Well-known toe-sucker Dick Morris, and Eileen McGann, who is apparently his court-mandated social worker or something, have used their Town Hall column to flack for Bill O’Reilly’s latest book. But either they are really bad flacks, or they actually dislike Bill as much as everybody else does, because it’s a really inept effort.
But hey, let’s give it a look and you can see what you think.
It’s time for the really scary ”birds and the bees” talk, kids.
Before or after every speech I ever give, somebody asks me: “What is O’Reilly really like?”
And then they say, “He can’t be as big a jerk in real life as he is on TV, can he?”
My answer is always the same: “What you see on television is what you get off camera. It’s the same guy.”
So, yes, he is that big of a jerk.
That much is obvious to anyone who knows him. But what was less clear to me is where he came from.
Yeah, with Bill claiming that he came from Levitown, but his mother assuring the Washington Post that he was actually raised in Westbury, Long Island, a “middle-class suburb a few miles from Levitown,” it is kind of confusing.
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, O’Reilly’s memoir, answers the question. O’Reilly, it seems, was made not born into his philosophy, rather, his values and personae were hammered into shape like a horseshoe, the blows coming not from a blacksmith’s hammer, but from life on the quintessentially American streets of Levittown.
So, Bill got beat up a lot, and the resulting anger, resentment, and insecurity fueled Bill’s values and “philosophy.” (If only he had received some therapy, maybe he could have developed a normal personae.)
Interspersing stories of his youth with bloviation on topics like the quality of courage and the necessity for self-reliance,
Um, Dick, you DO know that “bloviation” (“to speak or write verbosely and windily”) isn’t a good thing, right?
. . . O’Reilly makes it clear that his experiences are his philosophy, his biography is his message.
And his message is the medium, and his medium is Fox News. So, you’ve been warned.
Does he believe in resourcefulness and ingenuity?
No, but he does believe that black people are mostly dishonest, brown people are all illegal aliens, and Santa Claus is baby Jesus’s father.
Does he look down on the nanny state? It all harks back to his job as a kid painting houses. When his buddy dropped a bucket of white paint on a client’s bush, he sawed down the newly decorated plant, replaced it with various branches he collected, quickly cashed the check and was off. When the client noticed that something about the front of his house looked different, O’Reilly hastened to credit his paint job, not the missing bush.
So, Bill believes in covering up mistakes, lying to those who trusted you, never admitting fault even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and bilking people for whatever you can get away with (as long as the “nanny state,” with its pesky consumer protection agencies, can’t find track you down). No wonder his “philosophy” resonates with people like Dick.
‘Reilly was not the bookish sort.
In fact, he still doesn’t know how to read.
He had no particular interest in anything having to do with the outside world as he grew up.
Hey, he and Sarah Palin must be soul mates.
He was a borderline hooligan
with borderline personality disorder.
… who Irish mothers must have suspected of “devilment.” The title of his book comes from how Sister Lurana described him in grade school.
Yes, Bill and his sister attended private school. Let’s not forget that, as we read about his underprivileged life on the mean streets of Long Island.
Most autobiographies relate uncommon stories of great men and women.
But Bill’s relates common stories about a petty, commonplace man. And that’s why you should buy it!
We ponder how the extraordinary influences of their early life matured them and led to who they have become since. In O’Reilly’s case, his Levittown upbringing was the suburban equivalent of Tom Sawyer’s. Instead of painting fences, as Mark Twain’s character did, he paints houses “coated with slatelike shingles” leaving very little wood trim to work with.
Actually, Tom didn’t paint those fences, his dupes did. And is a charmless, grown-up Tom Sawyer really the person who should be angrily scolding everyone else about their moral failings?
But Levittown was a suburban jungle, the very sameness of its houses seeming to spur rebellion in its youth.
LOL! Bill O’Reilly is James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. He is Sidney Poitier in Blackboard Jungle. He is the monkeyman inGeorge of the Jungle! No wonder all the women he meets want him to sexually harass them.
O’Reilly was one of those kids who led adults to despair of the coming generation: out for trouble and self-absorbed, a restless rogue. Yet each of his experiences seems to have spawned a philosophy which, in turn shaped a political outlook. He is not driven by polls, but by personal experience.
Yeah, every self-centered, socially deviant street thug has a personal philosophy too, but they don’t usually get to repeatedly interview the President of the United States.
His background has left him with an internal compass that always helps him to find his way.
As the Bible says, broad is the path and easy is the way that leads to hell.
Al Gore grew up in a Washington DC hotel room while his Dad served in the Senate. Bill O’Reilly grew up in a small house in Levittown while his father was exploited by the Calltex Oil Company, trapped in a badly paying job he hated.
