Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, political strategist Larry Sabato bemoaned the “blogs on left and right” and “the things they come up with daily, the vitriol, the vile nature of the comments.”
O’Reilly said that he knew “for a fact that President Bush doesn’t know what’s going on in the Internet.” O’Reilly then said, “I have to say President Bush has a much healthier attitude toward this than I do. Because if I can get away with it, boy, I’d go in with a hand grenade.” Watch it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/10/oreillygrenade.320.240.flv]
Transcript:
SABATO: It’s very personal. And you’ve mentioned the blogs earlier.
O’REILLY: Oh, it was off the chart.
LARRY SABATO: Well, we both have experienced this. The blogs on left and right, and I mean way left and way right, the things they come up with daily, the vitriol, the vile nature of the comments. And then they have hundreds and hundreds of people e-mailing.
O’REILLY: I know for a fact that President Bush doesn’t know what’s going on in the Internet. I know that for a fact because I did ask around.
SABATO: Well, he’s lucky.
O’REILLY: But.
SABATO: He’s lucky.
O’REILLY: He is lucky, because these are hired guns. These are people hired — being paid very well to smear and try to destroy people. And that’s the difference, Dr. Schiller. That had never happened before. I’ll give you the last word.
BROWN POLITICAL SCIENTIST WENDY SCHILLER: Well, I think that one thing is for sure. The millions of voters that go to the polls in 2006 aren’t spending most of their working hours during the day reading blogs on the Internet. They’re working for a living. They’re taking those kids to school. They’re going on with their lives. So yes, there’s a lot of vitriol out there. It’s a marketplace of ideas. It’s a free country last time we all checked. And it still is. It’s a great country.
O’REILLY: All right.
SABATO: It’s free for that reason.
O’REILLY: I think — I have to say President Bush has a much healthier attitude toward this than I do. Because if I can get away with it, boy, I’d go in with a hand grenade.