Bill O'Reilly: Master Manipulator or Man of the People?

A freely available Cowboy Times EDITORIAL

Filed 9.05.06
Updated 9.07.06

JACKSON, Wyo., (CT) – I sure hope Bill O’Liely reads this. Because then it will prove, once and for all, that his fork-tongued noggin is not firmly lodged where his many devotees have buried their heads, and his many critics have accused him of marinating his noodle.

Now, that sophomoric insult is neither a fair or logical critique. But as an “ad hominen,” one of BOR’s all-too-common and fallacious rhetorical devices, it’s a K.O., even if I do say so myself.

And in the raging nitwit merry-go-round of celebrity pundit fetishes posing as pressing national interest—Gay Marriage, “The Death Tax” (one of my favorites), Anti-war traitors within our “Secular Humanist” mists, the Republican “Culture of Corruption,” the "Liberal Media Conspiracy," take your pick—the well-turned insult is the WMD in the Rovian “game-changing” armory of brass-knuckle oracular tactics.

Never mind the fact that dulling someone’s point by ridiculing them is illogical and often absurdist by nature. In a pithy word or two: Being “against the man” can get the “best of the man”.

High-falutin,’ Latin quoting, Volvo-driving, chardonnay-sipping, sushi-noshing, Yoga-loving, wind-surfing, flip-flopping, elitist, leftwing, bomb-throwing, east coast liberals have long out orated each other to see who enunciates “ad hominen” most Pontius Piously before all the Kettle One is gone and the last ferry leaves Martha’s Vineyard. Carrying with it all their hyper-competitive toe-headed brats to a misery-rich childhood of unwanted violin and ballerina lessons in lefty old Boston.

And just look at how f*cking in the pink and damn happy as Kennedys they all are!

As an example of irrational reasoning “the put-down,” so often delivered with a jaunty, Tartuffesque “Tsch-tsch” and purse-lipped pious pout, illustrates a tactic oft-deployed by the windiest of the nation’s chattering class. One that should not be lost on the well-educated, highly accomplished, wildly bloviating, increasingly popular and oft-condescending FOX News pundit.

A recent BOR rant illustrates the nutty logic of cable TV’s most successful commentator.

In a widely syndicated piece of Op-Ed spin last month, BOR accused the “left-wing media” of confusing “every day Americans” about the dangers of “Islamic fascism.” Deceptively, but artfully nevertheless, O’ShitforBrains redefined “liberal” as “left-wing,” then tarred the mass media with his pinko-commie-meets-Archie Bunker-a-red-under-every-bed brush before demonizing all with a byline who have noted the Bushies admitted screw-ups in planning and prosecuting the war in Iraq. Oh, yeah? There's also that smug and smarmy little passage where BOR invents the necessary myth of dumb-downed "everyday Americans" so he can then pander to them. In that column, O’SfB alleges that the “left-wing media” has conspired to mislead the public about the homicidal intentions of bloodthirsty Islamic fascists.

Unlike The Artful Dodger, O'Liely has now been caught picking Dr. Frankenstein's pockets.

In deconstructing the more lucid flaws in BOR’s shallow pseudo-thinking, I will exploit his confusion in blindly proselytizing the White House’s derivative use of “Islamic fascism” to define the modern phenomenon of asymmetrical mass-casualty threats that happen to worship Allah.

In all of pre-9/11 history the word “fascism” had never described anything other than a state or nation under extreme authoritarian rule. Because some ambitious Bush speechwriter lifted this glib neologism from Christopher Hitchens and other tabloid intellectuals first in no way legitimizes its coinage as sound political currency.

As proof of the White House's mid-term jitters regarding the hyping of this loaded bugaboo, President Bush did not so much as even hum the word "fascism" in his high-profile speech Tuesday before a room of gung-ho military officers.

Since Islamic terrorists do not unite under the banner of nationhood or nationality, like Mussolini’s and Hitler’s loyalists did, but bond over their shared and often suicidal religious ideation, certain logical extensions born of the ironic conflating of 21st Century nihilistic religious zealots, who plot to murder innocents to advance theological and political objectives, with 20th Century fascist regimes must, in the name of fair and balanced truthiness, be given equal time.

