Did Al Sharpton Try To Slander Bill O'Reilly?

eohrnberger said:

What Bill said on his program last night makes believe they are no longer friends. Seems like Sharpton has done this a number of times to Bill, who calls it sleazy, distorting, etc. etc.

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He says the same thing about Jon Stewart when they are going at it. As O'Reilly says when he comes to TDS, it's all for entertainment.

Hard Truth said:

If that scenario was accurate Mandela and the other apartheid opponents would have lost the struggle for freedom. The apartheid opponents won because the white controlled government finally realized that most of the world was against them thanks to the ongoing public information campaigns, protests and boycotts. The whites might have won a violent battle, but they would have been isolated and reviled internationally.

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Exactly, that's what Mandela is credited for, from stopping the ANC doing what commies are known to do after gaining power.

If you go back and actually read the newspapers and magazines published back during the late 80's and early 90's, the sanctions were taking a toll in South Africa. Apartheid had to come to an end or South Africa would end up going from being a developed country and becoming a developing country. Guess what happened ?

Today South Africa looks like a developing country with one of the highest crime rates in the world. It's the rape capitol of the world. The middle class along with the black middle class which actually has grown after apartheid live behind walled communities that are guarded by hired mercenaries. The poverty, it's still there.

I still have a couple of friends who still live in South Africa that I met back in 1977 who I keep in touch with. One drives a BMW that has a sun roof. He says he's never been able to drive the car with the sun roof open because it's to dangerous to do so.

The older South Africans have something to compare South Africa of today to. The younger South Africans probably under 40 only know the South Africa of today and have nothing to compare it to.

The same is true in America today. If your under 50 years of age, it's very likely you don't know what quality is. Or the personal freedoms the freedom of choice we once had in America that is no longer.

When I first came to the PD there was a thread about California. I mentioned something about the personal freedoms we no longer have in California. Someone challenged me. I started listing them, I can list a hundred personal freedoms we use to have lets say back in 1970 that we don't have today.

Which reminds me, if I want to start a fire in the fireplace tonight, I have to go on the web or drop a dime and find out if the EPA will allow me to put a log in the fireplace tonight. I didn't have to do that two years ago.

I don't know how Sharpton keeps his job.......

If Al Sharpton said something negative about Charles Manson, people would stop and think...huh...Maybe dood wasnt really THAT bad of a guy....

as much as i hate to defend al 'tawanna brawley" sharpton, noted race baiter, he was correct in asserting that o'really was damning Mandela with faint praise, pretending that while Mandela was a "communist" he was a good communist
there is nothing which tells us that Mandela was a communist. certainly not Mandela, himself
based on the facts, that asshole sharpton wins the debate

justabubba said:

as much as i hate to defend al 'tawanna brawley" sharpton, noted race baiter, he was correct in asserting that o'really was damning Mandela with faint praise, pretending that while Mandela was a "communist" he was a good communist
there is nothing which tells us that Mandela was a communist. certainly not Mandela, himself
based on the facts, that asshole sharpton wins the debate

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Thank you justabubba, unfortunely I have just one 'like' to give you.

Perotista said:

Al Sharpton was playing to his audience and giving them the red meat they want regardless of the truth that o'Reilly actually was praising Mandela. Sharpton was wrong in cutting every portion out of what O'Reilly said, but he is a talk show host and not a news reporter. All he did is give his viewers a small slice of film of what they believe and wanted to hear. Do I have a problem with it, not really. Our politicians do the same thing in using quotes out of context and spouting half-truths. So why not a talk show host?

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Did you watch the second video? If you think Sharpton was playing to his audience, then what about O'Reilly calling Mandela a communist on the eve of his death. Wasn't O'Reilly playing to his audience??

pbrauer said:

Did you watch the second video? If you think Sharpton was playing to his audience, then what about O'Reilly calling Mandela a communist on the eve of his death. Wasn't O'Reilly playing to his audience??

