Red Rag

During his reasonably entertaining interview with Michael Moore, Faux News host Bill O’Reilly explains what constitutes lying:

MOORE: Uh huh. So, in other words, if I told you right now that nothing was going on down here on the stage…

O’REILLY: That would be a lie because we could see that wasn’t the truth.

MOORE: Well, I’d have to turn around to see it and then I would realize, oh Bill, I just told you something that wasn’t true…

Right. That sounds simple enough.

Later, O’Reilly suggested that nothing was going on down here on the stage — or at least that Ted Kennedy was not speechifying:

Bill O’Reilly, who was presenting his show live from the Democratic National Convention, teased the upcoming segment of his show by saying of convention speaker Senator Edward Kennedy: “When we come back, we’ll let you listen to Ted Kennedy for a while, if he shows up.”

In fact, Kennedy had already shown up and had been speaking for several minutes, as O’Reilly need only have turned around to see.

So by his own standards, Bill O’Reilly is a liar.

While we’re on the topic of the Moore/O’Reilly exchange and right-wing dishonesty, Matt Drudge posted a transcript, along with a photo of Moore and O’Reilly. Thing is, he stole the photo from Tom Tomorrow, and went to some extraordinary lengths to hide that fact. Needless to say, the photo has vanished from Drudge’s site.