Quote Of The Year

[Dr. Shane]

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Wins“Quote of the Year”

Quote:

The Media Research Center today announced its Best Notable Quotables of 2008: The 21st Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews “won” the dubious honor of Quote of the Year for gushing over a Barack Obama speech back in February: “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often….And that is an objective assessment.”

The Media Research Center is a conservative think-tank which can be balanced out by Media Matters which is a liberal think-tank.

[Dr. Shane]

I still think that Biden made the quote of the year. It wasn't just what he said but the context he said it.

Part of what a leader does is install confidence and demonstrate that he or she knows what they are talking about and communicates with people. If you listen to me and follow what I am suggesting we can fix this. When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed, He said, "Look, here's what happened."

What kind of leader do we need again? One that knows what he is talking about? One that installs confidence? Well a guy that has spent his life in the US Senate should know who was President when the market crashed. And most students of political science know that the 1960 debate between Nixon and Kennedy was the first televised debate. So Biden pretty much told us that he is not a leader. Yes, I think that is definitively the quote of the year.

[Woody]

I'm with you on that one Shane.

[Neil D]

The Media Research Center is a conservative think-tank which can be balanced out by Media Matters which is a liberal think-tank.

Media Matters ...a liberal think-tank?

Hmmmmmmmm......"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501©(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." [From MM website on "Who are we"]

Doesn't look like a "think tank" to me......

[Dr. Shane]

A think tank is a research and information center that advocates certain policies which can be economic, social, political, religious, scientific, technological, business or industrial. Often times they are non-profit. The term covers a broad spectrum of organizations.

[Neil D]

A think tank is a research and information center that advocates certain policies which can be economic, social, political, religious, scientific, technological, business or industrial. Often times they are non-profit. The term covers a broad spectrum of organizations.

and it doesn't cover Media Matters......Media Matters is NOT a research and information center that is advocating certain policies.....Check it out for your self....

[Dr. Shane]

I am being kind by calling Media Matters a think tank. That may be too generous of a comment as it gives purpose to what they do. Media Matters is a research and information center that supposedly advocates a fair and objective media. To me, that is a policy. For the most part they just criticize conservatives in media. They hired Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin to research Rush Limbaugh and then paid $100K to air anti-Limbaugh ads on CNN, MSNBC and Fox. I can't remember the last time I heard Limbaugh mention them but O'Reilly has exposed their inaccuracies on numerous occasions.

[Neil D]

...and we all know just how much of a cad O'Reily is too... O'Reily doesn't like them because they expose his inaccuracys as well....and he gets flack for it...And O'Reily is NOT center in his opinion either...

[Dr. Shane]

O'Reily is the king of FOXNews. They go after him because it drives their fund raising. Many of these liberal think tanks have made a lot of money from going after FOXNews. Their efforts haven't hurt O'Reilly's ratings at all.

O'Reilly is a moderate conservative. He is one of the better one's on TV. I like him and Jim Lerher. Tim Russert was my favorite but now he is gone. If O'Reilly was on MSNBC we wouldn't see half as many articles being written by Media Matters. FOXNews is their target and O'Reilly gets hit just because he is there.

[fccool]

I take O'Reilly for being more of a propagandist than an actual objective newscaster. He does not offer anything of a value, but his opinions on the events that he spins according to his world view. He is not simply stating the event, but putting a spin on it by saying "this is what it is really about". He brings people on the show not because he cares about their honest opinion, but for a debate, which he will win because he has all the time to rebut post debate... and he at time responds to yesterday's comments today pouring dirt on people who have no chance to respond.

What good are his "conservative" values if he does not care about basic human decency? I kind of glad that he is a talking head, and not a cop or politician... someone with real power.

[Dr. Shane]

O'Reilly is a commentator. He is hired to give his opinion. People value his opinion enough that he has one of the highest rated cable news TV programs. He is not a newscaster. That would be someone like Katy Couric. He is a commentator.

O'Reilly is passionate. That is one of the things a lot of people like about him. He does bring on guests that disagree with him. He claims he does that to balance out his view. Thus anything that he might be "spinning" they can unspin. I think he does a good job. I don't agree with him all the time. In fact, I often find myself agreeing with his guests which tells me he is running a fair program. I have no problem with Bill O'Reilly. It will be a sad day when he retires.