Once you’ve paid your $26.00 for this book, you’ll
notice that its title isn’t Culture War, but Culture Warrior,
and the author’s name is actually in a larger typeface than the title.
O’Reilly’s book is less about this “vicious” struggle than his own
heroic, “life-defining” contribution to its inevitably victorious outcome.
Bill’s appraisal of his role is made clear on page 1,
where he states the battle is “exhausting and dangerous.” On the back-cover
blurb, no less an authority than gossip columnist Liz Smith compares him to
General George S. Patten for his “aura of command.” Despite his total absence
of martial experience, O’Reilly sees himself in the mantle of military sage
Sun Tzu. According to Mr. O., making millions exposing such threatening foes
as Susan Sarandon and Maureen Dowd is a pastime “fraught with danger.”
Coupled with the hyperbole surrounding Bill’s
T-warrior status is just a pinch of shameless hypocrisy. He promises this
won’t be a “hit book,” like those written by “media vermin” Al
Franken, yet he devotes much of it to name-calling and exaggerated
mischaracterizations of anyone to his left.
A case in point is his assessment of “far-left
ideologue” George Clooney. Bill describes the actor’s publicist as
“oily,” and Clooney as suffering from “unchecked narcissism.” Anyone
who’s seen Clooney interviewed knows he’s humble and self-effacing, with a
self-deprecating sense of humor. He’s about as far from narcissistic as
O’Reilly is from self-effacing. Yet Bill finds it necessary to describe a
meeting in which the 5'10" Clooney “had to look up to all
6'4" of me.” Any insecurities there?
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Page 152 of Culture Warrior features a
rather unpleasant photo of Mr. Clooney. It must have been hard to find
such an unattractive picture of one of Hollywood’s best-looking
leading men. Ironically, about 60 pages earlier, Mr. O had complained that
the cover of one of Franken’s books made O’Reilly “look
hideous.” Any narcissism there?
On that same page, Bill introduces Franken as a “smear
merchant,” then lists his career failures, ignoring his Emmy-winning
successes and characterizing his best-selling books as “immature
vitriol” and “character assassination.” Then he expresses outrage
that Franken considers “sophomoric” attacks on Bill’s fellow
right-wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh to be “satire.” |
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At the same time, Mr. O ridicules San Francisco
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi for labeling as “not acceptable” his own comment
that, if al-Qaeda wants to “blow up [San Francisco’s] Coit Tower, go
ahead.” O’Reilly calls this “standard talk-radio stuff” and something
“no rational person” could take seriously, and concludes the S-P legislator
lives in a “virtual land of Oz.” Then he mentions that he’d “throw water on
you and take your shoes.” So, calling the Speaker of the House a witch
isn’t name-calling? Maybe it’s satire?
The most hypocritical aspect of Culture
Warrior is O’Reilly’s oft-repeated claim that he’s
“crusading” against “today’s vast armies of far-left and far-right
zealots,” despite having spent almost the entire book bashing liberals. He
devotes a dozen or so words to criticizing right-wing talk-radio host Michael
Savage, then writes numerous pages savaging such “left-leaning” journalists
as Tom Brokaw, Bill Moyers and Paul Krugman.
He spends page after page attacking Michael Moore as an
S-P “bomb-thrower,” yet mentions right-wing zealot Ann Coulter ― who
calls liberals “traitors” who “hate America,” want to “kill
babies” and “hate religion” ― just once. He claims to have
“scolded” her for saying that anti-war 9/11 widows enjoy their husbands’
deaths, but I saw that interview, and it was the gentlest scolding I’ve ever seen. (The
repulsive T-warrior attorney is a frequent guest on O’Reilly’s nightly T.V.
show, The
Factor, where he treats her like a respected scholar.)
Bill takes the same unbalanced approach to the moneymen
who fund the opposing S-P and T-warrior camps. He spends a couple paragraphs
on right-wing billionaires, such as Richard Mellon Scaife and the Coors family,
as well as their libel campaigns, such as the Arkansas Project that smeared
Bill Clinton and the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry. Then he makes the
bizarre claim that right-wing money actually damages the T-warrior cause
― an assertion he doesn’t bother to explain or elaborate on and one
that’s likely to surprise its
victims.
In contrast, Mr. Bill spends nearly an entire chapter on
S-P billionaire George Soros. He labels Soros anti-American for such
statements as, “The war on terror as we have waged it since 9/11 has done
more harm than good.” Wasn’t this more or less what the National
Intelligence Estimate reported? He also warns that Soros is — God help us!