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Okay, I don't watch O'Reilly and I don't watch Sharpton. But the fact O'Reilly said he was a communist and then basically said even though he was a communist he was a great man and went on from there to praise Mandela for what he accomplished under dire circumstances. I suppose he was playing to his audience, this is what talk show hosts do. This is why I am not upset, although I wouldn't have done what either one did, but I think Sharpton is more in the wrong here. One, O'Reilly simply said he was a communist a long time ago and then did a, b, and c to help his nation and people, that he was a great man. Sharpton left the impression that all O'Reilly did was call Mandela a communist and said nothing else.

Was Mandela a communist? I really don't know and don't care. I know what he did and what he accomplished and that he IMO was an ICON to the world. He will be missed. I do know he at least held hands with communist leaders but he did so to accomplish his goal of setting his people free. Heck, during WWII we held hands with the USSR and communist Uncle Joe Stalin to accomplish our goad of defeating Hitler and Nazi Germany.

If Sharpton was upset with O'Reilly calling Mandela a communist, he should have showed the whole clip and then hit O'Reilly hard at that one point while, if Sharpton was me, I would have pointed out that call Mandela was inappropriate.

Perotista said:

Okay, I don't watch O'Reilly and I don't watch Sharpton. But the fact O'Reilly said he was a communist and then basically said even though he was a communist he was a great man and went on from there to praise Mandela for what he accomplished under dire circumstances. I suppose he was playing to his audience, this is what talk show hosts do. This is why I am not upset, although I wouldn't have done what either one did, but I think Sharpton is more in the wrong here. One, O'Reilly simply said he was a communist a long time ago and then did a, b, and c to help his nation and people, that he was a great man. Sharpton left the impression that all O'Reilly did was call Mandela a communist and said nothing else.

Was Mandela a communist? I really don't know and don't care. I know what he did and what he accomplished and that he IMO was an ICON to the world. He will be missed. I do know he at least held hands with communist leaders but he did so to accomplish his goal of setting his people free. Heck, during WWII we held hands with the USSR and communist Uncle Joe Stalin to accomplish our goad of defeating Hitler and Nazi Germany.

If Sharpton was upset with O'Reilly calling Mandela a communist, he should have showed the whole clip and then hit O'Reilly hard at that one point while, if Sharpton was me, I would have pointed out that call Mandela was inappropriate.

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A big THANK YOU pero that's exactly what he did!!!!

Protecting Mandela’s legacy from the right

Perotista said:

Was Mandela a communist? I really don't know and don't care.

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If the liberals back during the 1980's didn't start white washing Nelson Mandela's past, you wouldn't have to ask that question, you would already know the truth.

Should you care if Mandela was a commie ? Not really

Should you care that the left has used revisionism and have white washed Mandela's past in his early commie years of terrorism ? Yes.

The same people who sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War now seem to be trying to distance themselves and Mandela from the communist revolutions, terrorism and proxy wars of the past. Why is that ?

pbrauer said:

A big THANK YOU pero that's exactly what he did!!!!

Protecting Mandela’s legacy from the right

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Not bad. I have post this many times over the last few days and I wonder about some of the posters upbringing. I was taught to always respect the recently departed, if I couldn't respect them, then to stand there and keep quiet. Others are in mourning. I know this is a political site, but on certain occasions we should give politics a rest. At least for a day or two.

APACHERAT said:

Should you care that the left has used revisionism and have white washed Mandela's past in his early commie years of terrorism ? Yes.

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But repeating a revisionist narrative ad nauseum until it is generally accepted as common knowledge is what they do best...

APACHERAT said:

If the liberals back during the 1980's didn't start white washing Nelson Mandela's past, you wouldn't have to ask that question, you would already know the truth.

Should you care if Mandela was a commie ? Not really

Should you care that the left has used revisionism and have white washed Mandela's past in his early commie years of terrorism ? Yes.

The same people who sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War now seem to be trying to distance themselves and Mandela from the communist revolutions, terrorism and proxy wars of the past. Why is that ?

