No Country for Old Men

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen is the personification of the pompous windbag cliché. He always has been. And has he's gotten old, it's only gotten worse.

There was once a time when puffed-up jackasses like him strode across the media landscape like kings of the jungle, and to be honest it's difficult to describe to anyone below a certain age just how tedious this era was in journalism. But changing times and cultural shifts have taken a toll on the Richard Cohens of the world and now all you really hear from them is the forlorn cries off in the distance as they face down inevitable extinction. Sure, guys like Cohen, and Friedman, and Brooks still have jobs, but they're not the exalted voices from on-high they once were. The smart ones don't complain about it; they simply keep on keeping on, perfectly content in their gargantuan sense of self-importance and their continued big paychecks.

But Cohen can't do that. He needs the adulation of the masses. He needs things to be the way they were in the good old days, before independent women and a cultural distaste for people who believe that all black men should immediately be viewed as suspicious made things so confusing. That was the time when people actually cared what kind of wisdom an Interesting Man like Richard Cohen had to impart to the world. It's almost enough to make you cry.

Except that it shouldn't. Not ever. Because it's important to keep in mind that Richard Cohen is an asshole. A monumental asshole.

Only a monumental asshole could write an entire column on how it's not racism but "reality" to profile young black men immediately following the acquittal of the guy who profiled and ultimately killed Trayvon Martin. Only a monumental asshole would actually try to argue that it makes perfect sense that Zimmerman automatically assumed Martin was a threat just by the color of his skin and the clothes he wore.

Only a monumental asshole can write something like this:

"Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? This does not mean that raw racism has disappeared, and some judgments are not the product of invidious stereotyping. It does mean, though, that the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news...

There’s no doubt in my mind that Zimmerman profiled Martin and, braced by a gun, set off in quest of heroism. The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason."

Richard Cohen is indeed a monumental asshole.

The Washington Post: "Racism vs. Reality" by Richard Cohen/7.16.13



In November of last year, I wrote a piece for Banter pegged off of something else shockingly ridiculous that Richard Cohen had written.

"The White Guy of a Certain Age's Lament" (Originally Published at the Daily Banter, 11.28.12)

I'm sure you probably already know this, but it's a really tough time to be a white guy of a certain age right now. Everything's just so upside-down and nothing's how it used to be, with white guys of a certain age lumbering across the face of the earth like mighty dinosaurs, perfectly, languorously content in their dominion over all creatures. There was the re-election of the weirdly named multi-cultural black man Barack Obama -- along with the denial of the whitest, most of-a-certain-age man alive, Mitt Romney -- and its heralding of the demographic shift that's wresting power from their hands and giving to welfare queens and leaf-blowers. At the same time, there was the backlash against the attempt by a popular and official collective of über-white men -- the GOP -- to restrict the reproductive freedom of women on the grounds that not having proper babies from white guys of a certain age constitutes indefensible promiscuity anyway.

But that's politics. The real battlefield for white guys of a certain age these days seems to be pop culture, which is telling them that they can't just "show up" and still be the subject of adoration, as they once were, while simultaneously reminding them at every turn that the various peoples of the globe have other interests besides their lengthy, fascinating tales of their own heroic exploits that involve the experience of just being white guys of a certain age.

Over the past 48-hours, we've been treated to two comically embarrassing screeds lamenting the changing face of American and world culture into one that devalues the traditional merits and interests of the white guy of a certain age. One is self-pitying and personally revelatory in ways I'm not sure the author fully intended; the other is bitter, pissy and amusingly detached from the times in a way that only a man who shouts at kids to get off his lawn can find civil.

The latter, of course, involves Bill O'Reilly, the recently self-knighted harbinger of doom for white-guys-of-a-certain-age culture and the official miserable, racist uncle to all of America. Last night, on his regular prime-time complaint box on Fox News, O'Reilly and hack shrink Keith Ablow attempted to dissect the immense popularity of Psy's Gangnam Style, which recently surpassed Baby, from the harmless and infinitely less confusing Justin Bieber, as YouTube's most-watched video ever and is on track to having over a billion hits. O'Reilly, as you might imagine, can't fathom the popularity of Gangnam Style, which he describes as "a little fat guy from Pyongyang or someplace... doing the pony."

His and Ablow's debate over the clip and desperate attempt to understand the viral phenomenon that's sprung from it -- which lasted more than five minutes -- truly has to be seen to be fully appreciated. Ablow decides to go all Kierkegaardian nihilism, saying that the song literally means and affirms nothing, which is why it's the perfect mirror for our current culture; he even argues that Psy is uttering gibberish instead of "intelligible words," which he believes confirms his theory. That the lyrics of the song are in Korean never even comes close to popping the provincial bubble Ablow, O'Reilly and Fox News's audience exist inside of; I guess they figure that if something is huge internationally it has to have come from America. Haven't those Asians heard how exceptional we are? Don't they watch The O'Reilly Factor? For his part, O'Reilly simply dismisses the whole thing as madness.

For the record, I couldn't care less about Psy or Gangnam Style -- like most internet fads, it's annoying as hell -- but I can appreciate that it was written by someone whose experience isn't mine and who was attempting to satirize a place I didn't even know existed and a lifestyle I've never seen for myself. K-Pop isn't my thing and neither is the often peculiar Asian appropriation of hip-hop, but I'd never argue that the song is about nothing just because I don't understand it. I'm also not an asshole to the nearly unsurpassable extent that O'Reilly and Ablow are.

