Bill O'Reilly is a No-Talent Ass-Clown

I just listened to the Fresh Air interview with Bill O'Reilly after reading elsewhere that O'Reilly had stormed out in a snit after reducing Terry Gross to laughter with his outrage. I just love it when O'Reilly appears in the media in a situation he doesn't control. His fight with Al Franken at the Book Expo back in the day was hilarious. This interview wasn't quite as funny, but it was still quality stuff, showing off all the things that lead me to announce, with some certainty, that Bill O'Reilly is in fact a no-talent ass-clown. In that vein, I would like to make a lengthy ad hominem attack on him now.

I hope he doesn't sue me.

The worst thing about him is the repulsive, clammy, insinuating way he passes himself off as an unbiased friend of the little guy, standing up to all the Fat Cats and Spin Doctors and so forth who are out to fleece the hard-working, honest, God-fearing folk of America, when he's guilty of every sin he accuses others of committing. His hypocrisy is staggering. In the interview, Ms Gross mentioned an unfavourable review of O'Reilly's last book that O'Reilly had gone on to mention and criticise on his programme; O'Reilly, at first, claimed that the reviewer had been attacking O'Reilly personally, rather than dealing with the book, which he found completely unacceptable. Mr O'Reilly, champion of civility and reasoned discourse, called the reviewer a 'pinhead'.

Then there's the way he passes himself off as a non-ideological problem-solver. (Along with the sickeningly folksy way he speaks, as if he's trying to convince you he's just one of the guys, not a wealthy Big Media tool. But that's neither here nor there.) I have my doubts about him. How would the practical Mr Bill respond to creeping socialism in Iraq, I wonder? The American proconsul, Grand Moff Bremer, is planning to axe Iraq's food distribution programme:

A more substantial assault on Saddam's legacy is under way in the Republican Palace, where the occupation authority is making preparations to dismantle the food distribution system which gave free rations of flour, rice, cooking oil and other staples to every Iraqi.

Described by the UN as the world's most efficient food network, the system still keeps Iraqis from going hungry. But the US civilian administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, views it as a dangerous socialist anachronism. The coalition provisional authority (CPA) is planning to abolish it in January, despite warnings from its own technical experts that this could lead to hunger and riots.

When socialism is demonstrably to the people's benefit, is Bill O'Reilly in favour of socialism? Inquiring minds want to know.

Actually, the worst thing about Bill O'Reilly may be his irrationality, hatred of logic, and anti-intellectualism. Andrew Sullivan also has this particularly loathesome quality. In the interview, O'Reilly railed against 'secularists' like the ACLU and progressives who wanted to strip spirituality out of political discourse, when, O'Reilly arsetrumpets, 'We are founded on Judeo-Christian philosophy. There's no question about that.' Curiously enough, this statement appears to be either disingenuous hyperbole, or a sign of enduring self-deception, given that the US Senate and President John Adams approved without apparent reservations this treaty, which a lot of people have been citing lately, with Tripoli declaring 'the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion'. One could claim, I suppose, that as Europe itself was dominated by Christian theology for so very long, everything stemming from the European intellectual tradition is rooted in Judeo-Christian philosophy...But that's like claiming the stock market is controlled by quantum mechanics. While it might technically speaking be true, it's completely vacuous because it's true of almost everything else also. It's not an intellectually honest thing to say.

O'Reilly also announced that he doesn't believe in the Big Bang, and thinks that the fact that Nature works reliably and consistently, with food and air and suns and all the things living creatures need all present and accounted for, is proof of the existence of God. I consider it proof that he is unwilling to attempt to understand science on even the most basic grade-school level. It's worse even than the Strong Anthropic Principle as a piece of illogical buffoonery. The reason Nature is so well-suited to life is that life developed around pre-existing Nature. It's a funny old thing that Nature spawned people in the end; but trying to invert the causation is just absurd, and Bill O'Reilly is talking through his asshat.

And that's not even touching on his professional conduct.

Posted by aloysius at October 09, 2003 05:23 PM | TrackBack |