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I think whomever Mandela associated with, he did so in the hopes that they could help him free his people and end apartied. Everyone of us makes mistakes. I don't know if holding hands with the likes of Castro or whomever help his movement or not, but the fact remains he was successful and South Africa is a much better place.

We, the good old USA sided with some nasty people and countries during the cold war, we did it with a long range strategy to defeat the USSR and communism. Mandela probably side with nasty people and countries too, his long range strategy was freedom of his people. Both were successful.

APACHERAT said:

If the liberals back during the 1980's didn't start white washing Nelson Mandela's past, you wouldn't have to ask that question, you would already know the truth.

Should you care if Mandela was a commie ? Not really

Should you care that the left has used revisionism and have white washed Mandela's past in his early commie years of terrorism ? Yes.

The same people who sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War now seem to be trying to distance themselves and Mandela from the communist revolutions, terrorism and proxy wars of the past. Why is that ?

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[...]
Mandela was not a communist ideologue. "Mandela is the least ideologically rigid leader I have ever encountered," said John Carlin, author of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. "He was the very opposite of a fanatic. He showed immense respect for all political points of view and never to my knowledge believed he had the answers to the problems of human life, much less the key to heaven on earth, as his Communist brethren might have done."


Indeed, Carlin said,during Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment at Robben Island, he "had long and heated debates with the one big South African Communist Party figure imprisoned there, Govan Mbeki."


Fostersaid that even if Mandela was officially a Communist Party member for a time, he would not have defined himself that way.


"Nobody who has even a passing familiarity with South African history, and Mandela's role, would describe him as someone with mixed loyalties," Foster said. "He was a disciplined, true-blue member of the ANC through his entire adulthood."


• For decades, there were few allies Mandela could have sought out in the fight against apartheid. At the time Mandela would have been a South African Communist Party member, all liberation groups (including the Communist Party) were banned. And within this small group of opponents of apartheid, only the Communist Party was multiracial.


"The Communist Party in South Africa was attractive to some because it was the only nonracial party at the time for activists who didn't want to be defined ethnically," Schechter said. "For many years, the ANC was only for Africans, the Indian Congress for Indians and the Congress of Democrats for Whites."


Indeed, Keller writes that the legacy of nonracialism was one of the most valuable legacies of Mandela’s alignment with the Communist Party, since it made racial reconciliation possible after the toppling of apartheid. (Keller also lists other, less positive legacies, including "remnants of Communist protocol and jargon (that) live on in the platform and demeanor of South Africa’s ruling party.")


• The Communist Party – due in part to its long fight against apartheid – does not have the same negative connotation in South Africa that it does in the United States. Former South African President F.W. DeKlerk -- who worked with Mandela to end apartheid -- told Schechter that Communist Party leader Joe Slovo "played a pragmatic and crucial role in engineering the compromises that led to a political settlement. … All this ‘commie’ talk obscures more than it reveals."


In fact, "half the members of the present cabinet in South Africa are party members," Lodge added. "It really isn’t an issue."

Bill O'Reilly says Nelson Mandela 'was a communist' | PunditFact

Ad_Captandum said:

I feel like you might've been misled as to what communism is -- communism can be democratic, inclusive, and indeed some iterations allow private enterprise.

There's no debate: Nelson Mandela was a communist, his party, the ANC, are communists, and his legacy in South Africa is one partially of communism.

That doesn't make him a bad guy. He's still a great guy.

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I know he was openly a communist in his younger years. I haven't seen any evidence that he implemented any communist policies while in office. Much to his credit, he did not carry out one of the traditional practices of communists (and many other ideologues) who get into power: deport, imprison or kill everyone who doesn't support the new regime.

Summerwind said:

He says the same thing about Jon Stewart when they are going at it. As O'Reilly says when he comes to TDS, it's all for entertainment.

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True, but in those exchanges with Jon, it's far more friendly than how Bill took Sharpton's chopping and skewing of his comments about Mandela. He seemed seriously pissed off about that. Not so with Jon. Ever.