A remedial O'LOOFAH primer in The New Yorker

[UTUSN]

The writer comes across as patronizing and out of touch, but the laundry list of things-DUers-already-know-about-O'LOOFAH is likely to irritate O'LOOFAH, so here'tis. At least the point of his VIOLENCE is made. But regarding the new difficulty of his booking A-list-Libs, uh, was Puff COMBS *ever* a spokesman for A-list Libs? And it must bug the heck out of O'LOOFAH that Bob SCHIEFFER, who big-footed him at CBS, has gained more prominence.


*******QUOTE*******

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060327fa_fact

.... O’Reilly’s account of what went wrong at CBS has him, as always, pissing off powerful people because he won’t play their phony games. The key moment seems to have come when, during the Falkland Islands War, O’Reilly and his crew got some exclusive footage of a riot in the streets of Buenos Aires and it wound up being incorporated into a report from the veteran correspondent Bob Schieffer, which failed to mention O’Reilly’s contribution. O’Reilly was furious, and after that, by his account, he was in career Siberia at CBS. During this period of forced inaction, he later wrote, “on a visit to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, I stumbled upon an amazing story. The tiny fishing village of Provincetown had become a gay mecca!” O’Reilly took a cameraman there and did a piece on the dangers this posed to local kids, but the network wouldn’t air it. Not long after that, he left.

In 1998, after the launch of “The O’Reilly Factor,” but before superstardom, he published a thriller called “Those Who Trespass,” which is his most ambitious and deeply felt piece of writing. “Those Who Trespass” is a revenge fantasy, and it displays extraordinarily violent impulses. A tall, b.s.-intolerant television journalist named Shannon Michaels, the “product of two Celtic parents,” is pushed out by Global News Network after an incident during the Falkland Islands War, and then by a local station, and he systematically murders the people who ruined his career. He starts with Ron Costello, the veteran correspondent who stole his Falkland story: ....

In earlier times, O’Reilly’s bookers were more successful in attracting big-name liberals into the “No Spin Zone.” It gave O’Reilly the opportunity to confront, say, Sean Combs with the feeling that he was speaking truth to power (“People are under the impression that rap music and this rap world is a violent gangster-ridden corrupt enterprise”), and to get a lot of mileage out of the failure of, say, Hillary Clinton to appear as a guest. Lately, the guests on the left who make “The O’Reilly Factor” fun have been lesser figures—such as Mel Feit, of the National Center for Men—for whom an on-air confrontation with O’Reilly is a journey to the big time. O’Reilly is not only bigger than these people; he’s usually also smarter, handsomer, better spoken, better groomed, and more sophisticated. O’Reilly imagines himself to be the underdog in a confrontation with any liberal, but, when he goes after one, it can come across as the television equivalent of police brutality—bullying undertaken for the sheer joy of bullying. Probably the most notorious example, featured prominently in “Outfoxed,” was his 2003 interview with Jeremy Glick, the left-wing son of a September 11th victim, who had signed a newspaper advertisement opposing the invasion of Afghanistan: ....

No television host’s career lasts forever, and it may be that O’Reilly is too hot, too close to entertainment, to maintain his position as long as a network anchorman might. O’Reilly has been able to reach the top of the cable-news ratings and stay there—and to turn the deep and determined enmity of the left to his advantage—by relentlessly reminding his audience of how much the left hates him. This baroque period of O’Reilly’s is partly circumstantial: it’s hard to be straight-ahead if you’re essentially oppositional and the people you like are in power, if the guests you most want will not appear on your show, and if it’s nearly impossible to demonstrate the existence of the trends you have made it your mission to oppose. O’Reilly is an amazingly nimble talent, and part of his skill is how persuasively he communicates that he is completely uncensored and incapable of guile or calculation. ....

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[atommom]

1. Well, if it will irritate Bill, who am I not to kick it?

:kick:

[UTUSN]

3. I'm e-mailing the link to him n/t

[niyad]

2. or maybe he's just a stupid, nasty, ignorant blow-hard who doesn't

deserve any sort of attention.

[UTUSN]

4. A kick to irritate n/t

[stevedeshazer]

5. K & R

Anything to help push this sick pinhead over the edge. Antone who could write this passage is MUCH more dangerous than the ACLU!

"The assailant’s right hand, now holding the oval base of the spoon, rocketed upward, jamming the stainless stem through the roof of Ron Costello’s mouth. The soft tissue gave way quickly and the steel penetrated the correspondent’s brain stem. Ron Costello was clinically dead in four seconds. "

There's really something wrong with this guy.

But, my question is, What's wrong with Lis Wiehl?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200406240004

[UTUSN]

6. Thanks for that & it's true: Does ANYBODY (co-hosts) buy into "it"?

He's sick. His bosses know he's sick. Possibly his followers know he's sick. So why is he continuing and continuing? He's not the first hateful blatherer. There was Father COUGHLIN in the 1930s and there's LIMBOsevic.

[Octafish]

7. Where's the part where he wins the two Peabody Awards?

Thanks for putting clothes on the Master of Falafa.

LMAO. The guy really is a nutjob.