But if you thought those two could turn a pop culture phenomenon into a full-on existential crisis, you haven't read Richard Cohen's recent and instantly legendary elegy to his fading place as an object of feminine desire. I wouldn't be surprised if Cohen really believed he was simply examining the changing face of masculinity during his write-up of the new James Bond movie in Monday's Washington Post, but let's be honest: He was lamenting the fact that he, 71-year-old Richard Cohen, can't score 20-something pussy anymore. In the column, Cohen mourns the death of what he calls the "sexual meritocracy" of years past, when guys like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart could nail women much younger than themselves by virtue of little more than their "experience and savoir-faire" and their ability to, preposterously, "send out a suit for swift hotel cleaning." He compares these qualities, ones you can easily imagine him ascribing to himself, to those Daniel Craig displays in Skyfall. The result is a piece of intellectual resentment almost impossible to truly describe without hearing the voice of Family Guy's "Buzz Killington" in your head.

"Nothing about him looks natural, relaxed -- a man in the prime of his life and enjoying it. Instead, I see a man chasing youth on a treadmill, performing sets and reps, a clean and press, a weighted knee raise, an incline pushup and, finally, something called an incline pec fly (don't ask) ... Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen or a conversation not held."

While I'm sure you can sympathize with the ways in which Daniel Craig is crushing Richard Cohen's self-esteem and taking all the women who would otherwise be gushing over his droll tales of hours spent painstakingly crafting didactic, faux-erudite columns for The Washington Post, it's ludicrous to make the assumption that because someone is physically fit, that person must be neglecting other parts of him or herself -- as if bettering your mind and body is a zero-sum game. It's basically Cohen bemoaning his loss of entitlement and being petty, jealous and essentially the real-life equivalent of William H. Macy's Quiz Kid Donnie character in Magnolia, sitting at the end of the bar pondering aloud why nobody wants to be with him anymore. On the plus side, he couldn't have written a column that's stronger catnip for the girls over at Jezebel if he'd tried.

Years ago, the late William F. Buckley wrote a series of novels about a character with the hilariously improbable name Blackford Oakes. Oakes is a rakish CIA agent and man of mystery who travels the globe foiling cold war-era plots and sleeping with beautiful women, despite having a pretty little liberal-arts lady back home in the land of the free who cares for him dearly but whom he must constantly condescend to lovingly and lecture about the true nature of the world. He's sexy, lethal, Ivy League-educated, and always a gentleman. In other words, he's exactly how a pompous bore like William F. Buckley imagined himself; he's Buckley's alter-egomaniac. Buckley's bombastically high opinion of himself didn't manifest in self-pitying public requiems, as Cohen's did -- it was turned into really crappy dime-store spy novels. Cohen should take up fiction. It would be less humiliating to him.

It's worth mentioning that both O'Reilly and Cohen have been accused in the past of inappropriate sexual conduct with women much younger than them. O'Reilly's target, infamously, was producer Andrea Mackris, whom he offered to "falafel" in the shower because she supposedly had "nice boobs"; Cohen's was a 23-year-old editorial aide named Devon Spurgeon (he also had an affair with Peter Jennings's wife back in the late 80s). See, there was a time when white guys of a certain age like them, as lords of the sexual meritocracy, could expect to exert their privilege and not only get away with it but have women fall willingly and effortlessly into their powerful, interesting arms. All they had to do was show up. They were the kings of all they surveyed and everything went their way and made complete sense to them at all times.

Those days, though, may be coming to an end.

We now live in a changing world, one where a pudgy Korean guy can be an American and global phenomenon and James Bond isn't just the coolest man in the world, he's also one of the hottest.

Yes, it's a tough time for white guys of a certain age. The good news is that they'll grow out of it. And besides, white guys still have it pretty great all the way around. Just ask anyone else.

Right Hook

Today's bonus Friday column for the Daily Banter examines Dennis Kucinich's new role as a Fox News contributor -- and Fox News's ongoing unwillingness to face somebody who actually has a chance of kicking its hosts' asses.

Here's an excerpt:

"So last night Dennis Kucinich made his debut as a Fox News contributor. The former Ohio congressman, perennial presidential candidate and liberal stalwart officially joined Fox earlier this week, but it was on yesterday’s O’Reilly Factor that he had his official coming out party. As you can imagine, Kucinich received a very cordial welcome from O’Reilly, who couldn’t resist taking the opportunity right off the bat to make the claim that Kucinich’s very presence on-air disproved Fox News’s critics, who insist that the network is nothing but a propaganda machine for the right. 'Wow, what a conversion!' O’Reilly said to Kucinich. 'Congressman, how did that happen? You know all the people on Fox News are far-right crazy people!'

Uh-huh. Because casting an ineffectual laughingstock like Kucinich as one of its maybe three token liberals, all of whom are ineffectual laughingstocks of one stripe or another, really proves that Fox News is committed to presenting a progressive viewpoint that’s as bold, slickly packaged and indomitable as the traditional conservative viewpoint that’s made it famous."

Read the Rest Here

The Gore-y Details

As expected, it didn't take long for Fox News to hone in on the apparent hypocrisy of Al Gore promising to build a completely independent journalistic outlet in Current TV -- one with liberal ideals to spare -- then selling out to the highest bidder. O'Reilly went on a tear last night against Gore, bringing up the above as well as the thoroughly predictable right-wing attack line that he sold Current to an "anti-American" network in Al Jazeera and, to top it all off, made sure the deal was closed in time to capitalize on 2012 tax rates.