— an atheist, and rants about his alliance with Peter Lewis, chairman of the
Progressive Insurance Co., a cabal aimed at promoting a “radical domestic
agenda” through “far-left” smear and slander Web site MoveOn.org. (I’ve
attended MoveOn post-election celebrations, and those middle-aged, middle-class suburbanites are
about as sinister as a Tupperware party.)
Like the “elite media types” of the supposedly S-P
ABC television network (who once ran Bill Maher off the air for making the legitimate
and completely accurate observation that the 9/11 suicide terrorists
weren’t cowards), Mr. O has a problem with inconvenient truths. He cites
Soros’ completely accurate statement that 9/11 was “an audacious idea …
that could not have been more successful” as proof Soros isn’t pulling for
the U.S.
Believing that those who criticize Bush policies hate
America (he’s no fan of the Dixie Chicks), Bill concludes that Soros is a
“ruthless ideologue,” with “no scruples, ethics or sense of fair
play,” before comparing him to Colonel Banastre “Butcher” Tarleton, the
“most justly hated Redcoat during the Revolutionary War.” No name calling
there, I guess.
Glossary
To properly
understand the parameters of the O’Reilly Culture War, a few
definitions might be helpful:
Ailes,
Roger: GOP political consultant; now,
the fair-and-balanced president of the Fox News Channel.
Dissent:
Hatred of one’s country and all
things decent (synonym: blaming America first).
Extreme
Left: Anyone more liberal than
O’Reilly.
Extreme
Right: A mythical construct; there is
no such thing as the extreme right.
Falafel:
See loofah.
Happy
Holidays: A now-discredited seasonal
greeting once used by secular-progressives to offend God and his true
believers.
Hume,
Britt: One-time right-wing journalist;
now, a fair-and-balanced newsman on the Fox News Channel.
Loofah:
Dishcloth gourd (see falafel).
MoveOn.org:
Fanatical, smear Web site opposed to the policies of George W. Bush (see
dissent).
Murdock,
Rupert: One-time Republican publisher,
now founder of the fair-and-balanced Fox News Channel.
Separation
of Church and State: Atheism (antonym:
theocracy).
Smear
Merchant: Anyone with anything
negative to say about any conservative politician, apologist or policy.
Snow,
Tony: One-time conservative
broadcaster; one-time fair-and-balanced newsman on the Fox News Channel;
now, fair-and-balanced White House Press Secretary for G.W. Bush.
S-P:
Advocate of opposition to the Iraq War, separation of church and state,
debauchery, free speech, privacy, women’s rights, witchcraft, dissent, high taxes,
sodomy, socialism, Marxism and infanticide.
T-Warrior:
Supporter of the Bush and Cheney families; school prayer; Christianity (the real
kind);
deficit spending; the beatification of Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, any war started by a
Republican; truth, justice and the American way; lower taxes for the
wealthy; Ann Coulter.
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However, most of Mr. O’s smearing involves his continuous
misrepresentations of liberal values. Chapter 1, for example, is a mock State of the
Union Address, delivered by a future, fictional left-wing president. Designed to
frighten the masses of O’Reilly’s sheep with his warped exaggerations of a
fictitious S-P agenda, it paints separation of church and state, dissent, civil
rights for gay Americans, fiscal responsibility and libertarianism as un-American values.
However, every now and then, he does betray his biases, such as when he places
the sentiment, “You are free to trust in God but not to insist that your
fellow citizens share that trust” into the mouth of radical S-P
president Gloria Hernandez.
So, should T-warriors insist on compelling
Americans to trust in God? O’Reilly insists he has “no interest in forcing
religion on retailers, Christian prayer in public schools or any other
kind of ‘theocratic’ display.” This probably comes as a surprise to
anyone familiar with his crusade against the S-Ps’ alleged “war on
Christmas.”
Put the Hubble Space Telescope in Boston and point it
at a dime balanced on the point of the Washington Monument, and you can
read that coin’s date. Put the Hubble Space Telescope in my neighbor’s front
yard and point it at me, and you still wouldn’t be able to see how little I care about
this issue. And, despite O’Reilly’s nonstop flogging of the subject,
I suspect most of my neighbors couldn’t care less whether the clerks at
Wal-Mart wish them “Happy Holidays,” “Merry Christmas” or
“Joyous Guy Fawkes Day.” It’s
just some red meat thrown at bored T-warriors who don’t know what to do with
themselves after they’ve finished watching radio comic Rush Limbaugh perform satiric
impersonations of Michael J. Fox and other Parkinson’s victims.
If you haven’t overdosed on the incessant Christian
iconography of the Christmas season, which now lasts from Halloween until
after New Year’s, you’ll probably enjoy the Christmas section of Culture
Warrior. And if you found this book under your Christmas tree (or holiday
tree, if you prefer), as I did, you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I
did. |
