It'll go down in the history of something, but probably not 'journalism.'
Is there anyone in politics, elected or not, who can match the
obsessive self-regard of Bill O'Reilly?
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly predicted Thursday that his pre-Super Bowl interview with President Barack Obama would go down in "journalistic history."
“I’m going to predict that that interview that I did is going to go down in journalistic history as what should be done,” O’Reilly, who has now spent four days doing press for the interview, told fellow Fox personality Geraldo Rivera on his WABC radio show. "It takes a certain skill to pose questions in a factual way and be persistent without being disrespectful."
Gawd, he's
still milking that steer? You have to admire his persistence, I'll give him that. The interview with the president, like most things Bill O'Reilly does, was
mostly about Bill O'Reilly and Bill O'Reilly's checklist of Fox News conspiracy theories; a large part of the resulting week of O'Reilly self-love seems to be an allergic reaction to
very rude people pointing that out.
In an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, O'Reilly said Milbank "is a weasel in my opinion, beneath contempt." [...]
"It's OK to be a liberal columnist, but once you cross the line into lying... the paper's got to take action," O'Reilly said. (His remarks came moments after he told Hewitt, "I never attack anyone personally.")
(Milbank's sin appears to be noting that O'Reilly spent nearly all the interview going on about Benghazi and other conspiracy theories.)
More on Bill O'Reilly below the fold.
We're still left with the same baffling question that we're left with after every one of these Obama "interviews" with Fox News: Why? Surely, we of the earthly realms cannot pretend that Bill O'Reilly is a "journalist"; Bill O'Reilly is a standup comedian for very angry people, a sort of Jay Leno for crabby bastards. No good ever comes of it, save validating the opinion of Bill O'Reilly in the eyes of Bill O'Reilly and giving Fox News a platform to argue that Serious People are taking their various smears and conspiracy theories seriously. It is always exactly this much of a joke.
That said, I suppose a bit of good did come from it, in that it gave Nancy Pelosi a chance to insult O'Reilly to one of O'Reilly's trademark ambush-with-camera "reporters," a fellow who had been apparently sent with the explicit task of bullying Pelosi into sitting down for her own interview with King Blowhard because she pwommised him, she did:
“I’m wondering, I know you’re a woman of your word, and I’m asking if you’re going to be honoring your commitment,” the Fox reporter then responded.
“Well, I didn’t make any commitment to him, we were having a social conversation. In fact, it was at the White House, the first time I ever saw him because I never see him on TV,” Pelosi said, drawing laughter from the press corps. “But then Greta came along and I’ve known her for a very long time, so I did Greta. And so you know, we go from one outlet to the next.”
“But your husband was there, next to you, when you said you would do the show,” the reporter interjected.
Pelosi cut him off again, “One of these days, it’s open ended. One of these days maybe I will. I was not pleased with the disrespect that he showed to the president, so that wasn’t a warmer upper."
Aaaaah. Now that is how you deal with Bill O'Reilly and his minions. You pack them a bag lunch, you pin their mittens to their coats and you send them on their damn way already.