Under this new and elastic propaganda model, “fascists” might now include everyone from bin-Laden and his jihadi minions to medieval Christian crusaders and the preemptive evangelical-minded Chicken Hawks who publicly promote the neo-conservative civic religion of militant, mass-casualty Americanization of the Middle East while denouncing their stateside critics as un-American traitors.

Hm? Who best fits the historical definition of “fascist” now? BOR and his well-oiled audience of bloodsport thirsty devotees longing to sip from his well-stocked trough of Kool-Aid-laced-GOP-talking points? Or a bunch of guys in a cave with a laptop and a cell phone and no nation to call their own?

Let me also be the first to argue here that many of BOR’s legions of nightly viewers are not, as he boasts, fans or supporters.

My friends and I started watching BOR some years ago, because it was better than that tired drinking game involving reruns of The Bob Newhart Show. So consistently does BOR make a pompous, wrong-headed ass of himself that we decided to see how tight we could get one night by doing shots of Jagermeister & Jim Beam every time O’Leily made his smirky little shit-eating face or twirled his idiotic pen while crowing: “The spin stops here.”

If you’ve never watched The O’Leily Factor let me give you a heads up: Bring lots and lots of Jagermeister less you find yourself drowning in all the fruity Kool-Aid.

In his August column on media liberalism and Islamic fascism, BOR provided zero tangible proof for concluding the mainstream press is anything but flat-out profit-driven.

But boy, oh boy, did he try.

To prove his indictment of a leftist cabal blinkering everyone but BOR & FOX, O'Reilly offers up a handful of New York Times media scribes, one sports writer (por que, loco?), and four of their unnamed “uber liberal op-ed” writers, which he claims typify the thousands of working reporters and journalists who make up the mainstream press.

Calling "recent" a Dec. '05 UCLA media study, BOR also accurately cited one of its conclusions of a left-of-center media bias among 18 of the 20 major media outlets with the CBS' "Evening News," The NY Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of, no f'ing joke, The Wall Street Journal.

However, what O'Liely left out was that his same pet study also concluded that "only Fox News' 'Special Report With Brit Hume' and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter."

Question? Why is it cool for right-wing nut jobs to publicly flog left-wing news sources as biased, but uncool when the godless Bolsheviks out the Tory throne-sniffers for their pro-whoever-holds-the-most-power, anti-science ass-kissing screwiness?

NEWS FLASH: All news reflects our atomized, schizoid society. Ergo, all news is crazy.

30 days later, I am still guessing who at The New York Times O'SfB ordained with such omniscience. Was it Dowd, Krugman, Herbert? Certainly the fourth could not be Pulitzer-prize winning Globalist and Iraq war pitchman Thomas Friedman. Please, the man has made a small fortune and good name by arguing for and against everything under the sun.

Nonetheless, if being liberal in BOR’s universe equates to being a “left-winger” on par with Trotsky and Lenin, what does an "uber-liberal" mean? A Stalinist…a Satanist?

See, it all boils down to this.

Namely, to be a player in the world of big media brainwashing bowing to the tenets of logic are a fool’s head game. Tenets? Ha, such fuddy-duddy academic poseurs and their posturing outdated niceties need not apply here! Go write your conscience-stricken epiphanies and urgent investigative missives for Mother Jones or Vanity Fair. For in the Alpha-bully media-o-sphere of cable and daily newsprint you and your strange oracular ways are rhetorical dinosaurs.

The problem with logic and competitive, mass-produced opinion-shaping?

Logic offers even less promise of earthy rewards by way of high ratings and kings’ ransoms of advertising lucre—not to mention the persuasive echo-effect of pill-popping yak-a-ratchik co-conspirators—than counter-programming a PBS special on spotted owls during the Super Bowl.

Propagandists, ideologues, demagogues, religious nutballs and even some talented Amway salesmen, schooled in the art of persuasion, tend to, after wooing the masses and paralyzing their critics with a few sharp zingers, reframe complex issues of intense public and global interest with their rigid brand of simple, moralistic thinking. Creating phony black-or-white choices between two typically false dilemmas, O'SfB, like the president, shouts to hell with messy, underlying nuances…just shut-up and give me my tee time!

