|
|
|
If, as Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit," Bill O'Reilly's book The O'Reilly Factor is very witty. It's a collection of soundbites, one-liners, anecdotes and first-hand experiences to illustrate and hammer home O'Reilly's strong opinions about practically everything. You won't agree with them all - you're not supposed to. But often enough, when you don't, your annoyance is mitigated by O'Reilly's twinkle and Irish grin. They shine through even in print. O'Reilly has spent 25 years in the media - television, radio and print; CBS, ABC, and now Fox - and is now the star of the Fox News Channel. His best-selling book is like his nightly television program: brash, in-your-face, always interesting and provocative. In the post-Watergate era, it seems that the chief motivation of establishment journalists is to bring down the high and mighty for the sheer sport of it. The late Meg Greenfield, grande dame of the Washington Post, once said, "I like nothing better than to deflate people." O'Reilly targets a lot of sacred cows (both human and material), but it's not for the savagery of humiliating them. It's to make them accountable, and that may be the secret of O'Reilly's meteoric rise in popularity. O'Reilly's disdain of those who play the role of victim comes through loud and clear. Were you born on the wrong side of the tracks, handicapped by class, race, disability, abuse, unfair treatment by parents, teachers or employers? Stop reveling in victimology. Stop whining. Drop your grudges. Put the past behind you and move on. You can't change past wrongs, but you'll do yourself a favor by erasing it from your memory. Looking for revenge just keeps you from enjoying life in the present. Several pages alone are worth the price of the book. In his chapter on The Ridiculous, O'Reilly gives the best short summation of the Clinton Administration we've seen anywhere. In six paragraphs, O'Reilly hits all the important points to describe how Bill Clinton, who was awarded the greatest honor in the world, then blew it. O'Reilly tells two historical anecdotes that elucidate how cable television has changed news coverage. First is his description of how the media concealed the fact that John F. Kennedy, while President, had an affair with Judith Campbell Exner, who was also the girl friend of Sam Giancana, the unchallenged boss of he Chicago Mafia. Giancana claimed that he had helped JFK win the 1960 election by stuffing ballot boxes in Illinois. But "the fix was in," O'Reilly says, and the controlled media of the 1960s didn't report this scandal. No President could get by with such a secret life today because of cable television. A second example is the way that none of the establishment media of the 1960s challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson's version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that became his excuse for involving us massively in the Vietnam War. LBJ used what we now know was a non-event to "prove" to the voters that he was really anti-Communist during the 1964 presidential campaign. The pro-LBJ media accepted his press releases at face value. O'Reilly doesn't fit into the mold of a conservative, liberal, or even a moderate. He doesn't pander to the public's prejudices. The theme of the book is Bill O'Reilly's belief that hard work, perseverance, and an upbeat attitude are the key to success and enjoying life in the here and now. His career has proved it. |
Among the assortment of sacred cows O'Reilly goes after are the use of big money to influence politics, Jesse Jackson, the public schools' failure to teach children (especially minorities) how to read, the failure of the "drug war," and parents who turn their kids over to the media.
