Heard the one about the $16 government muffin?
That story originated with a Justice Department inspector general report that claimed $16 muffins were served at a conference for immigration judges and attorneys. That was reported on the front pages of the September 21 Washington Post.
But the story fell apart in a matter of days, after the hotel explained the paperwork was being misinterpreted. Post ombud Patrick Pexton (9/30/11) explained that both the original report and the paper’s story were at fault. The real bill was for continental breakfast and afternoon snacks—not a bad price for a D.C. hotel, it turned out.
But for critics of government waste—whose outrage is quite selective—the muffin was pure gold. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly couldn’t stop talking about it.
—9/21/11
“Now we have the $16 muffin scandal,” O’Reilly announced.
He explained:
At a training conference in August ’09, $4,200 was spent on 250 muffins. That adds up to $16 per muffin. Now, I’m sure they were delicious muffins. I’m sure they were presented in a pleasing way. But the $16 muffin now becomes a symbol of how wasteful the feds are with our tax dollars.
And he went on:
Now, I have stayed in some of the swankiest hotels on earth. I have never seen a $16 muffin. I want to see that muffin. I want to taste that muffin. You know why? Because I bought the muffin and so did you.
He pleaded:
And now President Obama wants more tax money to buy more muffins…..Why should I or you work hard every day so some guy in a suit can have a $16 muffin?
O’Reilly finished: “Want revenue, Mr. President? Pass a fair and flat tax. Close up the loopholes. Knock out the $16 muffins.”
—10/6/11
There are now accusations that a Justice Department official Darryl Foster spent thousands of dollars dating and charged it to the taxpayer. This goes right alongside the $16 muffins we told you about last week.
—10/12/11
O’Reilly played a clip of his appearance on the Daily Show, bragging that his show “broke the story” (by reading it in the Washington Post?).
O’REILLY: Do we all know what the $16 muffin is?
JON STEWART: What?
O’REILLY: All right. See, you don’t even know what the $16 muffin is.
STEWART: What neighborhood do you live in? Who makes a $16 muffin.
O’REILLY: This is great. I’m glad. Look.
STEWART: All right.
O’REILLY: A $16 muffin.
STEWART: All right.
O’REILLY: …broke the story last week on the Factor. You were otherwise occupied making your little wise remarks, not reading what’s happening.
-10/13/11
But I agree that those of us like myself who have prospered in America, owe our country a lot. I agree with you. And I would be willing to pay 5 percent more in income tax, but only if I don’t have to pay for $16 muffins. You know the $16 muffin…. Now, until there are no more $16 muffins, no more Solyndras.
—10/14/11
O’Reilly played a clip of himself on the Late Show With David Letterman:
O’REILLY: I would actually give them 50 percent or more of my stuff if they would spend it responsibly. All right? How about the $16 muffin, Dave? Do you know about the $16 muffin? $16 muffin, know about it? Yes? No? Maybe? OK. They have these big conferences, the Department of Justice, a swanky hotel.
LETTERMAN: Coffee and muffins.
O’REILLY: The muffins, 16 bucks. Come on, get an $8 muffin, all right?
O’Reilly went on to marvel at the fact that Letterman and Stewart were unaware of this apparently momentous scandal:
O’REILLY: Letterman is a devoted liberal.
ARTHEL NEVILLE (Fox News): OK.
O’REILLY: And he wants more government spending.
GREG GUTFELD (Fox News): Yes.
O’REILLY: And so does Stewart. Jon Stewart. And neither of them know about the $16 muffin.
—11/3/11
At this point, O’Reilly finally clued in his viewers to some questions about the story—which, naturally, were part of a liberal plot: “Some left-wing Americans are trying to discredit the $16 muffin story, whereby you and I pay an outrageous amount of money for pastry at government conferences.”
He went on to say that “the left didn’t like that report, and sought to discredit it by saying there was also juice, coffee and fruit included with the $16 muffin. The DOJ latched on to that and retracted the muffin scandal.”
11/18/11
But O’Reilly wasn’t buying any retraction: “I don’t want to pay him for $16 muffins,” he declared.
—12/23/11
And then they spend it on $16 muffins; that’s what gets me. Look, if they were curing cancer. If they were spreading democracy throughout the whole world, and everybody was getting on board with the USA, I would say all right. But you know what they are doing.
He added:
Now, I want everybody to know I made the muffin as a metaphor for the larger picture, which I’m sure [Dennis] Miller understood is not really about the muffin itself. It’s the cause the muffin represents.
Which brings us, many months later, to this comment from O’Reilly Tuesday night (4/3/12):
We all remember this $16 muffin, which was actually a $16 continental breakfast that was worth about $2.50. The Justice Department was responsible for that colossal waste.
“We all remember” what now?
