Bill O'Reilly and Bernard Goldberg Give SNL Too Much Credit

Last night, 3/6/08, Bernie Goldberg claimed the Saturday Night Live skit about the media's coverage of Obama was a wake up call to the press giving them "permission" to treat Obama with less reverence. In addition, BOR claims in his weekly column that SNL is responsible for Hillary's win on Tuesday.

Here's Goldberg's theory about the media reaction to the SNL show with Hillary Clinton as a guest.

"The media were in love with Barack Obama," Goldberg declared. "They live in a comfy liberal elite bubble, and they can go for a lifetime and never run into anybody who disagrees with them. But then here comes Saturday Night Live to puncture that bubble. That comedy show gave the mainstream media permission to throw away their Obama pom-poms and begin to act like real journalists."

O'Reilly agreed adding that he thought a lot of women felt sorry for Clinton because she was getting battered by the press and decided to vote for her out of sympathy.

Bill opened his weekly column with this thought.

"Hillary Clinton should send the Saturday Night Live writers fruit baskets and expensive bottles of wine. That's because without them, she might be out of the running for the presidency right now."

He claims the timing shows the big influence Saturday Night Live had on the undecided voters.

"Exit polls from Ohio and Texas show that Senator Clinton routed Senator Obama among Democrats who made their choice within three days of the vote—exactly the time frame of the SNL skit. In Ohio, Hillary won those voters 58% to 40%. Could be a coincidence, but I don't think so."

comment: It's not surprising that O'Reilly gives the media complete power over the voting public. Since he has complete confidence in his own ability to sway public opinion through constant manipulation, he assumes that the voters are powerless to make their own decisions.

Since Hillary has a large base of mature, working women, one wonders how a skit on SNL will be the deciding factor for them .Also does O'Reilly really believe the so called undecided voters were really so undecided and too out of it to see what the press has been doing. After all, he and FOX have been mutilating the Clinton's for years. People just don't take it seriously anymore.

Media Matters has an interesting analysis of the subject by Matthews and Olbermann