The idealistic Plato had a word for these seductive abusers of the public trust: Sophists! But none dare speak those filthy Greek words these days, despite the land of Homer being one of America’s political/intellectual progenitors, without risk of being dismissed as a Yuppie Chow scarfing “Secular Humanist/Progressive” by O’Leily and other like-minded BS artists.

When did the one-two combo of being a humanist-oriented member of the “reality-based community” become an effective, game-changing put-down? Are there actually any clear-headed Americans out there who do not admit to owing some allegiance to the reality-based community?

Folks, who besides giving us boring un-Christian evolution, are comprised of the practical-thinking types who brought us the car, light bulb, vibrator, Jacuzzi and even plum-apple mouthwash.

Who you going to call at four in the morning when your toilet is spewing vile goo chock full of nasty organisms and red-headed Pine Martens: A plumber or some over-stuffed, bought-and-paid clock-watching ignoramous shilling for the American Enterprise Institute?

O’Leily and his slick, morally vacuous brethren frequently issue amusing insults and black-and-white reasoning, plus other logical deceptions, despite themselves knowing, as well-educated professionals and quasi-public intellectuals, how primitive and terrible it is. Primitive because fallacious reasoning short-circuits the intellect and plays to the gut, and terrible because it dehumanizes that other wonderfully unique and dangerously innate human quality: Curiosity.

Having bypassed curiosity, a.k.a. the all-too-human BS detector, master demagogues can tap our strongest and most malleable emotions and manipulate the uncritically minded en masse. A busy mob accustomed to being told what to think, instead of doing its own thinking, by authoritarian type-A personalities amplified by the persuasive mysteries of the mass media..is this what we've become?

Why do these talented shitheads do this?

A cynic might argue that being a sly pundit, versus say a backwater raconteur, is more profitable. As evidence of their cold-blooded, free-market calculus look no further than the salaries and book advances these famous mouthpieces and influence-pedaling whores draw, which in turn earns them the adulation of their fans and exclusive access to covet their petty ideological causes, politicians, celebrity newsmakers and endorsements arranged by high-flying PR flacks, lending their books, products and broadcasts an air of chummy, insider expertise and authority.

Has anyone not had enough of these ill-mannered “authorities” in high places telling us what is right and noble while selling our country down the river, flushing our futures down the John and hurtling the world toward greater and greater genocidal chaos?

A more pragmatic analyst might observe that O’Reilly fans who religiously tune in each evening are likely to not have researched his petty complaint du jour beyond their favorite newspaper or BOR's own daily wind-up/OP-ED piece. Therefore, readers of his slick opinions and viewers of his snappy on-air diatribes look to BOR to verify by prejudice what they already suspect to be true but are unsure of, trusting in his clever marketing slogan: “The spin stops here.”

Why are they unsure?

Is it because in the confusing welter of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda posing as vetted fact—which is everywhere these days and makes used car salesmen look as honest as brown-eyed altar boys—gathering info in an unbiased, open-minded fashion for one’s self is such a hassle when there are kids, spouses, jobs, house payments and clawing Pine Martens to tend to?

As a recent broadcast of his demonstrated, O’Liely has a chronic and allergic aversion to certain stubborn facts. Earlier this summer, BOR showed his full-blown distaste for the numeric exchanges of missiles between Palestine and Israel in that awful, tragic and intractable conflict.

“I’m not interested in a missile count!” O’Reilly thundered over his doggedly persistent interviewee, as she cited the historically accurate claim of Israel’s greater use of missiles on Palestinian civilians than Palestine's aerial assaults on Israeli citizens.

Does BOR shout down these uncomfortable truths because many of the missiles that have caused so much agony and suffering have Uncle Sam stamped on them? Or do uncomfortable truths such as American defense contractors habitually arming both sides in the world’s most intractable conflicts chip away at O'SfB’s unexamined devotion to the irrational notion of “American exceptionalism?”

Well, I’ll leave that conundrum to those who bother to tune in. Just remember Newton's 1st Law of Any Slickly Done Media Snow Job: "Where the spin stops, the BS flies." And if you're watching The O'Liely Factor bring an extra pillow and barf bag, because you’re really going to hate all that sickly sweet, Kool-Aid-scented Jagermeister in the morning.

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