O'Reilly's Black Hole of a Show: First Melanie Morgan, then attack on Springsteen
By David Neiwert Wednesday Jan 28, 2009 4:15pm
I'm afraid Bill O'Reilly's Fox show is something of an existential threat to the existence of the universe. There is always the danger, when he has on complete nutcase guests like Melanie Morgan or Michelle Malkin, that the presence of such a combined mass of wingnuttery in one place could open a hole in the time-space continuum.
We survived just such a threat last night. Morgan, the erstwhile KSFO host noted for her ugly eliminationism, came on The O'Reilly Factor to talk about her campaign to stop small colleges from hosting talks by William Ayers -- the ex-Weather Underground member and Campaign 2008 cause celebre -- and we reached critical levels of wingnuttery, but fortunately the universe did not implode.
I particularly enjoyed how O'Reilly described Move America Forward, as "a group committed to defeating terrorism." Actually, MAF originated as a pro-Iraq War group. Now that that's worked out so swell, they've moved on to become a group devoted to keeping the wingnuttery alive by promoting their vision of the "war on terror."
Now, I have some more recent reports of domestic-terror activities for Morgan, MAF, and O'Reilly to think about, such as the Alabama man who'd been vandalizing synagogues found with a large weapons stasg, or the Spokane man recently busted with a huge cache of weapons and explosives he intended to use at some "indefinite date". Of course, I know these guys don't fit Morgan's profile of a "terrorist" -- after all, they're white -- but if Morgan and MAF really were genuinely concerned about "defeating terrorism," they would spend less time focusing on the activities of a man whose terrorist activities stopped 40 years ago, and look at more recent and very real terrorist activity.
In any event, the moment passed without a complete rendering of the fabric of the universe, but it was close.
And then we had a similar moment later in the same program when O'Reilly, with Andrea Peyser of the New York Post, attacked Bruce Springsteen for daring to express his (decidedly liberal) political views. Apparently, to O'Reilly, political expression should only be reserved for Grand Poobahs like himself, while mere peons like Springsteen should stick to singing:
The near-creation of a black hole of hypocrisy comes when they tut-tut Springsteen as "someone who sold himself to America as a regular guy," a "working-class guy."
Yeah, O'Reilly knows all about that.
