OREILLY CONTRADICTS SELF... IN 30 SECONDS!

On monday evening's O'Reilly Factor, the perpeutally-annoying pundit/host welcomed a historian, Dr. Brinkley, into his not-so-veritable "no-spin zone", to discuss Trent Lott's comments at Strom's birthday party. During their exchange, O'Reilly took the position that Lott is not a racist, basing his argument on Lott's voting record, and that Lott was merely "pandering" to the Thurmond audience (though the gasps, mixed with a couple confused chuckles, suggest Lott didn't do that good a job of pandering... listen for yourself, go to minute 32). Needless to say, there was no mention in the discussion of those 14 articles Lott has written over the years for the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Then O'Reilly gets into trouble. To more clearly define Lott as not ever being a racist, he points to the examples of Thurmond and George Wallace, saying he thought that despite their public repudiations of their past opinions and actions, that they hadn't really changed and still carried their prior philosophies at heart...

...Mr Brinkley then brings up Lott's conduct at the University of Mississippi, where he fought "tooth and nail" against allowing James Meredith to become a student there. O'Reilly's response?

"Oh come on, how old was he then?"

Well golly, suddenly people can change! No-spin zone, my ass.

(note - if/when transcripts of tonight's show are made available, I will provide the relevant passages here)