Yesterday over at the Banter I ran down the details of the sale and dropped more than a few hints regarding my opinion of the whole thing. I think Gore did sell out and he deserves to be taken to task for that. He walks away from the deal with Al Jazeera with more than one hundred million dollars in his pocket while the network he worked to create from the ground up and professed an unyielding dedication to gets shuttered and its hard-working staff gets thrown out on their asses. The insanely wealthy country of Qatar, meanwhile, regardless of its politics or culture, buys itself a very big foothold in the American market, and everyone pretends that it's just business being business.

Al Jazeera makes a good news product and no one is saying it doesn't deserve a voice in the United States or that it's up until now been treated entirely fairly by U.S. distributors. But the way this deal went down comes off as a little unseemly. Of course no laws were broken, but there's a difference between illegal and simply not all that right. This falls into the latter category.

White Man's Burden

Today's column for the Daily Banter is all about the apparently fading mojo of white guys of a certain age. At the center of it: Bill O'Reilly and the Washington Post's Richard Cohen.

Here's the opening shot:

"I’m sure you probably already know this, but it’s a really tough time to be a white guy of a certain age right now. Everything’s just so upside-down and nothing’s how it used to be, with white guys of a certain age lumbering across the face of the earth like mighty dinosaurs, perfectly, languorously content in their dominion over all creatures. There was the re-election of the weirdly named multi-cultural black man Barack Obama — along with the denial of the whitest, most of-a-certain-age man alive, Mitt Romney — and its heralding of the demographic shift that’s wresting power from their hands and giving to welfare queens and leaf-blowers. At the same time, there was the backlash against the attempt by a popular and official collective of über-white men — the GOP — to restrict the reproductive freedom of women on the grounds that not having proper babies from white guys of a certain age constitutes indefensible promiscuity anyway.

But that’s politics. The real battlefield for white guys of a certain age these days seems to be pop culture, which is telling them that they can’t just 'show up' and still be the subject of adoration, as they once were, while simultaneously reminding them at every turn that the various peoples of the globe have other interests besides their lengthy, fascinating tales of their own heroic exploits that involve the experience of just being white guys of a certain age."

Read the Rest Here

Time's Up

Yes, I admit it: Once the race was called for Barack Obama last night, I immediately suggested to the people I was hanging out with that we switch the channel over to Fox News. I expected it to be interesting. I didn't expect it to be as interesting as it was. Watching the entire operation publicly deflate -- with Karl Rove refusing to accept reality and Megyn Kelly actually getting up and walking over to the "decision desk" to demand answers -- was honestly one of the damndest things I've witnessed in a very long time.

But Bill O'Reilly's bitter, crestfallen soliloquy on how America isn't really America anymore was the most memorable moment. Memorable because of how disconcertingly comfortable O'Reilly is with his own racism and xenophobia and also because he simultaneously acknowledged what some of us have been warning for a while -- namely that the Republican party in its current form simply can't survive and will soon be demographically pushed into extinction -- while making it clear that Fox News likely intends to now double down on the extremist rhetoric aimed at the dwindling resentful-old-white-guy crowd.

O'Reilly's sullen little rant is the statement of a man who's just had it finally made clear to him that he's not in charge anymore.

Racial Gray (Complete)

The Full Text of the Piece That Appeared Yesterday at the Daily Banter

I didn’t want this to turn into a public back-and-forth, but when I wrote a piece last week for this site on the double-standard when it comes to how news outlets cover crimes which are racially motivated or have the potential to be racially motivated, I knew I might be opening a Pandora’s Box. So with that in mind, and after my good friend and podcast partner Bob Cesca penned a response to my original column here a few days ago, I feel like I want to clarify and expand on my views a little.

First of all, I really do hate the fact that even though my motives are much different and I have to believe more noble than theirs, my opinion gets to be lumped in with the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg. I don’t like that it looks like I’m defending them when I’m simply defending a point they’ve made — again, regardless of why they made that point. It should also go without saying that I hope I’m not labeled some kind of racist — or a latent racist, unaware of my own racist feelings, a charge that’s almost impossible to defend against — by those who disagree with me on this. I want to make it clear that while O’Reilly and Goldberg seemed to suggest an equivalence between the incident in Virginia and the Trayvon Martin shooting, I did nothing of the sort; they’re completely different cases and they should have been treated differently by the press.

The issue, though, is larger than an unfair comparison between two separate and distinctive events.

I’m not saying that the media don’t report black-on-white crime. Of course they do. Jesus, in a lot of places — mostly local news markets — it’s almost all they do. The difference — the double-standard — occurs when it comes time to tag a crime as racially motivated or to acknowledge a racial component within a crime. When there’s a possibility of labeling a crime racially motivated, the burden of proof is much higher in a black-on-white crime than it is in one that’s white-on-black. I understand completely the history involved — which Bob outlined nicely — and how and why that can come into play, but I’m still not sure that makes it right from the standpoint of journalistic ethics. From what I’ve seen, it would take a person or a group literally shouting “I hate white people” while kicking somebody’s ass for many in the media to report that a black-on-white crime had racial overtones — and if it didn’t appear at first glance to have overt racial overtones they almost certainly wouldn’t go looking any deeper for them.

