Blogged by Brad Friedman, from BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas…
Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, several television networks and, in fact, a blogger, is “very grateful” to Bill O’Reilly, the Fox “News” media personality who has been attacking — and even threatening — him mercilessly, of late.
I’m sitting in at Cuban’s closing Keynote address at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Vegas (I have been at the conference to speak on political blogging on a number of different panels) and I just asked him, during the Q&A, whether he finds O’Reilly’s attacks “to be a net plus or net minus” for his various business interests and enterprises.
After first replying that O’Reilly’s attacks didn’t much matter, and that they had very little effect either way, I followed up to ask specifically about Brian DePalma’s upcoming film, Redacted, which Cuban’s network, HDNet is releasing shortly.
“When it comes to a specific project like Redacted,” Cuban responded, “which is a small movie, it’s grown bigger and bigger by the day. So I’m very grateful to him.”
“Bill O’Reilly is my new best friend,” he added, to laughter from the crowd which was made up of bloggers and industry-related folks of all political stripes.
I’ll try to get the audio or video posted on that point later if I can, as an update. As the room is filled with several thousand bloggers, I suspect it should be easy to find shortly. (If anybody beats me to it, feel free to link it in comments, as I’ll be off grid for the next several hours!)
P.S. As his address was in the same room where I had just finished up my final panel of the conference, I had the opportunity to chat with him quickly as we were trading places on the stage, and was able to thank him for HDNet’s breathtaking Dan Rather Reports investigative exposé on touch-screen voting technology. I encouraged him to keep going along those lines and support Rather’s work in this regard. He agreed that it was an amazing report, and in turn, he thanked me for The BRAD BLOG’s coverage of same.
So he’s a billionaire who pays attention.
The most understated bio I’ve perhaps ever seen: On the big screens next to the podium where he was speaking, the title card read simply, “Mark Cuban, Blogger”.
UPDATE 11/13/07: O’Reilly lashes back at Cuban. Details & video here…
I met Mark when he headed up a dot com company called Broadcast.com and keynoted a dinner on 11/4/98 in San Diego. That is where he made his initial millions/billion, before the dot com bubble burst. He then invested very wisely, as we all know, and recently suffered a rejection on Dancing with the Stars, which he seems to have recovered nicely from!
I didn’t realize he owned HDNet – sure glad he put the Rather thing on and hope he will do more of the same. Am looking forward to “Redacted”. Way to go Brad – he knows you and maybe soon YOU can become his new best friend!
Thankfully, there are people like Mark Cuban and Brad Friedman who will stand up and tell it like it is instead of just going along with those who want to consolidate their control over us.
It’s time to take our country back. We need to throw the incumbents out before it’s too late.
Spread the word like Paul Revere. The tyrants have taken over DC and our state capitols. It’s time to fire them and send them home.
Kudos to Brad, Mark Cuban, and Bradblog.
I see that DePalma and Cuban are having a little tiff about whether to keep the “disturbing” pics at the end of the new flick ‘Redacted’.
I don’t know if that has been resolved yet…Brad?, do you know?
Now, if we could organize 527 operations for every progressive candidate, and get Mark to put some cash in, then maybe we would have the resources to get a progressive majority in the House of Reps.
What we need is a revolt against current House leadership, if we are to save this Republic.
This is exactly like, when they put “Parental Advisory Lyrics” on heavy metal records…the heavy metal bands lined up, “PLEASE!!! PUT THIS ON OUR ALBUMS!!! THANK YOU!!!” …and heavy metal record sales skyrocketted! It was THE most important reason for an increase in heavy metal album sales…back then…when will these idiots learn?
This all just makes me grin, big time. I live near Holland, MI where Evangelicals actually burned the first Harry Potter book, which really helped catapult sales of that book. The rest is history. If Bill-o hates “Redacted”, then that’s a movie I’ll want to see, for sure. (Keep it up, Bill-o, we appreciate all that free publicity!)
hi brad, was nice meeting you outside bwe 🙂 i’ve subscribed to bradblog and look forward to catching up. i also noticed the understated bio you mentioned…funny. although i don’t completely agree with his blogging stance from purely a blogging pov, i have a lot of respect for him for so many other reasons. thanks for posting this re-cap!
Here is the perfect opportunity to unleash a perfect storm of truth against the “Empire”, at a blogger’s convention!
Sybil Edmonds; send your story to 100 bloggers. Mail 100 cd’s to major and lessor news networks. Send it to every congressman and senator. Then everyone will know at the same time and will be unable to pretend they don’t know. From there, everyone can email their friends. Let truth spread like a wildfire.
God bless all of you.
Mark is a weird dude, but a good weird.
jo6pac
I 2nd MsKitty
Brad,
I’m so sick and tired of the claims that George Soros subsidizes liberals, etc. I have NEVER seen his name associated with any truth shown on TV, the newspapers, movies, etc.
Is there any possibility, that someone like Mark Cuban who is monetarily endowed could put a national TV network up on regular airwaves, devoted to REAL NEWS? The nation is facing an election where many communities get only one-sided disinformation and total lack of coverage on issues that matter. To wit, today is the beginning of San Diego’s long agony of NO real news, with our only progressive/moderate talk show radio station KLSD AM 1360 being turned into a 24-hour-a-day sports station, and the only newspaper the San Diego Union Tribune is super right-wing. Those of us who had the KLSD talk-show window to reality and to community news of back-stabbing by our local government no longer have this lifeline to guide us through the on-going assaults by national and local abusive government.
And this, prior to a major election.
Help! Our community voice has been killed!
Please talk to Mark Cuban!
So it is good to tarnish all our fighting troops with the same label then?
How is this garbage film helping?
I agree with Bill. Left wing loons FTL
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!
This entire incident just proves what a giant moron Bill O’Reilly really is. Nobody should be afraid of attacking this right wing hate producer.
The entire FOX NEWS show is a joke anyway.
At least Bill reports the facts.
Cuban is the one spreading hate by funding a film that could potentially harm our troops.
I am a Christian who actually believes what Christ teaches — love your enemies. I am against the war. However, I am also against putting our troops in danger and giving terrorist news organizations even more propaganda.
Bill O’Reilly is not always fair and balanced but neither is his competition Keith Obermann. There are always more than two sides to every story and none of them is “truth” as defined by the message above. No human owns truth and certainly not Brian de Palma, Mark Cuban or Bill O’Reilly. Bill O’Reilly may be a “hate producer” as another message says but Mark Cuban is proving himself the same.
I’ve only seen the Amish act without hate in recent history. They took food to the family of the murderer of their children. That is forgiveness. That is love and that is Christ.
And I’d like to add that Christ actually WILL save the entire world — muslims, atheists, Roman Catholics, murderers, lunatics, left-wing nutjobs and right-wing hell believers. God has a plan & a purpose that is in scripture. Read all about it at bibletruths.com. You see, Christ not only teaches to love our enemies…He practices what he preaches. Imagine that.
What you and Cuban should realize is that taking a handful of bad incidents and exploiting them to protest the war is in direct conflict of the “I support the troops” statement. We are quickly returning to the days of people feeling free to call our troops baby killers and spitting on them. Even if every event in this film is truthful, the intent is deceitful. There is glint on hope in both Cuban and DePalma that those who see this film will believe this is the norm for our troops and turn on them and the war. If that wasn’t true Cuban would fund other projects such as Lone Savivor to show the true nature of our brave fighting men and women.