Bill, once again, is trying to make us feel sorry for any minor cuts or bruises he may have sustained during his time on the 'battle-field' in this imagined Culture War; though he claims that the 'battle for Christmas' was a success. Also, he does exactly what he says he wouldn't do in the beginning of the book, talk about Al Franken.
O'Reilly talks about his 'loss' in a 'cultural battle' against Al Frenken and the now infamous Book Expo of 2003, the 'fallout' that ensued, and he even tries to explain away a couple of aspects of Frankens book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them".
Since O'Reilly likes to use his thesaurus to call people interesting names, i thought we'd take a quick look at a word that puts this next chapter into context.
hypocrite
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: pretender
Synonyms: actor, attitudinizer, backslider, bigot, bluffer, casuist, charlatan, cheat, con man, crook, deceiver, decoy, dissembler, dissimulator, fake, faker, four-flusher, fraud, hook, humbug, imposter, impostor, informer, lip server, malingerer, masquerader, mountebank, pharisee, phony, playactor, poser, pretender, quack, sham, sharper, smoothie, sophist, stool pigeon, swindler, trickster, two-face, two-timer, whited sepulcher, wolf
-----------------------------------------------------------------
On page 5 ( paragraph 2 ) of 'Culture Warrior', Bill refers to Al Franken as one of the "people who try to ruin people in order to make money".
Also in that chapter, he mentions the 'millions' that he makes doing television, radio, and writing books; as well as saying, "I'll leave the smears to the yapping character assassins." ( also on page 5 )
It's no suprise to anyone who has seen The O'Reilly Factor that, if given the chance, Bill will take pot-shots at Al Franken when the opportunity presents itself.
The story begins with the 2003 Book Expo in LA.
O'Reilly's initial complaint was that the promotoinal piece ( a blown-up version of the cover featuring pictures of Bill, Ann Coulter, George W Bush, and Dick Cheney ) used at the expo contained a 'doctored' picture of him that made him look 'hideous'. Now, it's common knowledge that, in the TV and film industry, people whom appear on camera are put through a typical 'make-up' process prior to filming. I've never met Bill in person, but i thinks it's a pretty safe assumption that his skin isn't 'perfect', i know mine isn't. Does he provide proof that it is in fact 'doctored', of course not.
Second, O'Reilly claims that:
Nobody had informed me about the nature of Franken's book, although the moderator, former congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, certainly knew about it, as did the panel's organizers".
Considering the fact that Bill was asked to appear with Franken and other authors and knowing that he would potentially have to defend his work ( in the book, on radio, and television ) he either didn't do basic homework duties prior to an event like this or is just lying about how the whole event went down. I'll let you make that call.
The book Bill was promoting was Who's Looking Out For You. After his speech, he listened to Franken to "take his measure".
O'Reilly, once again, launches into 'attacking' Franken, claiming that:
"his modus operandi was calling people with whom he disagreed, like Rush Limbaugh, sophomoric names."
And O'Reilly doesn't call people names!?
Next up is a rather suspect explaination about Franken's questioning of O'Reilly's childhood in Levittown.
In Franken's book "Lies...", he states that O'Reilly actually grew up in Westbury and not Levittown. The 'source' of this was an interview that Bill's mother gave the Washington Post. As for his explaination to why his mother said the things she said:
She has, tragically, been suffering from dementia for years and for that reason has round-the-clock supervision.
There's a fine line that's about to be crossed here. Either O'Reilly is telling the truth and Paul Farhi of the Washington Post never spoke with her, or he's lying about his own mother.
Franken states in his book that, when he asked O'Reilly where he came from, Bill reponded that it was the "Westbury section of Levittown". Al can, at times, get so bogged down in trying to pinpoint where the 'spin' in O'Reilly becomes an outright lie that he'll miss an opportunity to do some further fact-checking. Is there a 'Westbury' section or has this just dimished into a semantics argument? Well, that's not really what is troubling to me.
Yes, Bill had a copy of the deed to his childhood home appear in Culture Warrior, but the authenticity of any document can and should come into question. This has been shown to be true in conjunction with the documents in relation to George W. Bush and his time in the Texas Air Guard, something that Bill has already mentioned in this book. Should this 'deed' be held up to the same scrutiny? Yes, it should. But more to the point is the fact that Bill didn't even attempt to verbally evicerate either Paul Farhi or the Washinton Post, he simply put out that his mother is mentally defective. Does this strike anyone else as being something that just doesn't sound right?
Bill goes on some more about how Franken was 'lying' about his life, to which O'Reilly eventually states that he wanted to "beat the you-know-what out of him". Real professional there Bill.
---------------------------------------------------------
To end the chapter, O'Reilly warns his 'tradtional warriors' not to make any 'verbal mistakes', as they will be used against them. Here, again, we see Bill decrying a tactic which he regularly uses on both his radio program as well as on TV.
This particular situation involves a woman by the name of
Terry Gross who did an interview with Bill just after the 'incident' at the book expo.
Bill, once again trying to make us believe that he didn't do his homework, states that the interview with Gross was primarily about the confrontation with Franken as well as dealing with 'accusations' made by others and Harper's magazine.
For someone that claims to be an important figure in the 'culture wars' as O'Reilly paints himself as, shouldn't it be a basic tactic to do the simplist of research prior to a speech, or Q&A session where some of your 'enemies' are present, or for even something as simple as an interview with a radio personality that you already know is ( to use Bill's term ) an "S-P sympathizer" that works for a broadcasting company that you have already stated your express dislike of?
Bill thought that he would 'one-up' Ms. Gross by inviting her onto The Factor and do sort of a 'gotcha!' interview. But, poor planning, shear arrogance, and some small amount of insanity made Bill think that Terry Gross would change her tune once in the 'no spin zone'. But she didn't, she stood by her show and her book "All I Did Was Ask", and O'Reilly simply couldn't figure out why. Why was this woman standing by her story? How dare she!!!
There was no transcript of the interview on 'Fresh Air' ( in whole or in part ) and only a partial transcript from O'Reilly's program where he tried to put Terry Gross on the spot ( which Bill claims will make "anyone" see that Bill had nailed her cold ).
In an attempt to 'spin' his own 'spin' on how he has been taken to task, O'Reilly says that he "can't browbeat a tiny female radio announcer". Why Bill, you're softer than i thought. You big push-over, you.
In the end, the apparent lesson that Bill was tryin to teach those sheep that he is so eager to lead is this: don't attack people personally, because Bill doesn't do personal attacks. Oh, Really?
I took a tally of all of Bill's 'name calling in this small ( less than 10 page ) chapter.
In all, Bill used a negative descriptor 18 times in relation to the people with whom he disagrees. That's approximately one 'insult' per half a page.
------------------------------------------------------------
Next up, Bill finally says it, that the "SP" people are essentially no better than Al Queda.
.............to be continued.