O'Reilly predicts his Super Bowl interview will "go down in journalistic history": http://t.co/Mbxz4K6WsH
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) February 6, 2014
That Bill O’Reilly is a dick and a self-righteous ass clown should take no rational person by surprise. Bill-o the Clown, thoroughly convinced of His own brilliance as He is, seems to firmly believe that He’s the star wherever He is…even if that wherever happens to be the Oval Office on Super Bowl Sunday. Even if the person fortunate to be in His proximity is the President of the United States.
Of course, reasonable people might have asked themselves a very simple question when the interview was aired:
“Why the &$%# would President Obama grant O’Reilly an audience when he and the entire country knew what would happen?”
No rational person would have expected an actual interview complete with dignity and courtesy because of the man sitting in the Oval Office. The general rule has always been that, even if you don’t respect the man- and O’Reilly clearly doesn’t- one should have the decency to respect the office. That O’Reilly clearly hold the President in low esteem is hardly surprising. Why the President would grant a ten-minute interview on Super Bowl Sunday to someone dedicated to his utter destruction is something I find astonishing.
True to form, Bill-o the Clown spent most of the interview expounding on Right-wing talking points- Beghazi, the IRS, Obamacare- instead of asking questions and allowing the President to answer. As with any O’Reilly interview, it was calculated to spotlight the star of the show- Himself. In this case, it was a truly pathetic effort designed to once again demonstrate to the American Sheeple His legendary (at least in His own mind) intellect and importance.
In an interview on Tuesday with conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly went on an epic tirade over unflattering comments by Washington Post political columnist Dana Milbank. According to Talking Points Memo, O’Reilly called Milbank a “weasel” who is “beneath contempt” and wondered on what grounds the Post could employ “a guy like that.”
On Monday, Milbank wrote of O’Reilly’s Sunday interview with the president that the bellicose Fox host had “10 minutes to question the man he decries to millions nightly. O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.”
“Along the way, he interrupted the president 42 times, by my count,” Milbank wrote, “although, given the amount O’Reilly spoke, it may be more accurate to say Obama was interrupting him. Sometimes he argued with Obama as though the president were a guest on ‘The O’Reilly Factor.’ Of the 2,500 words uttered during the interview, O’Reilly spoke nearly 1,000 of them.”
What O’Reilly didn’t account for (somehow this always seems to be the case) were those would would dare call Him out for His disrespectful treatment of the President. When you do 40% of the talking during an interview, you’re not only revealing yourself to be damned poor at your craft, you’re demonstrating that it’s far more about you than your subject.
When you interrupt the President 42 times, you’ve demonstrated that respect is a one-way street. If Rachel Maddow had done the same thing to George W. Bush, the (well-justified) hue and cry would have been heard from sea to shining sea. A sitting President should be treated with respect and deference- unless he has the temerity not to be Conservative, White, and male. An African-American Democrat is evidently due no such respect, and as such should be treated with barely-concealed contempt.
Barely-concealed contempt is what O’Reilly does best.
O’Reilly told Hewitt that Milbank’s assessment was unfair and disingenuous.
“You know, the far left kooks like this nut at the Washington Post, Milbank, well, he’s a dishonest man, Milbank,” O’Reilly sulked….
“He’s a weasel, in my opinion, beneath contempt. I probably would not invite him on the program. Number one, the audience despises him. And number two, I don’t really care what he says. I care that the Washington Post employs him. That’s what I care about. Whatever he says doesn’t bother me, because I know where he’s coming from. But the fact that the Washington Post would employ a guy like that, I mean, it’s really disturbing.”
The sad thing is that O’Reilly’s convinced Himself that He (as always) performed brilliantly, and is therefore above petty questions from mere mortal. That He could summarily dismiss Dana Milbank as “beneath contempt” and “a weasel” only confirms that beneath the self-important bluster and self-professed brilliance lies a man with surprisingly thin skin. It’s acceptable, even to be expected if He gets personal…but when others do it to him, well, that’s just beyond the pale, the sort of low blow that gentlemen simply don’t engage in.
Yes, O’Reilly’s performance was pitiful and His “takedown” of Milbank even worse. That Milbank was spot on has to stick in O’Reilly’s craw. Bullies hate being called out and exposed, and Bill-o the Clown is nothing if not the quintessential bully. That most of America loves Him only goes to show how low the standards and collective IQ of the American Sheeple truly are.
The real question, though, is WHAT WAS THE PRESIDENT THINKING?? Yes, he called out O’Reilly when asked if he felt he’d been untreated fairly, and for that moment I was proud of him. O’Reilly was dumb enough to ask a question He was too arrogant to recognize would earn a verbal spanking from the President. All that really did was anger the trolls at Fox News Channel, who had a field day accusing the President of being a bully.
HOW DARE HE TALK TO BILL O’REILLY LIKE THAT? DOES HE NOT KNOW HOW FORTUNATE HE IS TO BE BREATHING TO SAME AIR AS LORD BILL OF BLOVIATINGHAM??
President Obama had no reason to sit down with O’Reilly and by so doing bestowing a facade of credibility on Him. I don’t care that it’s tradition for the President to be interviewed by a journalist from the network broadcasting the Super Bowl. If I was President, and a request that I assent to an interview with ANYONE from Fox News Channel crossed my desk, I wouldn’t have been able to stop laughing long enough to say, “Are you kidding?? HELL, NO!”
I suppose that’s why I’m not President….
Which bring us to today’s “coffee-spew moment”: Bill-o the Clown complaining about “declining standards of journalism”…as if He’s in a position to cast aspersions on anyone’s journalistic acumen. I’m not even certain an argument could be made that what He and the rest of the talking heads at Fox News Channel do should be called “journalism.”
