Posted on 07/11/2002 4:45:31 PM PDT by visagoth
August 2002
To his detractors, Bill OReilly, the tough-talking host of the phenomenally popular Fox News show The OReilly Factor, exemplifies the meanness and vulgarity of public discourse. The leftist media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting calls his show "The Oh Really? Factor" and takes him to task on a regular basis for mistreating guests and clutching "at any straw to avoid admitting hes wrong."
To his admirers, OReilly is a scourge of liberal pieties, a commentator who cuts through elitist nonsense and upholds common sense. As Stanley Kurtz put it in National Review Online, "OReillys plenty smart alright, but his tough-talking, working-class hero persona drives our cultural aristocracy nuts."
Love him or hate him -- or love to hate him -- OReilly certainly pulls in the audience. By the most recent figures, his show averages nearly 2 million viewers a night, handily beating CNNs Larry King Live even though the latter is far more widely available.
OReilly and his Factor have much to recommend them. (For what its worth, my sole appearance on the show, in January 2001, was a very positive experience.) He makes an effort to present both sides of an issue and to invite guests with whom he disagrees, even if he does tend to harangue them. He is upfront about his biases. His bluntness can be refreshing -- for instance, when he told cartoonist Ted Rall, who decided it would be provocative to mock the pregnant widow of the slain journalist Daniel Pearl as an attention seeker, that he was making himself look like a jerk.
A wealthy graduate of Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government, OReilly positions himself as a champion of the common man against both economic and cultural elites, and as a champion of common sense against intellectual sophistry. Given the propensity of modern intellectuals to believe in preposterous things, this means that OReilly turns out to be right a lot of the time. He also has the guts to take stances likely to alienate a good portion of his socially conservative core audience -- hes against the death penalty, for example, and condemns virulent anti-gay rhetoric.
But OReillys populist conventional wisdom has its limitations. As a result, his "no-spin zone," as he calls his show, sometimes offers a rather bizarre spin on the issues.
Consider a February discussion of the Supreme Courts refusal to review a ban on the display of the Ten Commandments at the Indiana statehouse. OReilly asserted that the Ten Commandments do not imply the endorsement of a particular religion but merely support general spirituality and "moral behavior."
His guest, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, pointed out that the Ten Commandments -- which include "Thou shalt have no other God before me" -- belong to Judaism and Christianity. OReilly retorted that nothing in them could be seen as contrary to Buddhism: "Buddhism is based upon pretty much the same tenets here, monotheism, one God."
Apart from this peculiar interpretation of Buddhism, which in its various forms either recognizes no personal god or worships many god-like, enlightened beings, OReilly seemed to ignore completely the existence of Americans who are not monotheists but polytheists (such as Hindus), agnostics, or atheists.
Just how blinkered and dogmatic OReillys "common sense" can be is most evident in his relentless cheerleading for the War on Drugs. His rhetoric on the subject rarely goes beyond some variation on "drugs are evil" and on occasion descends into outright demagoguery. Earlier this year, Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance appeared on the Factor to discuss the Office of National Drug Control Policy ad that premiered during the Superbowl. The ad, which showed teenagers alternately saying things like "My life, my body" and "I helped blow up buildings," asserted -- much to OReillys approval -- that casual drug users are helping underwrite terrorism.
Nadelmann noted that American teenagers primary drugs of choice are marijuana and Ecstasy, which are not linked to the funding of terrorism. OReilly countered that the Ecstasy trade is "run by Middle Eastern guys." When Nadelmann expressed skepticism, OReilly proposed a $100 bet.
The next day, in his "most ridiculous item of the day" segment, OReilly cited a government report which mentioned "the involvement of Israeli criminal organizations in Ecstasy smuggling. Some of these individuals are of Russian and Georgian descent and have Middle Eastern ties." He gleefully invited Nadelmann to "send a 100 bucks to Habitat for Humanity in New York City....It would be ridiculous not to do that."
According to Nadelmann, he never did send a check and never heard from OReilly again; but of course, he wasnt the one being ridiculous. Its fairly obvious that when people speak of Middle Eastern ties in the context of terrorism, they are not thinking about Russian- and Georgian-born Israeli mobsters.
Confronted with pro-legalization arguments, including the question of what makes illegal substances so different from legal ones such as alcohol and tobacco, OReilly tends to bluster his way out. A typical display occurred in his interview with Keith Stroup of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in May.
When Stroup pointed out that Holland, where marijuana is legally sold in coffee shops, has lower rates of marijuana use than the United States, OReilly testily replied that this was due to Hollands smaller population. Stroup countered that he was referring to percentages, not numbers.
"That statistics skewed," OReilly shot back. "If you...ask the government of the Netherlands to tell us about how many kids get caught, they wont tell you. I dont believe them for a second."
When all else fails, theres the tried-and-true tactic of invoking the children: "In America, where we have...such a substance abuse problem, if you legalize another intoxicant, that intoxicant inevitably is going to find its way down to the kids of America," OReilly told Stroup. Based on this logic, one would presumably see no problem with banning alcohol to protect the kiddies, either.
The tendency to invoke "the children" as the ultimate rationale for any dubious social policy is a trait OReilly shares with one of the public figures he most despises: Bill Clinton. The focus on children has led OReilly to do excellent hard-hitting programs on issues ranging from abuses in the child welfare system to child molestation by clergy. But it has also led him to chide politicians for not pressing for the resignation of Catholic cardinals who have covered up claims of sexual abuse, brushing aside constitutional issues of church and state by saying, "I want to see the big boys out of there for the sake of the kids and for the sake of justice."
At its worst, OReillys black-and-white approach to complex issues translates into a tendency to demonize the opposition. After his appearance on The Factor, Nadelmann received an obscenity-laden e-mail accusing him of promoting drug use and threatening to "break every bone in your worthless useless body." While OReilly is hardly responsible for the ravings of his less stable fans, Nadelmann believes that "he does play to such sentiments."
The Factor will undoubtedly continue to draw plenty of thoughtful and intelligent viewers -- as well it should. But I would worry about any member of the audience who doesnt want to yell at OReilly at least as often as she wants to cheer him on.
Contributing Editor Cathy Young is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
LOL. I agree. I too stopped watching quite a while back. No spin, unless you count Bills spin. When I was still watching, I found myself coming away from his show with the feeling you get when you find out you've eaten some questionable seafood.
I wouldn't put anywhere near 99% of the time....but I'd say most of the time.
What I believe gives away O'Reilly's mostly conservative leaning, is the patronizing manner in which he plays up those views that happen to agree with the left.
He seems to patronize them...as of to say, see? I'm fair and balanced.
That's only because she IS STUPID.
How stupid?? Sheila-Jackson-Lee-STUPID!
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