Featured image: Marco Verch
Do you know the Muffin Man?
All too bloody well.
But disregarding the hypocritical hyperbole of the source, there is something galling about the money wasted on the settings and amenities for these gummint get togethers, don’t you think?
“Conference” at a public building.
Eat your damn breakfast at home, or at a local diner.
Screw the “afternoon snacks”.
And take the money saved and use it to meet the needs of those who don’t know from “continental breakfasts”.
That would be the menschy thing to do.
Which means, perforce, I’m pissing in the wind, aren’t I?
Good old Bill O’Reilly. He is one of FAIR’s America’s top Islamophobes and Israel-Firsters, who compared Holy Qur’an to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He also made hateful anti-Muslim comment against Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. Last year he claimed on Fox News “The O’Reilly Factor” that former Rep. Cynthia’s is against Israel and US war on Libya – because her trips abroad are funded by Tehran….
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/who-gains-from-cynthia-mckinneys-assassination/
Hey Bill word to the wise…..Waste no more that 10 words on such stories EVEN if it bothers you.
Hey Fair ,word to the wise……..Waste no more than 10 words writing about such stories.
Hey me…….Did ya notice Rehmat found a way to pull an expensive muffin story all the way to the Koran, the middle east,and beyond?Little one tracked there my man.
Hey FAIR how’s about you stop picking on BillO???
It makes Michael e have a pout attack.
FAIR is not fair it is a right wing blog
And now we have the $4 shrimp and the blow out extravanganza in Las Vegas that he was hollering about yesterday. Let’s hope that turns out to be same pile of lies as the $16 muffin.
Be a little kinder to O’Reilly. He’s reaching that stage where truth begins to blend with wishful thinking. I remember my father taking on the government and Jews. Everybody at the dinner table would wince. Then it became professors and the over-educated. The only difference between O’Reilly and my father is that O’Reilly has a television show and everybody who cares to listen gets an ear full. At least my father’s gaffs were only available to the family. We were forced to listen.
There probably are $16 muffins somewhere in the world, if not in D.C.
But I wonder if the WaPo might do a study on how much each Fox Lie costs us taxpayers? O’Reilly tells a lot of lies, so that might bring the cost/lie down a bit, perhaps, but I’m guessing the cost is still out of reach for most of us who end up footing the bill to clean up the mess commercial media creates.
What a sad commentary on our state of affairs. We have unwanted wars, a penal system out of control, a lack of basic resources for the poor and middle class, a virtual police state in some areas of our lives, a war of ideas between the right and left and our media thinks that a $16 charge for a contintal breakfast and afternoon break at an all day conference is hot news.
That is part of life in arranging conferences at urban and not so urban hotels and conference centers. It is not news.
The real news is the poor roads, dangerous bridges, lack of safe schools, a good educational system, affordable higher education, reasonable drug laws, etc etc. Not a $16 hotel charge.
Just another typical example of how useless the O’Reilly Factor is at accurate reporting, like so much on Fox news, actual deep checks on the facts are not performed. Performing those fact checks which might mean some work, money spent, loss of revenue and bottom line degradation.
p Ness
You get me all wrong.I could give a rats ass how much Fair attacks Bill O.Anyone of us;man woman or child, in or out of the public eye in the conservative world, can expect constant attacks from the left.Mostly personal.It is the air we breath, and the water we swim in.Don’t give it another thought.What bothers me is that such a nothing story can actually make it onto these pages.Billions and trillions spent like change thrown in a wishing well ,and with much more to come- and this is what we discuss?I suppose I should say this is all you CAN discuss.God knows the wreckage that is this administration, and all its works, seems to be off the table completely at Liberal dinner tables.But go on i digress and have interrupted you.You were talking about muffins.
michael e – Here is a Canadian Rabbi who will sooth any paranoid Jew. He loved both Jews and Israel – but also blamed Jews for the “Six Million Died”. As good-old Henry Makow PhD said: “Truth always shine through clouds”.
Rabbi Wolf Gunther Plaut (born 1912), former president of Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and Chaief Rabbi at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple, died last month. In his 1990 book, ‘The Man Who Would Be Messiah‘, Plaut wrote that Frankist Jews were responsible for the Holocaust. The book’s ‘Forward’ was written by no other than Elie Weisel, the father of ‘holocaust culture’…….
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/rabbi-frankist-jews-committed-holocaust/
Ray Phenicie says: Performing those fact checks which might mean some work, money spent, loss of revenue and bottom line degradation.
No, it would simply mean the Facts would get in the way of good rant, which Fux Snooze needs to keep the Rethuglican Peeps going. How can you have them stay in a constant state of frenzied, mouth foaming, spittle flying, tear jerking obsequiousness, forking over billions in profit if you use actual facts which would normally amount to Snooze fest.
