I don’t think I have, so let’s dip into that well again.

I have a long-standing beef with O’Reilly, and most of it has nothing to do with politics. His politics rile me, that’s for sure, but what eats at me is that he seems to think he’s this bare-knuckle champion of the “folks” from a hard-scrabble childhood that clawed his way to the top thanks to his uncompromising integrity and brutal honesty.

Take this recent interview he did. Like so many he does, one of his favorite things to talk about in this interview is his tough childhood in blue-collar Levittown. For the moment let’s ignore that his own friggin’ mother disputes that claim, as per a Dec 13th, 2000, interview with the WaPo. The point is that he likes to talk about rough his childhood was. For evidence, he says the following (emphasis mine):

“As I read through this, you had a pretty comfortable life in Levittown,” Smith said. “Dad had a job.”

“I don’t know if my life in Levittown was, now it is. We lived in a little box house with no air conditioning,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t real comfortable in the middle of August when it was 112°. All right? And I was sweating. And I was eatin’, you know, fish sticks and stuff. They weren’t delicious, Harry. (laughs) So I don’t, I’m not, you know …”

Dear god. No air conditioning? Fish sticks? It’s amazing poor little Billy survived!

When Bill O’Reilly talks about his rough childhood, that’s what he’s referring to. Being sweaty and eating fish sticks. You know what I called that? Summer. O’Reilly’s also 59 years old, he was born in 1949. I didn’t have an air conditioner in the house until I was 20 and that was one of those window units (which admittedly makes the room damn chilly), and my family car didn’t have AC until I was nearly old enough to drive it. I don’t think any of my relatives had air conditioning back then. Not even the ones in Louisiana. He might as well lament his lack of a cell phone or wireless internet.

As for fish sticks, isn’t that one of those foods we all look fondly on? Fish sticks, pudding pops, macaroni and cheese, corn dogs? The guy’s listing off things that are typical of middle-class, suburban, happy childhoods as evidence of how he came from the bottom. He’s not talking about living on welfare or not having a car, being unable to afford food or having the water rationed. It just blows my mind.

So I’m sure a lot of you have heard by now that Sarah Palin’s email got hacked. I’m not going to link to any of the sites reproducing her email, I’ll just say three things. One, the hacker committed a crime. Two, Palin was an absolute idiot for using a Yahoo account for government business. Three, it’s funny that the “if you haven’t committed a crime, why do you care?” crowd is suddenly up in arms.

One of the fellas up in arms was Bill O’Reilly who decided to spend some time trying to drag liberals into things and just generally get in a big fat outrage at the world as he is wont to do. Showing that the internets are not to be trifled with, O’Reilly’s website got hacked.

The breach into BillOreilly.com came as retaliation for remarks O’Reilly made on Fox News condemning the attack on Palin’s Yahoo email account, according to Wikileaks, a site that makes it easy for whistleblowers, hackers and anyone else to leak documents.

As proof, Wikileaks posted a screenshot of the BillOreilly.com administrative interface that showed the names, email addresses, passwords, and home town of 20 subscribers of the website. In all, information belonging to 205 subscribers was intercepted, according to Eric Marston, CTO of Nox Solutions, the company that maintained the website.

You can take a gander at things on the site if you’d like. I’m looking forward to the next Factor, frankly. Once again, it’s a crime, but I’ve got no qualms with laughing when a jerk’s house gets egged, so I’ll laugh now too.

It was coming, so here it is.

O’Reilly is about as civil as you can imagine for O’Reilly. Which is to say, no shouting, no “shut up”, no cutting off Obama’s mic.

That said, wow does O’Reilly not know how to ask an objective question, and that’s the thing. You realize that Bill-O does not see himself as biased. He really thinks he’s being a “serious journalist” in this interview, asking the tough questions. Obama conducted himself fantastically, but you know his evident frustration with getting loaded questions will be interpreted as “stammering”.

I have to admit, this one surprised the hell outta me. I figured John McCain would have a better chance of a fair interview if he agreed to show up on Mike Malloy’s radio program. But there you have it, Barack Obama will be on The O’Reilly Factor tomorrow.

Before Senator John McCain delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Senator Barack Obama will make a marquee appearance of his own.

Call it counter-intuitive. He will appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel.

For Mr. Obama, it will be the first time in his presidential candidacy that he’s on Bill O’Reilly’s prime-time program. The appearance is intended to put Mr. Obama before a conservative audience, one week after drawing 40 million TV viewers at his own acceptance speech.

It’s worth mentioning that, since The O’Reilly Factor is on from 8 to 9pm EST, then chances are this interview is going to be pretty damn close to when McCain takes the podium. Call it a response to the Palin revelation.

