Bill O'Reilly Is An Asshole

Asshole

Bill O’Reilly is an asshole. I’m sure you already knew that because it would be hard not to know. For the last thirteen years he has hosted the O’Reilly Factor on Faux News, where he likes to masquerade as a hard-hitting politically independent “journalist” with no agenda. But in reality, O’Reilly is a douchey, blowhard, partisan hack whose shallow and deceptive “reporting” gives a one-dimensional picture of how he sees things. In this twisted world as envisioned by O’Reilly’s warped mind, he is the righteous defender of “traditional American values” against the evil machinations of college professors, Hollywood actors, and George Soros.

If you don’t believe that Bill-O thinks of himself in this way, peruse his latest piece of shit book, Culture Warrior—that is if you can tolerate reading it for more than eight consecutive seconds. (Don’t buy it, though. You’ll only encourage him.) I barely could myself. From cover to cover, O’Reilly has stuffed Culture Warrior with self-promotion and self-pity, making himself out to be some sort of living martyr for the “traditional values” cause. He even refers to himself and those who share his views as—you guessed it—culture warriors, or traditional warriors. Now, I don’t get queasy very easily, but the book’s sheer lameness combined with its overall holier-than-thou attitude had my stomach doing cartwheels. Needless to say, when I browsed Culture Warrior in Barnes & Noble, I nearly vomited all over the “New Fiction” section, which is exactly where this steaming turd should have been.

One of O’Reilly’s favorite hobbies is railing against “far left” figures, which for him means anyone who regularly advances liberal positions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—a very mainstream Democrat—is far left according to O’Reilly. So is venture capitalist extraordinaire George Soros. Objectively speaking, anything to the left of moderate is “far left” as far as O’Reilly is concerned, and so he ends up using this phrase as much as he uses the word “the.” As a result the words “far left” mean virtually nothing when they come from the bullshitting mouth of this professional prick.

A favorite tactic of O’Reilly’s is to demonize liberalism by repeating some offbeat lefty quote or argument advanced by a totally marginal public figure, and present it as proof positive that the country is in a liberal-guided moral decline. Take O’Reilly’s latest syndicated column written in his usual pedestrian prose. Right away he has a warning for us: “With America moving left politically and socially, it might be wise to take a moment and consider what might happen to kids if the drift continues.” Sounds serious, Bill. What, pray tell, would come of this continued leftward drift?

“The result is grim. Children in a dozen states have been charged with child pornography for ‘sexting’— sending nude pictures of themselves or others using cyberspace. A published study last December claims that 20 percent of American children had participated in some form of ‘sexting,’ including the extreme act of kids actually photographing themselves having sex.”

First off, can we all just admit that it is absurd to charge kids under child porn statutes because they sent racy photos of themselves or even others on cell phones? I’m not going to say there’s nothing wrong with some of what O’Reilly is describing, but it’s ridiculous that a kid could be convicted on child porn charges and have to register as a sex offender for the next thirty years. But O’Reilly isn’t interested in this angle of the story; for he has bigger and more liberal dragons to slay.

According to Bill-O, there has been insufficient negative reaction to the sexting phenomenon. In fact, he is appalled to find that somebody is actually saying that sexting is relatively innocuous. Who is it? Is it our Democratic president? The liberal Speaker of the House? Maybe it’s lefty Janeane Garofalo? Nope. It’s Peter Cumming.

I know what you’re thinking. Who the fuck is Peter Cumming? It’s a good question, and not one we’d easily be able to answer, but thankfully Bill-O saves us from this research project by telling us. Somehow, he got his ogre paws on some comments made by Cumming, who as it turns out is an obscure Canadian academic who delivered a paper at an equally obscure symposium. What did Professor Cumming say that got O’Reilly’s sagging Irish face all rosy red? Well, first the professor stated that sexting is no worse than old-fashioned spin the bottle, which actually makes sense because spin the bottle requires physical contact and can easily escalate to sexual activity. Anyway, Cumming also said,

“In Bush’s America, [sic] is there no middle ground between child pornography, sexual assault, abuse and exploitation on the one hand and children’s ‘abstinence’ on the other? When, in Western culture, did nudity become pornography, did children’s sexuality become perverse, and when and how and why have we forgotten children’s participatory rights as sexual beings?”

Now this is O’Reilly quoting Cumming, and if you watch Bill-O’s segment on the Non-factor about this, he repeats Cumming’s words, but they are slightly different. This suggests that O’Reilly has either intentionally tweaked Cumming’s words, or was too lazy to make sure he quoted him accurately. Either way, O’Reilly is aghast that other academics haven't come out against this professor, ostensibly demonstrating that academia lacks moral sense. But this would be to assume that people actually know who Cumming is, which they don't, professors included. In any case, O’Reilly proceeds to accuse him of espousing the philosophy of NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association), failing to recognize that the very sexting he’s been talking about is teen-to-teen interaction, and not teen-to-adult. But if you're O'Reilly, why stop to make this distinction when you can imply that some liberal academic is a pro child-fucking creep of the first order?

Unfortunately I was unable to find a copy of Cumming’s paper, so I don’t really know what his exact point was. I think it would be fair to say, however, that the professor was saying that Americans have a very puritanical attitude towards sex, and that nudity in and of itself ought not to be considered pornography. Consequently, the professor seems to be courageous enough to extend this principle to teenagers amongst one another. For O’Reilly to suggest that he’s in a league with NAMBLA based on these remarks is unbelievably dishonest. Because O’Reilly wants to convince people he’s right, he sets up a false dichotomy where people must choose between his position and NAMBLA’s. Given this choice, how could he not be right?

So that’s a neat trick from O’Reilly, but too bad his little anecdote about Cumming, which is the crux of his argument, is totally irrelevant as far as Bill-O’s thesis is concerned. Recall his opening statement: “With America moving left politically and socially, it might be wise to take a moment and consider what might happen to kids if the drift continues.” And how did he “consider” what might happen? By citing the remarks of, and lack of outcry to, Peter Cumming, an unknown, constituent-less, Canadian professor who teaches at a Canadian university, and who delivered those remarks at a symposium held in Canada. And so apparently this is somehow indicative of a moral decline in America, according to O’Reilly. Wow Bill, you really knocked it out of the park on this one. Shithead.

-Max