say, this one. Or Insty. Or Power Line.

James: I didn't see it, but I read somewhere that O'Reilly touted his Media Matters "Misinformer of the Year" award on his show. I'm not sure MM realizes that these kinds of attacks give him a glowing halo of integrity in the eyes of his audience. "See? The left hates me! That means I'm doing my job!"

Just goes to show.....

People ALWAYS fear that which they do not understand.

I have been trying yo get my friends & family 'into' the blogoshere for the last year now and they just look at me like I'm a freak.

Yet, they willingly plop themselves in front of the 'idiot box' nightly and get filled (to the brim) with MSM garbage....... hate to tell ya' but FOX has a rather large string of MSM woven into it's fabric as well.

Has anyone compared O'Reilly's comments about blogs or the internet before his scandal versus after it?

He lost all credibility IMO because of it. Maybe that's when he got more negative?

In a way, defending Rather is a way of defending himself. "See they're all liars..."

HomericPundit: I googled the Drudge/O'Reilly incident MojoWire mentioned above and came up with this summary. I suspect MojoWire is right, and this was probably the genesis of the "blog" paranoia.

What O'Reilly may not realize is that no one trusts Drudge anyway. I read the site myself, but come on. It's a trashy tabloid rendered in pixels. It's fun and gossipy, but it's been wrong so often I'd never believe anything written there without corroboration. But O'Reilly is not part of Net culture, so he probably doesn't realize that Drudge's reputation precedes him and dilutes anything he reports. All he knows (I suspect) is that some guy "on the internet" defamed him and he couldn't do anything about it. Ergo, all random bloggers are potential bombthrowers. As I said, if this is the case, it betrays a conceptual confusion about the internet. I mean, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly World News, and a Xeroxed fanzine are all "print media." But they are not equally important or taken equally seriously.

Meantime, as far as the scandal goes: AFAIK, no blogger unearthed any facts, or even any rumors, that were not in the public papers. He got off fairly easily blogwise, I think, because everyone was distracted by the debates at the time. In fact, in the center/right of the blogosphere, some bloggers even seemed to have a certain amount of sympathy, based on people's natural suspicions about the political and legal uses and abuses of sexual harassment claims.

In the talk radio world, O'Reilly seems to have been first to aim direct slams at fellow talk jocks and also to begin an endless array of labels for everyone: "right-wing", "leftist", "ideologue", etc.

Must often be at a loss for something useful to say!