Again, I do understand the lengthy and incontrovertible history that deserves consideration, but a group of white people beating up on a black person is automatically very suspicious — as it damn well should be — while a group of black people beating up on someone of another race or ethnicity is deemed, what? Business as usual? Just the way things are? Doesn’t the refusal to even acknowledge the racial element in a story like that — particularly when the coverage would be far different were the roles reversed — speak to Goldberg’s claim that the media may be trying to play a paternal role in protecting a minority community from the bigots who’d automatically label them savages or criminals? If so, is it the media’s job to play that paternal role?

There’s no denying that a news organization can often be influenced, sometimes very quietly, by factors not related to the goal of practicing journalism. On my site I’ve written often about the subtle pressure exerted on news producers to be cognizant of any possible liberal bias within their work — a product of years of accusations and strong-arming by the right — and how that can often lead a news department to overcompensate. True objectivity goes out the window in an effort to ensure that conservative critics are appeased — in other words, in the pursuit of the appearance of objectivity. Likewise, there’s an interesting guideline in place in many newsrooms — occasionally unspoken but often discussed openly — that tips its cards to the incredibly delicate way the press handles the subject of race and minority crime. It works like this: If a crime has been committed and the only description you have of the suspect is, say, a black male, 5’11″, wearing a white t-shirt, you don’t air or publish the description. Why? Well, because obviously that would mean police are currently on the lookout for six thousand people; the description is worthless. But its vagueness and consequent lack of value isn’t really the reason the description wouldn’t be run; there have been quite a few times throughout my career where it’s been acknowledged in my presence, and admittedly even affirmed by me, that a non-specific description of an African-American suspect is unfair to the black community.

True, a sketch of a suspect that ambiguous would likely be left out of a story regardless of that suspect’s race or ethnicity, but special attention was always paid to those who were wanted by the police and who happened to be black, often in an effort to avoid inflaming racial tensions or giving fuel to bigots. Of course, again, there’s a history to be considered here, a history of black people being unfairly targeted as suspicious due to nothing more than the color of their skin — see, yes, Trayvon Martin — and maybe it does in fact show journalistic responsibility and an acquiescence to the realities of the world to take that into consideration when publishing or airing a news item. I think this is the argument Bob was making in his piece and he could very well be right. But from a perspective that I hope is as dispassionate as it can be, the question of fairness and paternalism again comes up: Is it the job of a journalistic organization to favor one group over another or to treat one group differently in their coverage — to show it special dispensation or handle it with kid gloves not applied when dealing with anyone else?

One final thing before we hopefully put what I think has been a healthy debate to rest: By talking about this issue I want to make it clear that I’m not at all personally outraged about the double-standard in black-vs.-white press coverage nor am I crying that I’m being racially persecuted, as O’Reilly and Goldberg most certainly were. I’m a white guy living in the United States of America — I’ve got it fucking great. I’m merely pointing out that the double-standard exists and that there’s a very strong argument to be made that it does actually defy the rules of a responsible and unbiased press. Am I hedging a little because of the sensitive nature of this subject — wearing those kid gloves, as it were? Sure am. Is it somewhat cowardly to allow any kind of potential pressure or backlash to influence what I say or the way I say it? Perhaps.

But that was sort of the point I was initially making. Or at the very least, the question I was asking.

When the Right Is Right (Complete)

The Full Piece That Ran Yesterday at the Daily Banter

Every once in a while I apparently like to see to it that my progressive street cred takes a huge hit and, well, I guess it’s that time again. The line to angrily show me the error of my ways forms to the left — just, please, not the face, eh?

In case you haven’t been watching Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox recently — and I can’t in good conscience suggest that you do — his latest indignant crusade involves the search for answers in the beating of a pair of Virginia newspaper reporters by an angry mob a few weeks back. The two reporters were white; the people who attacked them, throwing rocks at their car and eventually sending both of them to the hospital, were reportedly all black. What got O’Reilly’s dander up was the fact that the paper the victims work for — the Virginian-Pilot — ran the story not as a news item but as an opinion piece two weeks after the attack. It never bothered to report the initial story; it only chose to comment on it well after the fact and when it did, it stated only that the reporters were beaten by a mob, with no mention of what seemed to be a glaringly obvious racial component. O’Reilly even sent his little Renfield, intrepid professional asshole producer Jesse Watters, down to the Pilot’s offices to confront the paper’s management about what he sees as an intentional oversight and ran an interview with at least one man in the neighborhood where the attack happened who claimed that anger over the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida might have played a role in the beating.

To top it all off, a couple of nights ago O’Reilly brought on Bernard Goldberg — who by the way is probably the most impressive surrogate for Fox’s audience of embittered old white people from among its stable of regular guests — to discuss how liberal media bias contributed to the unwillingness to broach the subject of race in the story. From Mediaite, here’s what Goldberg had to say:

“Here is what it is really about. It goes beyond journalism, it’s a much bigger issue. It’s about white, usually white liberal paternalism where they say, ‘Well, we really can’t hold black people up to the same standards as we hold white people up to. That’s why we are not putting it in the paper. They are different.’ So two things happen after that. One, the newspaper, the media, they don’t want to air that kind of dirty laundry because it’s kind of embarrassing for the black community. And two, they don’t want to give ammunition to the bigots who probably would say, you see, that’s how they all behave. Now look, we hate, we detest the bigots. But a newspaper has a responsibility to cover legitimate news.”