Just remember the Fux Snooze motto: if the facts get in the way, make up something that else.
Bill O likes to whip up sentiment, and he says he likes to entertain. So, a lo-o-ong focus on a nonissue like this gets him lots of mileage. I know he knows how hotels & conference venues charge for food and drinks. I know he knows that people traveling in from other places can’t eat their breakfast at home. Conferences must offer some amenities, like continental breakfasts, coffee and afternoon snacks. Captive audience and all that…
I just hope that Bill, sometime soon, attends a conference away from home. It would be too much to ask that it have some import to the government, so that some of their employees also attend. And I hope someone has the good sense to make a note of the cost to the conference organizers for the snacks that are served to Mr. Bill. Not that such a revelation will put a dent in Bill’s zeal. He’s already squeezed all the juice out of this one and has moved on to other equally momentous issues.
I guess the subtext of Bill’s attack is that government agencies should not have conferences. And their employees—whose salaries we all pay, you know—shouldn’t be allowed to attend them. How else could they avoid paying an EXTREMELY REASONABLE $16 dollars a person charge for snacks at a conference and, thus, suffering the smug wrath of Bill O’Reilly?
tony zoars, thank you for your pointed and painful comments (painful for you, because of those no-doubt painful memories). I’m guessing your father didin’t get paid millions of dollars to spew out his vast ignorances and prejudices, like O’Reilly. But you’re too kind. O’Reilly’s been getting away with this shit for years, and he keeps making more money. He’s massively ignorant and stupid, and I thank God that I rarely get to see his big dumb face on the tube (the only chance of that is in a bar, and I avoid dives and such joints that might have his propaganda on). O’Reilly is positive proof that in the USA we are not the least bit interested in the life of the mind, or improving our democracy in any way. Indeed, our Mission seems to be the opposite. We reward ignorance, stupidity, and avarice, and punish or ignore subtlety, complexity, curiosity, and common sense. O’Reilly is a well-paid dunce, and his fortune has convinced him that he’s a genius and a fellow to be reckoned with. Of course, there’s always that niggling little voice in the back of his head that constantly pesters him with the truth–“You really are a fuckin’ moron, Bill!”–and this is beautifully on display every time a really smart guy like John Stewart leans on him a bit. Stewart knows that O’Reilly knows that he (O’Reilly) is an immense fraud and a imbecile. It’s very obvious that O’Reilly feels the sting of the intellectual lash every time the brilliant “left-wing” Stewart lampoons him. Which is easy enough to do, so Stewart does it when he feels like it. I’m so glad that O’Reilly is a mere passing trend in my world, and it’s certainly fun when FAIR blog (and by extension–and linkage–John Stewart) points out his endless stupidities.
Tim it sounds like you and John Stewart have been kissing under the apple tree again.Check out Bill Os school record and where he finished top of his class.Then compare it to Obama or John.To call people stupid is such a liberal snore.Everyone who is not a lib is stupid.All libs are brilliant yadda yadda yadda.Just say you dont agree with him and don’t watch his show and move on.Sheeeesh!
Rehmut
You interest me greatly.You dig under every rock from the four corners of earth and beyond searching for stories to sharpen the ax you have against Jews.No story is too bizarre.Your like a compass always pointing North.Your aim is always true.Right between the eyes of the nearest Jew.Why don’y ya tell us what you really think?LOL :)
What interests me is that no one on these posts ever shoots you down.They may just think you are nuts but I think though they may not agree with you…..they are not all that upset over your constant Jewish attack dog mentality.Sad really
So I read the article you posted.It nuts.Written by a nut.For nuts.Hope your passover has gone well
I’ve never watched his show–it’s just fun shootin’ fish in a barrel every once in a while, fishie. P. Ness is right about you–and you know it.
Translation of shooting fish in a barrel=Take a liberal stance on something youve never seen ,or know anything about.Yup thats about right
School grades don’t seem to count for much for some people an Billious certainly shows he has been slumming for too long at Faux News. No need for truth an fact checking so his brain gets flimsy from lack of use. Like what you eat, what you learn affects you an it has affected your Bill’O. Brain turned to jello. Sorry but all you have to do is listen to the filth an lies an such garbage to show he is now a garbage man, an not the good kind either. He is a spewer. A generator of intellectual garbage.
Fair enough that is your opinion.Millions have a different opinion.
o’reilly’s average audience is between 2.5 and 3.5 million viewers a night..this monday the number was 2,677,ooo. tuesday the number was 2,693,000. on wednesday it was 3,128,000. typically, less than 25% of those watching were under 54.
it’s niche marketing…the audience is older, male and white. the identical demographics of the republican party.
and conservative talk radio has the same problem…the listeners are old, and getting older.