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Page 74:
O'Reilly's background & Bias
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Take, for example, my favorite moment at the
BookExpo luncheon. I questioned him about a
claim he had made three minutes earlier about
having “started out with nothing.” See,
O’Reilly always likes to crow about his
hardscrabble childhood in working-class Levittown,
Long Island. As he once told the New York
Observer, “You don’t come from any lower than I
came from on an economic scale.” |
This is odd, because this was (one of at least)
my favorite moment from the Expo luncheon too, because
Franken looked like a complete idiot. It was a shame
that it only lasted a few seconds, but worse that
Franken is trying to turn the tables here to rewrite
the history through Frankengoggles. Franken asked Bill
where he grew up and Bill answered - noting that this
stupid 'story' has been answered (in Bills words) "87
times!" and indeed was even included on his A&E
Biography. Did A&E lie about O'Reilly? Franken ignores
it - as well as all other vouchers that indeed
O'Reilly grew up in Levittown Long Island from a
working class family. As O'Reilly told Franken at the
expo "My mother still lives there, come on over. We'll
have a bagel" and Franken just scoffs. But wait a
minute - Mrs. O'Reilly DOES still live in the house in
Levittown! Why didn't Franken check up on this??? Is
he honestly that LAZY to check this obvious fact? Or
is he just that confident that his Franken-goggle
readers will accept this false statement without
question?
[LIE] - It's simply not true that O'Reilly
'likes to crow about his hardscrabble childhood'.
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Trouble is, an inside source (O’Reilly’s mother)
tells a different story. Mrs. O’Reilly
proudly told the
Washington Post that the family regularly took
vacations in Florida, and that little Billy
attended private school, a private college, and
that their home was in the affluent suburb of
Westbury, not blue-collar Levitttown. |
[MANIPULATION] -
O'Reilly's mother
didn't tell a different story at all! I too grew up in a blue-collar
town in long island in humble surroundings - but I also went to private
school until 9th grade and took frequent trips to California and even
Hawaii, with the choice to go to a nice college had I so desired. That
doesn't contradict the finances of my family, the atmosphere I lived in
or the location of my home at ALL! In my case, it was a combination of
luck and sacrifice - my father worked for TWA and then American Airlines
so we all flew for free (only) to places where we had a place to stay
for free (my Grandpa owned an apartment on Oahu which we inherited) and
my parents worked out their budget to send me to a good school.
Franken's matter of fact statement would make my own upbringing
impossible. The casual speech wouldn't be a big deal, if Franken didn't
make such a practice of taking others so literally in their own casual
comments.
So by my own example - it is certainly
possible to be a working class long island family and still send your
kid to good schools and take nice vacations. For my family, it was a
luck-sacrifice combo. In
Bill's case however, it was all sacrifice and no luck. On television,
radio and in his books, Bill O'Reilly has always given credit to his
parents for the sacrifices they made. The tiniest bit of research would
have seen him reference this a dozen times. If going to private schools
makes your family more than working middle class, then I know several
dozen ex-classmates still out on Long Island that should be studied as
case study phenomenon's - however, it's more likely that Franken was
just manipulating the obvious truth to spin his smear.
Regularly took
vacations in Florida? Another issue covered in the A&E
Biography as I recall. Also - Bill told NPR's Terri
Gross that they went to Florida one time. On
the greyhound bus. What a splurge, eh?
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So I asked Bill
where he grew up. Was it Westbury or Levittown?
Seemingly a hard question to spin. Backed into a
corner, he replied with a crazy lie, saying that
he had grown up “in the Westbury section of
Levittown.”
There is no
Westbury section of Levittown. They are two
separate villages several miles apart. It was
like saying he had grown up in Brooklyn—the
Manhattan section of Brooklyn. |
[LIE] - No Westbury section of Levittown
eh? Well, I'll get to that in a moment. Lets look at
the lying comparisson Franken makes, because it is a lie that I know quite first
hand to be untrue. Unfortunately for Franken, I know
quite well that his comparison is totally false. When I lived on Long Island, my
address read Lawrence NY. But I didn't live in
Lawrence. Indeed, Lawrence is a town
several miles
apart from my old house awn LonG Eyeland --
so I can prove from my own experience that Franken's
Brooklyn--Manhattan analogy is complete inaccurate
crap. Did Franken and his team of researchers not
bother to look up this clear fact?
[MANIPULATION] - Like I said earlier, Franken
doesn't mention A&E, Parade magazine, Salon.com and even the official
Levittown historian! who back up O'Reilly's roots, but backed
into a corner Franken tells this crazy lie. No
Westbury section of Levittown eh? Wrong.
The Levitt company built homes in villages of
Island Trees, Wantagh, Hicksville, and Westbury over a
4 year period. Levitt managed to get Island Trees
renamed to Levittown.
"Levittown" from a social and cultural
perspective would have included the area of homes
built in the Levitt era, irregardless of actual
village. So 30 to 50 years ago, if you lived there,
you would have identified yourself as from Levittown,
perhaps the
"Westbury section".
I've even been told that
when Levittowners
meet, the first question is: "Oh yeah, what section?".
The reason it's only totally wrong and not blatantly
obvious to Franken is, as the Island got built up, and the Levitt
development was no longer surrounded by farmland,
people began to identify more with the community where
their kids went to school, the post office that
delivered their mail, and the various roads and other
features that form boundaries. People who live there
today would not commonly refer to their home as being
located in Levittown, as
Westbury is now more "upscale".
The key there however is the word "now".
Although the Westbury section of Levittown has become
a bit nicer than the Levitt houses, the Levitt houses
were built for working-class folks. The developer
claimed he finished a new one "every 15 minutes" and
they hold no comparison to the bigger neighbors in the
community.
Bill O'Reilly isn't the only one telling the truth
about
this lie. Billy Joel is from an offshoot section
of Levittown as well. He is from "Hicksville"
Long Island, but
grew up in a Levitt home, and has stated many times that he is
from "Levittown" (which is also documented
in his biographies). He even contributed family
pictures to a local Levittown history book - yet
according to Al Franken, it's all a big lying liar
fraud because they're
"separate villages several miles apart".
For his
source in the back of the book, Franken cites 'any
good map' saying:
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The real
version (Westbury is not part of Levittown) appears on
any good map of Long Island.
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[MANIPULATION] -
Look at a
map and it will show you that they are 2 sections with
distance apart from each other. As explained on this
page, this means nothing. Look at a map of LEVITTOWN
and it proves that Franken is a liar:
Levittown at Fifty: Initial Developments
Since Franken's own source discredits him... one has
to ask if this was a stupid mistake that escaped
Franken AND all his researchers, if they didn't bother
to look it up, or if they did...and lied. Whatever the
case - it is a clear and blatant Franken lie. If
Franken is to claim this blaringly wrong accusation as
a mistake (which he has so far only ignored) then,
quite Frankenly...he CAN'T. Not after building
his anti-O'Reilly centerpiece around a ridiculous
misspeak over an award - there is no way Franken can
escape this LIE with dignity, which is probably why
he's ignored it.
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