Thank you, Bill O’Reilly, for sharing your insights with us! Not insights into any of the great issues of the day – but into your thinking.
Well… “thinking” might be too strong of a verb for the recent brain spasm we got from this liberal-hating, right-wing cable-TV talk-show host. What set him off was a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that O’Reilly’s network, Fox News, has been devoting twice as much time as other cable networks to the Anna Nicole Smith celebrity story, while spending much less time than other networks on Iraq, a story of real importance.
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This caused O’Reilly to have a double-barreled brain jerk. First, he blasted the other networks for covering the violence in Iraq, saying that they’re only doing it to embarrass the Bushites. “All their reporting consists of is here’s another explosion,” O’Reilly declared. “Bang. Here’s more people dead. Bang.”
He then went loopy, asserting “CNN and MSNBC are actually helping the terrorists by reporting useless explosions. Do you care if another bomb went off in Tikrit? Does it mean anything? No. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Well, actually, Bill, I don’t think terrorists are setting off bombs just to get on CNN. I think they’re setting off bombs to kill people, including U.S. troops. That’s what we call “news.” It certainly does mean something to the families of the dead, to the soldiers who served with the dead, and to the progress (or lack thereof) of Bush’s war policy. It means something every freaking time it happens.
Still, Bill dismissed it as beneath him. “We bring you stuff that is new, that is relevant to your life, “ he sniffed. “I’m not going to cover every bomb that goes off in Tikrit.”
So, Anna Nicole Smith’s death is more “relevant” to our lives than the deaths of our troops in Bush’s misguided war. Now there’s a real insight – into O’Reilly’s head.
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