I saw this on C-SPAN. (I suppose I could have just gone down to the convention center.) The crux of the issue is that Bill O'Reilly had, in several interviews, defended his tenure on
Inside Edition by saying that the show had one a Peabody Award. Franken found out this was untrue, and he called O'Reilly on it.
O'Reilly's point was that it's not a big deal whether he misspoke and called a Peabody award a Polk award. Franken's point was that O'Reilly is an inveterate liar.
As I see it, the problem is that O'Reilly just won't live up to his tabloid past. Perhaps he made the mistake because the show won the award
after O'Reilly had left the show. O'Reilly also had said that "we won a Peabody." This use of the second person is also deceiving. He didn't win anything. Of course, if I went to Syracuse, I could say something like, "We won the NCAA Final" and no one would question my meaning. The same wouldn't be true if my old firm won a $100 billion judgment and I said, "We won the biggest case of the year."
I should have watched the O'Reilly Factor yesterday to see his reaction. Franken wondered aloud how the incident would be edited.
My reaction after watching the whole thing was as follows (1) I'm not buying books from either O'Reilly or Franken, (2) Molly Ivins (the other panelist) comes off as Yoda, and (3) Pat Schroeder (wasn't she a presidential contender at some point?) was as ineffective as Cartman's mom ("Now boys, play nice together") at handling the situation.
I suppose this should be on the Politics Board, but whatever....
