Bill O'Reilly Goes After Lil' Ol' Me. No... Seriously!

I told myself I was going to stray away from political posts for a little while to let the blog get settled in, but this one is too good. In fact, it's going to have to be a multi-parter because all the facts and research aren't quite in yet. I'll get to that later. So for now, let's call this the "Preface"

This story starts on Monday while I was torturing myself with some good old O'Reilly Factor, waiting for Heroes to come on. Bill spent two or three segments worth of the show focusing on a "personal attack" on him in the New York Times which "accused him of being racist" (notice all the quote bubbles).

Here's the Times editorial by Andrew Rosenthal which he was referring to and the specific quote Bill was up in arms about:

"Rosenthal: It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

[And then Bill, while reading from the editorial on his show conveniently skipped the following passage... wonder why?]
Rosenthal: It is all around us. Much was made of the Republican mailing of the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro,” but the same notorious CD included “The Star Spanglish Banner,” a puerile bit of Latino-baiting. It is easily found on YouTube.

[Bill starts reading again at this point of the editorial]
Rosenthal: Google the words 'Bill O’Reilly' and 'white, Christian male power structure' for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of 'the far left' (including The Times) as racially traitorous."

So there you have it, he was a blip on their radar and the first half of an entire show is dedicated to his silly squable with a newspaper. What did Bill have to say?

"O'Reilly: As you may know, the Times and other far-left entities favor amnesty for illegal aliens, primarily as a way to gain political power."

This comment came after devoting his entire Talking Points Memo to his wild conspiracy theory that the only reason any of us (especially the Times) seeks amnesty for illegal imigrants is because we want more people to vote Democrat. He refuses to believe that we might actually care about other human beings and equality, and that we don't believe that a person is "illegal" based on where they are in time and space. The whole segment was absolutely appauling and difficult to watch, but your humble narrator marched on and stuck with him through this...

"O'Reilly: Of course, you can post anything on YouTube, any lie you want, any distortion, and Google can highlight the smear in the blink of an eye -- there are no rules. For example, I could post that Andrew Rosenthal completely distorted Bill O'Reilly's view on illegal immigration, because Rosenthal is a dishonest far-left zealot who uses hateful tactics, like implying people with whom he disagrees are racist.

I could post that, and then you could Google 'Rosenthal' and 'illegal immigration' and it would be there -- uncensored. Now if Rosenthal doesn't know that, he's stupid. If he does know it, then he's dishonest and intentionally misleading Times readers."

Well Bill, you'd almost have a point there if this weren't what comes up when you search for "Bill O'Reilly white, christian male power structure" on Google...



Here's the transcript in case you still can't believe it:

"Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we've got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don't need so many.

O'Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don't know, I don't know. We've got to cap it.

McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you."

Well first and foremost, Bill doesn't seem to understand how the internet works in the first place, but this isn't some kid on "the google space or the i tube" claiming that he might have once heard Bill O'Reilly mention something about the "white, Christian, male power structure", it's straight from the horses mouth. The guy is fear mongering all up in this piece! At this point I'd had enough and didn't have much else going on aside from sitting around eating pizza and decided it was time to take action. My plan was to start writing Bill as concise, polite, and to the point an E-Mail as I could every time I saw something on his show that reached this degree of offensively irresponsible journalism, and down right scum baggery in hopes that some day a long time from now he might read one on the air. Even though I know he would manage to make me look like an idiot to his brainwashed viewers, it'd still feel like a nice little victory. So here's what I sent him that night...

"Bill,

In the same John McCain interview you used as an example to show that the you're not racist you accused the Times of trying to 'break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I'. Those are your words; not mine or Rosenthal's.

Quit trying to pass off your personal and petty squabbles with other news and media organizations as 'news' and 'facts'.


Josh [and I included my last name here, which was a stroke of genius as it was the catalyst for the rest of this story which is still in progress]
Cincinnati, Ohio"

Two days went by and I missed the next night's E-Mails because I figured there would be no way in hell he'd pull mine out the first time I sent one. But last night at the bar Jason comes up to me and says, "Hey, John said he was watching the O'Reilly Factor last night and an E-Mail came up from a Josh [my last name] in Cincinnati."

Awwwww snap. He read it on the air. The question is, which part did he read? Because the first part is admittedly bait. When all I have at my defense are a few measly sentences I'd written the night before and he has all the power of his cable news throne, I knew that part, and probably the whole E-Mail would be torn apart on the air with ease. I'm more focused on whether or not the second portion about his feuds with other news organizations made it on because this is my primary issue with O'Reilly. His anger or "war" as he calls it with the Times and GE/NBC are nothing more than personal feuds because he can't take the heat of a personal attack every now and again, and he, just like all other TV and radio personalities, isn't the political genius he attempts to portray... he's just an ego maniac and an attention whore.

I spent hours today trying to find video of the E-Mail segment so I could do a comparison and analysis of his reading and response, but alas, I couldn't find anything except a few excerpts of the show. No transcripts... not even a contact to request transcripts from, which is important since as you can see based on this story here, they're in the business of re-writing their own history to make one side always look right and the other always look wrong. The less records of the past, the less work they have to do to cover it up later. MSNBC on the other hand had readily available and easy to find transcripts of every episode of "Hard Ball with Chris Matthews". I found the contrast to be quite hilarious.

But don't fear! My girlfriend's parents, being the rabid O'Reilly fans they are, tape it every night and hadn't watched the episode yet, so we're hoping they save the episode so she can transcribe it straight from the source and I'll get back to you on the analysis.


And just when you thought it was over... there's more! I got my first piece of hate mail thanks to that E-Mail to Bill and the fact that I left my full name on it. It goes as follows...

"Subject: POLITICAL IDIOT

JOSH

AFTER THAT ROYAL BURN YOU GOT LAST NIGHT BY O’REILLY, I THINK I WOULD STICK TO TRYING TO BE A WANNA BE ROCKER!

A FRIEND"

Yes. It was all in caps. At first glance we thought this guy had to know me personally, or maybe it was my girlfriends dad secretly attacking me from a friends E-Mail (which would have been way funnier). The truth is much more sad. Apparently some guy took the time to search my full name in Google. My name being pretty unique brigns up results that are all actually about me or made by me including a link to my band's MySpace page and a school project I did about two or three years ago. This guy sifted through all of those things to find not only my personal E-Mail address but also my old university E-Mail address and sent his oh so eloquent letter to both.

To make things even better a quick search of his E-Mail user name gave me his full name, address, place of work, and phone number. And this got me thinking... what compels someone to make an attack like that? What did he gain by sending that E-Mail? How did it make him feel? Why did he feel the need to personally attack me beyond my politcal views? I'm not offended because well... it's pretty obvious from the circumstance and text that he's an idiot, but I just want to know.

So hopefully tomorrow I'm going to attempt my first interview for 'Front Porch Affairs...' and give the guy a ring. At the worst he yells at me and then saves my number on his caller ID and harasses me constantly. But if all goes well and I get a civil discussion going we might get some insight into the psyche of hate speech, which I think could be really awesome.

Wish me luck on that... later dudes.