Well, Bill’s dad was making $35,000 a year when he retired in 1978, which is about $92,000 in today’s dollars, so he wasn’t all that badly paid (except in comparison with Bill). But he was a mean drunk whom I’m sure did hate his job, his life, and his son – so yes, Al Gore did have a much better preparation for life than Bill did.
And that has made all the difference for both men.Denied any exposure to reality as he grew up, Gore substituted ideology for experience, science for reality.
“Science” being mythical mumbo-jumbo with no relation at all to real stuff.
And sure, Gore worked summers as a field hand on the family farm, helping to grow hay and tobacco and raise cattle, but he wasn’t a self-absorbed restless rogue, so what does he know of reality? And Gore only served as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, while Bill saw combat in the Falklands, so it’s clear which guy has had the realest life.
O’Reilly lived a life just like those he calls the “folks” and always roots his spiels in the world from whence he came.
So, if you’re looking for spiels, rants, and tirades rooted in the world of an angry, self-centered, anti-intellectual, bullying Everyman, then Bill’s are the ones for you!
What is Bill O’Reilly really like? Levittown.
That is to say, cheap, mass-produced, and racially-exclusive.
Posted by s.z. on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 6:42 am.
19 Responses to “With Shills Like This, Who Needs Enemies?”
szinng! Well done and spot on. The last line alone is worth the price of admission.
Hey, Dick and Eileen, I’m sure Bill will like your verbiage. He may even bloviate about it.
Wow, that’s a gem. And, holy cow, you’re right about that being the most inept review. Did they *think* they were doing Bill a favor with that? Weird, weird, weird.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to dislike either Morris or O’Reilly more, but damn if they didn’t do it for me.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to dislike either Morris or O’Reilly more, but damn if they didn’t do it for me.
Did Bill “saw combat” in the Falklands? He covered the Falklands/Malvinas War FROM BUENOS AIRES!! (2.000 miles away from the islands)
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity
There’s a pooper scooper law in New York state, Bill-O.
There’s a pooper scooper law in New York state, Bill-O.
the blows coming not from a blacksmith’s hammer, but from life on the quintessentially American streets of Levittown.
hang on…I gotta address this: IF you buy into his “Levittown” address, then Bill-O having been brought up on the streets is like saying “All I got for my bar mitzvah was this cheap Rolex watch.”
It *couldn’t* have been that bad. I mean, it’s not like he “grew up” in a fucking slum!
And even if you extend Levittown all the way to Westbury and Old Country Road, my fucking God the original FORTUNOFF’Sis there!
“These kids today, they have it easy! When I was a kid, th’ only work I could find was polishing the silver at Fortunoff! In the main store!”
But Levittown was a suburban jungle, the very sameness of its houses seeming to spur rebellion in its youth.
Yea. It would have nothing to do with the spike in Thorazine and Elavil prescriptions the moms took…or the fact that hot sheet hotels started springing up along the main drags like fungi…Nnnnnnnnnnnno, it’s the mean streets of (all-white, and mostly Jewish nebbishes) Levittownnnnnnnn
Or as we used to sing it back in college (add appropriate bubbeh accent):
And we’re living here in Levittown,
and dey’re closink all de drugstores down,
Out in Babylon, dey’re killin’ time, prescription forms, stnadin’ in line,
And we’re leevin’ here in Levittown…
Give me a FUCKING BREAK! Even I, who grew up in a fairly tough neighborhood, wouldn’t stoop so low as to claim that my daily beatings by the goombahs and cugines was anything I didn’t fucking deserve for being a wiseass!
hang on…I gotta address this: IF you buy into his “Levittown” address, then Bill-O having been brought up on the streets is like saying “All I got for my bar mitzvah was this cheap Rolex watch.”
It *couldn’t* have been that bad. I mean, it’s not like he “grew up” in a fucking slum!
And even if you extend Levittown all the way to Westbury and Old Country Road, my fucking God the original FORTUNOFF’Sis there!
“These kids today, they have it easy! When I was a kid, th’ only work I could find was polishing the silver at Fortunoff! In the main store!”
But Levittown was a suburban jungle, the very sameness of its houses seeming to spur rebellion in its youth.
Yea. It would have nothing to do with the spike in Thorazine and Elavil prescriptions the moms took…or the fact that hot sheet hotels started springing up along the main drags like fungi…Nnnnnnnnnnnno, it’s the mean streets of (all-white, and mostly Jewish nebbishes) Levittownnnnnnnn
Or as we used to sing it back in college (add appropriate bubbeh accent):
And we’re living here in Levittown,
and dey’re closink all de drugstores down,
Out in Babylon, dey’re killin’ time, prescription forms, stnadin’ in line,
And we’re leevin’ here in Levittown…
Give me a FUCKING BREAK! Even I, who grew up in a fairly tough neighborhood, wouldn’t stoop so low as to claim that my daily beatings by the goombahs and cugines was anything I didn’t fucking deserve for being a wiseass!