O’Reilly himself then went on to bring up what he calls an undeniable double standard when it comes to the coverage of the Virginia attack: “You can’t tell me that MSNBC, if it were reversed, wouldn’t be every show, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, on and on and on,” he said.

Now make no mistake: Bill O’Reilly isn’t the least bit concerned with justice, fairness or, most assuredly, journalistic integrity — he’s just throwing red meat to his viewers to feed their white resentment, persecution complexes and the overall delusion that they’re the victims of “reverse racism.” Here’s the thing, though: He’s right about this. And so is Bernie Goldberg. Intentions be damned, almost across the board they’re both right.

Was flat-out racism really a factor in the decision by a large group of black people to attack the Virginian-Pilot’s two white reporters as they sat in their car at a red light? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else at the moment. But to not acknowledge at all the racial component of a story like this requires powers of self-deception — or at the very least the ability to twist yourself into a pretzel of rationalization — that border on superhuman. Again, no one should be claiming that race played a role in the attack, but it’s entirely fair to ask the question why so few in the media are willing to question whether it did — and to do it seemingly as part of a general rule about bringing up race when it’s a black-on-white crime. O’Reilly may be a pompous buffoon, but I dare anyone to challenge his assertion that were the races reversed in the case in Virginia — had it been a group of white people who attacked an African-American man and woman in their car — it would’ve been the lead on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show every night since the day it happened.

I want to stress one more time, because it’s that important: I have no idea whether race played a role in this recent attack and I won’t immediately jump to the conclusion that it did. But it’s a news outlet’s job to dispassionately report the facts, even if it’s to impress upon the public that not enough is known about a news item to make a judgment call. But the press generally doesn’t do that when it comes to issues of race and violence, not when the victim is white and the assailant is black. As Goldberg says, they’re holding the two groups to different standards when it comes to what they’re willing to say about them without unequivocal evidence. When a power-drunk white guy in Florida shoots an unarmed black teen, it’s asked whether the attack was racially motivated. And it should be. When an angry mob of young black men and women attack a couple of white reporters, trashing their car and sending them to the hospital, the possibility that the attack was racially motivated isn’t even discussed, out of fear of offending anyone or fueling an ugly stereotype. And, again, it should be.

Why? Because that’s a news outlet’s job.

When the Right Is Right

My new piece for the Daily Banter is up and it deals with Bill O'Reilly's latest bit of faux-indignant theater.

But my take on it doesn't necessarily go where you'd think it might.

Here's the opening shot:

"Every once in a while I apparently like to see to it that my progressive street cred takes a huge hit and, well, I guess it’s that time again. The line to angrily show me the error of my ways forms to the left — just, please, not the face, eh?

In case you haven’t been watching Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox recently — and I can’t in good conscience suggest that you do — his latest indignant crusade involves the search for answers in the beating of a pair of Virginia newspaper reporters by an angry mob a few weeks back. The two reporters were white; the people who attacked them, throwing rocks at their car and eventually sending both of them to the hospital, were reportedly all black."

Read the Rest Here

Most Ironic Quote in the History of History

"Unfortunately, most of the voters -- four and a half million watched this debate last night. That’s all. That’s all that watched it! I think this is one of the most uninformed electorates in the last hundred years."

-- Bill O'Reilly

That'll do, Bill. That'll do.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"No other media people fought the war. In fact, most of the liberal media attacked me -- your humble correspondent -- for actually standing up for Christmas."

-- Bill O'Reilly, officially ringing in the Christmas victimization season for the right

Usually it's well into December before I pull this holiday classic out of the archive, but like everything else involving Christmas, we're seeing things ramp up earlier and earlier each year. So, here you go -- a DXM holiday tradition -- my little take on the balls-out absurdity of the so-called War on Christmas.

"The Thin Red and Green Line" (Originally Published, 11.27.07)

The following e-mail correspondence was released to the public on December 16th, 2011 via the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (Amd. Public Law 104-231) and was collected at an undisclosed time via the U.S.A. Patriot Act (Public Law 107-56). It includes content which will remain classified by the United States government due to its sensitive nature regarding matters of national security until the following date: January 1st, 2050. Please be advised that despite FOIA provisions, the publication or broadcast of this communication may be subject to restriction or amendment as dictated by the Fox News "First Look" Act of 2009 (Public Law 134-793, Signed by President George W. Bush, 1-17-09).

Communication Intercept #XX,XXX,XXX (USAPA)
Transmitted on: December 10th, 2009
TC: 13:21:06
From: PFC Granville Sawyer, 57th Overlanders (Tactical Infantry)
To: Mrs. Myrna Sawyer, Seattle, WA

Dear Mom,

I didn't think it would be this cold in Kansas, but the truth is it feels an awful lot like home right about now, except for all the unfriendlies.

My platoon's dug in far behind enemy lines. We have been for quite awhile now, just how long I don't want to say -- long enough that I've seen some things that will haunt me forever.

I keep going back to the same questions, Mom: How did it get this far? How did we get into this mess? How did this bloodbath start?

The first time I heard somebody say that there was a "War on Christmas" I laughed. I figured it was just bunch of overblown garbage used to sell some idiot's books. I thought it was a scare tactic.

Then came all the court cases, the lawsuits against any businesses that used "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." The threats, the intimidation. Christians saying that they were being persecuted. Pushing their beliefs on so many until finally somebody decided to push back. I guess that's when I stopped laughing.