But why O’Reilly? Well for a number of reasons. One is that O’Reilly has the #1 show on FOX and if you want to reach out to conservatives, that’s where you’ll have to do it. Another is that, when confronted with someone such as Obama, O’Reilly has a tendency to be a bit of a shrinking violet. Sure he’ll rail into a Geraldo or some random activist, but as his Kucinich interview showed, he won’t try to shout down someone he genuinely knows is smarter than he is. By O’Reilly standards, he was downright civil with Kucinich.

Obama’s no dummy, he won’t let Bill-O trip him up and you know he won’t be able to spout any falsehoods about Obama’s record because, well, he’ll be right there to say “actually that is untrue”. I sense this is a good move.

I’ve avoided writing on this one, and I’m sure a few of you wondered why I didn’t leap at an opportunity to jump on the “kick O’Reilly’s ass” bandwagon. The reason is simple: this one’s unfair. We all love slamming Bill-O, but in this case I think we shot ourselves in the foot. Look at his entire comment:

You know, I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle Obama, for Bill Clinton, for all of these people. Bill Clinton, I have sympathy for him, because they’re thrown into a hopper where everybody is waiting for them to make a mistake, so that they can just go and bludgeon them. And, you know, Bill Clinton and I don’t agree on a lot of things, and I think I’ve made that clear over the years, but he’s trying to stick up for his wife, and every time the guy turns around, there’s another demagogue or another ideologue in his face trying to humiliate him because they’re rooting for Obama.

That’s wrong. And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.

Read it. Then read it again. Notice that William O’Reilly, noted right-wing pundit who goes after anyone for any reason, is coming to Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama’s defense because he sympathizes with their plight. He’s saying “listen, people aren’t always going to phrase things well, they’ll say something a little off, so don’t jump on them over it.”

That was his message. Then, in a case of self-destructive ultra-irony, the left proceeded to pounce on O’Reilly, ignoring his message of “it’s unfair to seek out verbal missteps in order to humiliate people” and instead sought out his verbal misstep and used it to humiliate the guy.

I have no doubt that O’Reilly used the word “lynching” intentionally, probably referring to the right’s crusade against her. Though poorly-contrived, it’s a perfectly legitimate way of phrasing it. It was just stupid to use it. But so many people have so much anti-O’Reilly zeal that they tossed out the one defender on the right that Michelle Obama has in this phony “scandal”. Good work, folks.

This is like a summary of Bill O’Reilly’s career. We’ll hit the list.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51jTHnw8gRk]

Tirade against Air America and Al Franken? Check.

Asks the guest to say what he dislikes about the Democrats, but not Republicans? Check.

Refuses to let the guest talk when he might be proven wrong about something? Check.

Shuts the guest down when he badmouths a Republican? Check.

Starts taking potshots against Clinton? Check.

Patronizingly insults his guest for disagreeing with him by saying “that’s your opinion, but…”? Check.

Makes me want to hit him in the face with a shovel? Check.

Obviously Bill-O was hoping the guest would say “Clinton” when he asked “who do you loathe”, if his unceasing attempts to steer the discussion toward her is any indication. Yep, no bias on The O’Reilly Factor, no sir.

Here’s a great Robert Greenwald vid nicely summarizing the FOX smearing of Barack Obama, as well as showing the clip where O’Reilly shoves one of his staffers (an incident so stupid I can barely comment on it). So here you go.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfc8cn8Yqxk]

I’ve stayed away from O’Reilly’s little racist tirade for going on a week now, but I figure it’s about time I at least say something so I don’t have to bother with it any more.

Looking through a chunk of the transcript, you can read up on it and figure out for yourself where the racist bits are if you haven’t heard already. Media Matters gives up a solid four paragraphs and full audio, so if there’s context I’m missing I’d like to know what. Anyway, the pertinent parts…

And I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.

Okay, this is the famous pair of sentences here. The important part is the beginning. He couldn’t get over the fact. What that tells you is that upon entering Sylvia’s, he had this image in his head about what a black restaurant with primarily black patronage is going to look like.

Am I the only one that gets this image of Bill-O staring around in disbelief, wondering how this could be possible? When you tell the guy that you’re taking him to a restaurant in Harlem, what do you think is in his mind? Do you think he gets visions of the end of “Do the Right Thing”, where the black neighborhood throws garbage cans through the window and sets fires?

You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.

And there it is. In O’Reilly-Land, white people are calm and behaved, and when blacks do the same it’s such an enormous accomplishment that they deserve a pat on the head and some words of encouragement. When he “praises” Sylvia’s and their customers later, it’s tainted because it’s all done through the lens of “hey, you’re acting like white people! Finally, we can accept you!”