What’s REALLY shameful for me reading this is knowing that Dickie attended the same high school as me, so should know better. THAT was in a tough neighborhood, just above Alphabet City on the Lower East Side in the 60s and 70s!
It always amazes me that some poor woman undergoes the heebie-jeebie-inducing indignity of kinky sex with Dick Morris just to put food on her family, and of the two people in that motel room,she’s the one considered a whore.
“Damned by faint praise” has never sounded more true.
Could someone, please, teach these guys, the , proper, use of, commas?
Thank, you.
Thank, you.
WHY does he even bring Al Gore into it? Monomania? Is Al Gore his once and future whipping boy? I think it’s because these people once managed to turn Gore, a supremely, embarrassingly (for them) qualified man, into a joke for a time but then he went on to a reclaim and burnish his reputation, garnering public respect and a frickin’ Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize in the same year—and they just can’t get over that. Not that they would ever have forgiven him for whatever it is they hate him for (probably, being better than they are), but now they’re just obsessed by their resentment. He was supposed to be a punchline and stay one, but he proved them wrong, and that will make him a target forever.
P.S. Sweet Jesus, I hate Bill O’Reilly.
P.S. Sweet Jesus, I hate Bill O’Reilly.
Did Bill “saw combat” in the Falklands? He covered the Falklands/Malvinas War FROM BUENOS AIRES!! (2.000 miles away from the islands)
They have TVs there, though, right? I’m sure he *saw* combat.
They have TVs there, though, right? I’m sure he *saw* combat.
He’s suppose to be extremely intelligent, but he assumes the reader hasn’t heard of, or(more likely) doesn’t care about O’Lielly’s lawsuit or his meltdown videotape that came out a while ago or sending his staff out to harass people and videotape the results as if he’s some sort of 21st Century Mike Wallace.
From the Deepest, Darkest Hells that were “The Streets”…
…A world of one car garages
…A world of goyim and shiksas (well, sometimes)
…A world that created…
O’Reilly!
A Roger Corman Film
…A world of one car garages
…A world of goyim and shiksas (well, sometimes)
…A world that created…
O’Reilly!
A Roger Corman Film
“he paints houses “coated with slatelike shingles” leaving very little wood trim to work with.
This really got me, is the fact that he painted asbestos shingled houses supposed make us feel inspired? Or is there some character development that occurs when one doesn’t have trim to paint? I’m really lost on this.
Also, what the hell is a “suburban jungle”? Dodging desperate housewives hurling stainless pots at eachother? Angry white men racing up and down the streets in their souped up riding lawnmowers? Social isolation due to a lack of conveniently located shopping malls?
I don’t get it.
This really got me, is the fact that he painted asbestos shingled houses supposed make us feel inspired? Or is there some character development that occurs when one doesn’t have trim to paint? I’m really lost on this.
Also, what the hell is a “suburban jungle”? Dodging desperate housewives hurling stainless pots at eachother? Angry white men racing up and down the streets in their souped up riding lawnmowers? Social isolation due to a lack of conveniently located shopping malls?
I don’t get it.
His background has left him with an internal compass
Or, in other words, he has both a thin metal spike and a sharpened pencil lodged in his ass. It really explains a lot.
Or, in other words, he has both a thin metal spike and a sharpened pencil lodged in his ass. It really explains a lot.
Also, what the hell is a “suburban jungle”?
Bwana make left at Roosevelet Field for four klicks, then turn south on Merrick Road. Can’t miss eaty-eaties. Beware hairy tribe in wifebeaters. Ungabunga!
Bwana make left at Roosevelet Field for four klicks, then turn south on Merrick Road. Can’t miss eaty-eaties. Beware hairy tribe in wifebeaters. Ungabunga!
“Indiana Jones and the Journey Through Suburban Jungle”
With a compass secretly embedded in a body cavity and his white male middle class identity on his sleeve, our hero ventures into the uncertain realm of cub scout meetings, lawn fertilizer and the ever present frustrated housewife.
Will our hero escape alive? Will he capture the treasured recording that holds the meaning of life as we know it?Stay tuned!
With a compass secretly embedded in a body cavity and his white male middle class identity on his sleeve, our hero ventures into the uncertain realm of cub scout meetings, lawn fertilizer and the ever present frustrated housewife.
Will our hero escape alive? Will he capture the treasured recording that holds the meaning of life as we know it?Stay tuned!
Will our hero escape alive? Will he capture the treasured recording that holds the meaning of life as we know it?
Stay tuned!
Fuck it! We’ll do it live!
Stay tuned!
Fuck it! We’ll do it live!
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