The problem here – well, in addition to all of O’Reilly’s usual problems – is that he seems unaware, or pretends to be unaware, of the difference between an online community forum like Daily Kos and traditional corporate-owned pre-Internet media. Inviting users to participate in an interactive, Web 2.0 medium doesn’t make you automatically agree with everything they post to your site. If it did, there would be very little reason to do it.

O’Reilly even seems unaware of the comments left by people on his own site. Again, it’s possible that he just chooses not to be aware or he pretends not to be aware. But given O’Reilly’s demographic and the hate he peddles, it’s not hard to imagine that O’Reilly has more than a few viewers who would be willing to express views in a public forum that even O’Reilly wouldn’t want to be associated with.

I don’t consider comments on the O’Reilly site as coming from O’Reilly himself. It’s inappropriate for O’Reilly to use the comments on blogs or the postings of Kos diarists to compare progressive blogs to the Nazis and KKK.

The rebuttal to this lunacy was, of course, put best by Stephen Colbert:

Exactly. The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis were both notorious for allowing people to express unpopular views in an open and free forum.

And that basically sums it up. If O’Reilly wants to make the argument that people who instigate hate are responsible for all of the comments and opinions of their followers, he’s free to do so. But then, we’ll all need to have a word with O’Reilly himself.

Discuss.

Excerpts from a mock trial questioning Shakespeare’s authorship:

For more on the authorship question, check out this 1964 article by William Murphy.

Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie show us how it really happened:

Tomorrow night is the final episode of the Sopranos. Use this thread to discuss the series, and post any predictions, speculations, or hopes about the final episode. Everything’s fair game here, both the sacred and the propane.

Via The Media Dude we find this thread of speculation about the final episode. Which theories do you think will play out?

And after the episode airs, feel free to continue the discussion here, about the finale or the series in general. What were the best moments of the series? What was the best hit? What was the biggest shock? And what was the best malapropism of the series?

If you need to catch up, the current season is On Demand. And you can see a recap of the first six seasons here:

Enjoy!

I had wanted to post this clip from the Republican debate earlier, but didn’t want to ruin this week’s Headline Game. Giuliani was asked to respond to a harsh quote from a Catholic bishop about his stand on abortion. As he tried to answer, lightning began to play havoc with the sound system. The audience laughed as the candidates on either side of him, Romney and McCain, began to back away, and Guiliani made a joke about it.

Politics aside, it’s pretty funny. Check it out:

If you watch the rest of the clip, you can see Mike Huckabee’s defense of his earlier stance against evolution. He spins it hard, but then he ends with a quote that leaves little doubt about his position on the matter:

If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it.

McCain and Giuliani seemed amused by that. We’ll see how it plays with the Republican base.