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way (and I only pulled out the most well-known two of the many pertinent parts), since all this went down Bill-O has claimed that he was speaking out against racism, and I can see how he means that. The point he was trying to make, as far as I can see it, was that, hey, you may think whatever else about blacks and black neighborhoods but you know what? They’re just like you and me. That’s what, I believe, he was trying to say.

A while ago I read something on our friend Bill Orally. Basically, the Bill-Head seems to honestly, truly believe that he is politically neutral. Anything and everything that comes out of his mouth is objective and free of bias, while anyone who disagrees with him is guilty of spinning and partisan hackery. Validity of statements and whatnot mean nothing, he seems to truly think his opinions are facts and bases all else upon this principle.

That has to be the case, because otherwise I’m not sure how to explain his reaction to gay pride being at a baseball game with a free hats for kids promotion.

It is almost unbelievable, but the San Diego Padres scheduled a promotion for gays on the same day the team gave away hats to kids. So thousands of gay adults showed up and commingled with straight families. Predictably, that caused some anger, some saying the promotions were inappropriately timed, and some parents echoing that.

Now “Talking Points” believes the San Diego Padres made a mistake. If you want to have a gay night, don’t put a children’s promotion along with it. That’s just common sense.

San Diego Padres might think they’re being inclusive and politically correct, but they’re really being insensitive and, well, dumb. While secular progressives will applaud the mixing of a gay promotion with a kids’ giveaway, clear-thinking people understand it is completely out of context and inappropriate. And in this case, two strikes and you’re out. And that’s the “Memo.”

The only way for this guy to say things like that is for him to truly believe that his massive anti-homosexual (oh, sorry, anti-gay) bias is common sense and completely reasonable.

Now, O’Reilly claims he has no problem with gays, but he means that in the sense of “whatever you do in the privacy of your bedroom and never ever talk about in public is okay as long as I never ever ever have to see it.” He is okay with homosexuality existing, but only in secret. That’s what his opinion above boils down to. Now, I don’t think exhibitionist behaviour is right to show to children no matter what, and I don’t think kids should see two gay guys spooning lewdly any more than they should see a straight couple doing the same.

However, “Hanlon’s Razor” believes that Bill-O is just a dunderhead who needs to lose his TV show and go live in a cave for the rest of his life. And that’s the Razor.

Sometimes I get really disappointed with other blogs around here, in that they never seem to pick up on any issues regarding religion. AMERICAblog adores the gay/lesbian stories, the others stick with generally political stories but dip into civil rights type issues when it’s anything but religion. So I was incredibly annoyed to find that while Crooks and Liars linked to Bill O’Reilly’s talking points, there was no video from his rather revealing interview with Richard Dawkins.

[youtube]g8etMHn4P6g[/youtube]

There are so many severely stupid things in this interview it’s difficult to list them all off. To start with, I’m actually impressed with how humble Bill is during all this, which I’m going to assume is not evidence of him becoming a better person (Geraldo, anyone?), but rather possible evidence that when paired up with someone irrefutably smarter than himself he turns much softer.

Note, for example, that he doesn’t actually say that Christ is the true Messiah or any of that. He actually goes so far as to say that it’s “true to me,” which I will readily admit is a far more progressive comment than I would ever expect out of O’Reilly. A tip of my hat to him in that regard, arguing for the personal nature of Christianity over its true historicity. Of course, this is also the guy who wrote that Jesus was primarily a philosopher and that’s why we should celebrate Christmas, so who knows.

The far more bothersome part of the interview came later when O’Reilly brought up Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. In “The God Delusion,” Dawkins spends a long time explaining first of all that Hitler wasn’t an atheist, but secondly that their atheism had nothing to do with what they did, and thirdly that they were killers on that magnitude not because they were more evil than anyone else but because of 20th century technology. He dismantles the argument handily, yet O’Reilly brings it up like he’s hit on gold.

Which brings me to my conclusion, and why O’Reilly annoys me. Like him or not, Jon Stewart actually reads his guests’ books. When he had Ramesh Ponnuru on, he actually read “The Party of Death” before interviewing him and brought up points from the book itself. O’Reilly obviously didn’t even read the preface to “The God Delusion” but attempted to hold a debate with Dawkins anyway, and proceeded to use talking points that are handily dismissed within the book’s pages.

It’s just a shame that other blogs avoid these stories. Also, sorry about having such a religious bend lately to any of my older readers who hopped in before the recent switch. When my schedule permits I’ll be back to the grind.