Crazy Like A Fox: Chapter Four

“The O’Reilly Factor”

Day One

I promised I’d attempt to watch an entire week’s worth of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the signature series of the Fox News cable network. Day one of what is also called “The No Spin Zone” began with O’Reilly saying “Ideological zombies bore me.” I find his viewers boring at times, too, but I have the decency to keep that opinion to myself.

This week is probably a good week for me to suffer fools gladly, as it also happens to be the week O’Reilly is playing portions of his interview with Barack Obama. According to O’Reilly’s own talking points, he was accused of interrupting Obama as he tried to answer questions. O’Reilly claimed they were “lively intrusions,” not interruptions. Indeed, O’Reilly is a genuine excretory cranium.

I was going to say O’Reilly’s production team intentionally chose lighting and camera angles to make Obama look bad, but those same lights and angles made O’Reilly look worse, so never mind.

Stating “We want to be fair and balanced” does not make O’Reilly fair and balanced if the next sentence promotes a conservative point of view.

O’Reilly promoted tomorrow’s portion of the interview, not as newsworthy, but “lively.”

O’Reilly won’t consider Palin ready to be VP until she appears on his show.

In tonight’s “Personal Story segment,” O’Reilly quoted Michael Moore, Bill Maher, and David Letterman and claimed they were attacking Palin. Since when does disagreeing with a person, or disagreeing with a person’s beliefs, constitute an attack?

Of course, when contemplating the American geopolitical scene, I often ask myself, “What does Kinky ‘Big Dick’ Friedman think?” Thanks to “The O’Reilly Factor,” I can answer that question. Apparently, Friedman believes Sarah Palin is “Ronald Reagan in a dress.” It just goes to show that inside every conservative man is a drag queen crying to get out (easily offended conservatives, reread that until you see it as a lame attack on a dead idiot, not a sexist attack on a live idiot).

I’d heard about O’Reilly dispatching “reporters” to the homes of journalists to harass them about stories they’ve written, but until today I hadn’t seen it. The harassed reporter in question noted that although O’Reilly stepped up and criticized the Spears parents after the teenage Spears turned up pregnant a while back, O’Reilly hasn’t been critical of Sarah Palin, whose teenage daughter turned up pregnant very recently. O’Reilly’s defense is, “there is no evidence the governor’s children are unsupervised.” Other than the pregnant teenage girl, that is. Or did the governor bear witness?

O’Reilly then chastised Jon Stewart for using O’Reilly’s own words on the same subject out of context, apparently not understanding that Stewart’s “The Daily Show” is not a freakin’ news program, and they can do pretty much whatever they want.

The show concluded with a segment entitled “Pinheads and Patriots.” He referred to Madonna as a pinhead because, in a recent concert, she dedicated the song “Like A Virgin” to the pope. Says O’Reilly, “That woman had better hope God has a sense of humor.” First, God does have a sense of humor… how else can one explain the platypus? Second, God could only take offense at Madonna’s dedication if Catholicism were the one and only true path to Heaven. My good pal Martin Luther shot that notion down a long time ago.

I really want to dislike O’Reilly’s program, but if I am honest with myself, the format, tone, and content mirror “Countdown.” Separated only by ideology, the two shows are more alike than different.