rachel maddow
Rachel Maddow

After hyping a fake story on Afghan bounties, cable's leading anchor doesn't blink and moves on to the next fable.

If you'd told me back in 2005, when I first met Rachel Maddow, that the lightning-quick, ultra-smooth broadcaster would someday supplant Bill O'Reilly as the #1 name in cable news, I wouldn't have been surprised, at all. But I'd have been shocked if you told me she got to the top by being Bill O'Reilly.

With Maddow in the lead role, MSNBC has become Fox, but somehow more craven, jingoistic, and shameless. If you don't believe it, compare their narratives side by side, and see if you can spot a real difference between Bush-era Fox and Maddow's MNSBC broadcasts from this past week.

On February 16, 2001, six months before 9/11, O'Reilly said on Fox, "You know, I don't take Saddam Hussein all that seriously anymore, as far as a world threat." He added, "Maybe I'm wrong and naive here. Should we be very frightened of this guy?"

Within two years, O'Reilly reversed course. He launched himself into an incredible 16-year run as the #1-rated star on cable by playing Madame DeFarge for the Bush/Cheney War on Terror. His show became a nighty fireside chat in which citizens tuned in to fulminate over stories of Saddam's boundless evil, denounce traitorous unbelievers, and engage in McCarthyite interrogations of the insufficiently patriotic.

He moved the factual record by himself. On December 6, 2002, he told his audience: "I can't, in good conscience, tell the American people that I know for sure that [Saddam] has smallpox or anthrax or he's got nuclear or chemical and that he is ready to use that."

But two months later, on February 17, 2002, he was saying, "According to the U.N., he's got anthrax, VX gas, ricin, and on and on." Two weeks after that, as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting noted, O'Reilly was saying things like, "This guy we know has anthrax and VX and all this stuff."

He furthermore announced that "Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up," adding that "Americans, and indeed our allies, who actively work against our military once the war is underway will be considered enemies of the state by me."

By the runup to the invasion, O'Reilly was berating anyone who even tried to suggest the WMD case was not airtight, or had the temerity to suggest that Saddam Hussein was not the equal of Hitler. "Whoa, whoa. It's not Hitler?" he snapped in one broadcast. "What's the difference?"

Want to know how seven in ten Americans during the war came to believe that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind 9/11? In part, because people like O'Reilly regularly said things like, "Saddam Hussein... I believe is involved with this World Trade Center and Pentagon bombing," and "I believe that you're going to find out that money from Iraq flowed in and helped [9/11] happen."

O'Reilly eventually got around to putting his "spotlight" on anyone who didn't publicly back the invasion effort. He even took on Pope John Paul II, saying, "And then the pope sits in Rome and says, gee, this is terrible, but does not throw his moral authority behind removing this dictator." He went after Sean Penn, the French, congressman Jim McDermott, etc., etc.

Then a funny thing happened. We invaded Iraq, the WMD case went splat, and O'Reilly, grudgingly of course, admitted he was wrong. "Well, my analysis was wrong and I'm sorry," he said, on Good Morning America. "What do you want me to do? Go over and kiss the camera?"

Who knew that would end up looking like a proud moment in TV history?