Watching Bill O'Reilly makes me feel like a child who witnesses a grave injustice at the hands of someone bigger and stronger and popular. I feel helpless, frustrated, embarassed for not being able to stop it. Of course, this feeling manifests mostly as a tightness in my chest that is soon channelled into burbling rage.
My anger is so intense because I know that O'Reilly can't possibly believe all the things that are coming out of his mouth. At least not before talking himself into it. He has found a formula that works for him, and all of his anti-liberal rantings are due to the success of that formula. There are certain people out there who want to be incensed and really do agree with the offensive fabrications that O'Reilly presents as fact (he accused CNN of not covering the story about a Muslim convert gunning down two Army recruiters in arkansas; CNN's Rick Sanchez then played a montage of the network's extensive coverage of the story). The attacks he makes are entirely self-serving, like the one on CNN, instead of motivated by justice or morals or resoluteness. It's clear as day to me and, I assume, millions of others. But the man is still on television. And people watch his show. A lot of people.
I'm not one of them (occasionally I'll happen by Faux News on my way to the Discovery Channel and see the infamous O'Reilly forehead). But I do frequently read about what he's said and watch clips on YouTube, just so I know he's still a psychopath. So this morning when I stumbled upon his Friday night battle with Salon editor Joan Walsh about Dr. George Tiller and late term abortions, I went through all the familiar stages–fear, shame, anger–and ended with the acceptance of the fact that this man is the worst kind of crazy and a lot of people like him.
O'Reilly asks Walsh repeatedly if she felt that late term fetuses had rights or deserved protection. The question is, of course, phrased in such away that makes it impossible to answer and assumes that the issue exists in a context of absolutes. It doesn't.
There's a lot of frustrating back and forth in this exchange. O'Reilly makes this absurd and contradictory comment: "My constitutional rights say I can say what I say, you can say what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero." O'Reilly actually stops talking long enough for Walsh to give him a real zinger. It's at the very end of the clip.