I can't even remember when war was officially declared.

We don't get much information out here and I'm worried that our transmissions are being monitored by electronic surveillance. XXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXXX What we hear are mostly rumors. Is it true they wiped out New York City? The last I heard, the National Guard was moving in to crush some kind of uprising that torched the Rockefeller Center tree and destroyed all the Christmas windows at Saks. If the rumor's true, man, all those people. It wouldn't surprise me if it is. After the 42nd Irregulars took out John Gibson live on the air back in March and Fox News decided to relocate from New York to Orlando, it was only a matter of time before the Christian militants finally got their hands on some loose nukes and leveled that city. They've been looking an excuse for years.

I don't know if communcation's been cut off from California, but our new captain says that after we captured Santa Cruz and Santa Monica and renamed them (although I understand the decision, I kinda think Odin Cruz and Odin Monica sound a little silly), the Army's 1st Air Cav launched an assault on San Francisco. He says they came in off the horizon in a fleet of low-flying gunships, blasting Burl Ives's Holly Jolly Christmas as they opened fire. Cap was there and says it was the most terrifying thing he'd ever experienced, the smell of flaming egg nog in the morning. Scared the hell out of the locals.

I hope you're safe, Mom. There's a big mission coming up for us, maybe I'll be able to tell you about it next time I write.

Love,

Gran

Communication Intercept #XX,XXX,XXX (USAPA)
Transmitted on: December 15th, 2009
TC: 9:17:54
From: PFC Granville Sawyer, 57th Overlanders (Tactical Infantry)
To: Mrs. Myrna Sawyer, Seattle, WA

Dear Mom,

Last night, the Marines' 105th Airborne Crusaders -- they're nicknamed O'Reilly's Raiders -- dropped on our position. It was a violent fight. We lost thirty men, including one of my best friends, a guy named Muhammed. Thing is, the Raiders don't just kill you. No Mom, they want to make damn sure you know that "Jesus is the reason for the season." After the battle, we found out that they'd taken a bunch of our guys, tied them up with strings of Christmas lights, then forced them to eat mistletoe and myrrh. It's a poisonous concoction. A terrible way to die from what I hear. Another reason to hate Christmas.

But I'm still not sure all of this is worth it. We hit them and then they hit back, then we hit back harder. I don't even know if the brutality of the Raiders is a response to our own Special Ops unit. They're known as the Season's Reapers. There's word going around that they've been kidnapping carolers and tacking their Santa hats to trees... with the heads still in them.

This morning we torched a Christmas tree farm near the Colorado border. The cloud of smoke from the inferno blotted out the sun. It was like hell on earth.

Give my love to Dad.

Love,

Gran

Communcation Intercept #XX,XXX,XXX (USAPA)
Transmitted on: December 19th, 2009
TC: 21:06:33
From: PFC Granville Sawyer, 57th Overlanders (Tactical Infantry)
To: Mrs. Myrna Sawyer, Seattle, WA

Dear Mom,

We're XXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX XX and I'm not sure what sort of weapon they've got, but it's XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXX. I've never seen anything like it. All of a sudden there was this bright flash of white and XXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX garland and pine needles raining down...

Communication Intercept #XX,XXX,XXX (USAPA)
Transmitted on: December 19th, 2009
TC: 05:45:21
From: PFC Granville Sawyer, 57th Overlanders (Tactical Infantry)
To: Mrs. Myrna Sawyer, Seattle, WA

Dear Mom,

Things are bad here. Word is the Christian militia's moving reinforcements into our position. They're conscripting the Kwanzaa Regiments into service by promising them freedom after the war -- that and Cadillac Escalades with 27-inch chrome rims. The only ones still standing with us now are the Jewish Brigades. They call themselves Zion's Lions. Strong fighters, but they make these fire bombs called Mazel Tov cocktails that use bottles of Manischewitz. Problem is that the stuff doesn't light very well.

It's now turned into a guerilla fight on both sides. Our best weapons right now are IEDs: Improvised Explosive Decorations. We plant them on the side of the road, and their guys just can't help but stop to take a look at them, since they love Christmas and all. We fill the ornaments with explosives and BOOM! ... that's the last Noel for them.

What's the word on the net from the front?

They say there've been some major victories for our side on the ground, but I'm hearing some rumors that really scare me.

Is it true we're putting dwarves into internment camps?

Love,

Gran

Communcation Intercept #XX,XXX,XXX (USAPA)
Transmitted on: December 24th, 2009
TC: 16:03:50
From: PFC Granville Sawyer, 57th Overlanders (Tactical Infantry)
To: Mrs. Myrna Sawyer, Seattle, WA

Dear Mom,

So this is it, the final offensive, the one that could finish this war once and for all. After the American Family Council -- those crackpots out in Mississippi -- firebombed the Supreme Court, we knew we needed to make a statement. We needed to do something big and public.

That's what will happen in a few hours.

It ends tonight.

Wish us luck.

Your loving son,

Gran

Communication Intercept #XX,XXX,XXX (USAPA)
Transmitted on: December 26th, 2009
TC: 11:20:04
From: PFC Granville Sawyer, 57th Overlanders (Tactical Infantry)
To: Mrs. Myrna Sawyer, Seattle, WA

Dear Mom,

How will history remember this war? How will it remember those who fought against Christian fundamentalist terrorism, or those who fought to preserve a beloved tradition? Who will judge all of us?

After the capture of NORAD two nights ago and the live feed that was beamed to every home in America, after the retaliatory annihilation of the entire coast of California, after the truce that finally followed -- after the bloodbath, what's left?

Now I can tell you, I was part of the team that seized NORAD. We took Cheyenne Mountain and as the facility was going live with its traditional "Tracking Santa" broadcast, we broke in on the air, gave the statement of purpose that I'm sure you saw, then locked on and ordered a complement of surface-to-air missiles to be fired on the designated target. A few minutes later, Santa was blown out of the sky. The people in northern Canada reported seeing a huge explosion in the sky, followed by a fireball plummeting to the ground. The team that confirmed the kill said that nothing was left but a few toys and a bright red nose. For the rest of the world, all they saw was the "Santa" radar blip disappearing on their TV screens.

Then we cut into TNT's "24 Hours of A Christmas Story" and replaced it with The Exorcist on a continuous loop.

The retaliatory nuclear launch that followed, from the militia-controlled Army bunker in DC, was devastating. Millions were killed in California.

That's when both sides realized it was time to end the nightmare.

Hopefully this armistice will mean that I'll be coming home to you, Mom.

Although I finally have access to a TV and while flipping through cable channels this morning I came across Fox News, and there was Bill O'Reilly...

...saying something about a War on Easter.

End of Correspondence

Bonfire of the Inanities

The above picture is exactly what you think it is: A bunch of copies of Bill O'Reilly's new book, predictably and ridiculously titled Pinheads and Patriots, being torched. What's interesting is exactly who the ones doing the torching are.

This is what was posted on the Tumblr account that put up the picture:

"Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington - Patriot; George Soros - Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap. Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander's orders."

Yes, apparently it was a group of U.S. soldiers behind this little bonfire.

Now of course because the soldier in question goes by the screen name "Everqueer," he'll be able to be handily dismissed by O'Reilly and the bitter septuagenarians who makes up 97% of his audience. (The other 3%, I'd imagine, are people who simply died in front of the television.) But there's still something startling and surreal about a) seeing the tables turned and a conservative demagogue's book being burned for a change, and b) knowing that it seemingly came at the hands of our traditionally inviolable troops.

Needless to say, the soldier behind this has already received more than a few complaints, which led him to post a follow-up message:

"The motivation behind the order to burn them was not political...as mentioned in the original post, we are in an extraordinarily remote location. We don't have a post office here, so sending them back wasn't an option. Extra space is scarce and alternatives that a few mentioned, like recycling, are nonexistent...I'm aware of the historical implications of book-burning. I won't say I didn't take pleasure in removing a few copies of this bigoted twerp's writings from circulation, but the reason for doing so was military necessity."

Like this guy, it's tough to cheer the burning of a book -- and yet I can't help but admit that while I'm stoic on the outside when it comes to this, somewhere deep inside myself I'm doing the Snoopy dance. If nothing else, I'd love for this to be a lesson to right-wing jerks everywhere who presumptuously believe that they and they alone have the right to co-opt our military -- that all our men and women in uniform share their narrow worldview.

Seriously, the person who thought it was a great idea to send a bunch of Bill O'Reilly books to Afghanistan -- that our troops over there at the far end of the world dodging bullets would just eat them up? That guy's an asshole.

The Ex Factor

Last Friday I mentioned how Gawker's John Cook was claiming that a recent, bizarre Fox News attack against the legendarily snarky NYC-centric website was in fact a preemptive strike. According to Cook, he was about to go public with an embarrassing item featuring one of Fox's hosts and the network was responding in advance by trying to trash Gawker's reputation in an attempt to discredit it.

Well, that story has now been published.

It involves Bill O'Reilly, his estranged wife, the guy who may be her new boyfriend, and the Nassau County Police Department.

It's pretty entertaining stuff -- although given what we know about O'Reilly's personality, not the least bit surprising.

Gawker: How Bill O'Reilly Tried To Get His Wife's Boyfriend Investigated by the Cops/8.30.11

Quote of the Day

"Dozens of guys I grew up with... were just like him. Overbearing, argumentative, Irish guys who think they know everything and can back up nothing. Those guys have always been a joke to me, which is why O'Reilly almost never has the capacity to outrage me, because he is just a joke to me most of the time."

-- Lawrence O'Donnell on Bill O'Reilly

I smell a donnybrook coming.

Picture of the Week

From the most recent episode of The Simpsons, with Groening and Co. continuing to lob big-ass cannonballs directly at the mothership.

Needless to say, Bill-O is not amused.

Quote of the Day

"I am a loon. I'm on the Canadian dollar bill. It's awful...but you, however, are also a race-baiting fuck."

-- Rachel Maddow, responding to Bill O'Reilly's comment that she's a loon, in the excellent cover story in this week's New York magazine.

If you ever thought that the cable news business had devolved into the playground of a bunch of narcissistic children, consider yourself proven correct.

Quote of the Day

"Here's what Fox has done, through their cyclonic perpetual emotional machine that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: They have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao."

-- Jon Stewart talking to Bill O'Reilly last night on Fox News

Sound and Fury

I know how everyone hates it when I use a news item -- especially a big and depressing news item -- to illustrate the validity of one of the opinions I'm regularly espousing around here. It's admittedly a pretty exploitative tack to take, but I never claimed to be above that sort of thing.

Which brings me, once again, to James Von Brunn and yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

There's a decent piece in Salon.com this morning, written by Joan Walsh, that asks the same question you've heard here and a lot of other places recently: Does crazed right-wing rhetoric bear any kind of responsibility for the rash of far-right extremist attacks that have left more than a half-dozen innocent people dead since the inauguration of Barack Obama? Walsh succinctly expresses the implications of the paranoid fantasy-world nonsense that the right-wing echo chamber has been amping up lately:

"There's clearly been an uptick in rhetoric suggesting that white men are having their rights abridged by the Obama administration, especially since his pick of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In a debate with (Pat) Buchanan a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men -- he didn't give me any examples of lynching -- and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence?"

That last question is, of course, one worth asking -- and I'm not going out on a limb of logic by saying that the answer is inarguably "yes." But the setup for Walsh's column wonders aloud whether right-wing media bullhorns like Fox News and talk radio, being ostensibly responsible broadcasters and taking into account the potential dangers of riling up the conspiracy-minded loonies, might finally ease back on the crazy talk in the wake of the violence. The answer to that question, of course, is "no." They won't change a goddamned thing because as far as they're concerned they're not responsible for any of this -- the murder of an abortion doctor, five cops and a security guard (so far) -- in any way. You can't make someone tone down their dangerous and incendiary rhetoric when they refuse to acknowledge that what they're saying is dangerous or incendiary. If anything, I'd be shocked if blowhards like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity and so on didn't respond to this latest attack by shouting even louder (if such a thing is possible), their increased volume a natural reaction to having been persecuted by their political enemies for something they obviously had nothing to do with.

The real question though is: if they won't cut this kind of malignant shit out, what can anybody do?

We've come to a truly unprecedented moment in the evolution of the American media. Throughout history, the writers and broadcasters who practiced journalism and offered commentary in this country were, for the most part, responsible adults who understood the awesome sway they held over the public's imagination. They adhered to a gentleman's agreement that was largely unspoken because it didn't have to be spoken: You don't just go on the air or off to press spouting completely ridiculous, inflammatory crap without the slightest concern for the facts or for the potential consequences of your claims. You weren't running Fisher-Price's "My First Television Network"; the airwaves and print outlets weren't your own personal goddamned sandbox where you were king and could say whatever you pleased. Yes, you had the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, but you knew full well that with that came responsibility -- and since you were a grown-up and not some asshole schoolyard bully obsessed with the sound of his own voice and drunk on his own power, you behaved accordingly.

Not anymore, though. The Limbaughs and Fox News Channels of the world don't behave responsibly. Very much the opposite, in fact. But what can be done about it? What do you do when someone stands there in front of you, like a bully does so well, a smug look on his face and his chin raised high, taunting you with the fact that there's nothing you can do to make him behave like an adult? The entire Republican platform these days seems to be based around the notion that you can't force somebody to do the right thing. So what can you do?

I honestly wish I had the answer, because if somebody doesn't come up with something quickly -- if average people don't stand up and tell these clowns to knock it off -- things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better.

It's one thing to have a dissenting, even controversial, opinion and to express it. But if you can't do it responsibly, you don't deserve the forum that allows you to shout it to the masses.

Bill Kill 2: The Reckoning

Does Olbermann have his own agenda -- one that deserves to be taken into consideration when listening to his opinions on Bill O'Reilly's role in the murder of Dr. George Tiller? Yes, as a matter of fact.

Regardless, are those opinions for the most part right? Absolutely.

Bill Kill

Here's a sucker bet: A hundred bucks says it takes Bill O'Reilly all of a minute or so into his show tonight to condemn the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

By now you probably know that yesterday during a church service in Kansas which he was attending with his wife, George Tiller, a controversial provider of late-term abortions, was shot dead. The man who police say killed him is, needless to say, a walking cliché: He's a 51-year-old fundamentalist Christian named Scott Roeder who hails from an unremarkable suburb of Kansas City and who boasts a supposedly vivid history of mental illness. In other words, he's exactly the kind of person you'd expect to walk into a church and gun down an abortion doctor in front of his wife and a crowd of stunned parishoners -- a guy who was such a human time bomb that he probably had C-4 hardwired into his fucking DNA.

Roeder's now in police custody, and one would hope they're going to throw the proverbial book at him -- or possibly use it to hit him repeatedly in the head until his brains are coming out of his ears. He killed a man in what was unequivocally an act of political and religious terrorism, and as such he deserves to suffer the full brunt of whatever harsh punishment our legal system decides to dole out to him.

But while Scott Roeder shouldn't be allowed to escape the blame for an act that, at face value, was committed solely by him -- the reality is that there's plenty of fault to go around on this.

Sure, Roeder pulled the trigger, but there were a hell of a lot of people standing behind him, indirectly encouraging him to do it.

People like Bill O'Reilly.

For years now, Dr. George Tiller has been one of O'Reilly's favorite cultural boogeymen -- providing a regular target for the talking head's pompous, self-righteous venom. O'Reilly glibly called him "Tiller the Baby Killer"; he painted him (wrongly) as a Mengele-like monster, gleefully murdering babies right up to the moment of their births, all for a few grand a pop; he accused Tiller of having blood on his hands and warned that a "judgment day" was likely coming. Bill O'Reilly, and the unscrupulous, unethical assholes like him, laid the groundwork and set the wheels in motion that led to yesterday's almost inevitable violent conclusion.

But tonight, make no mistake, O'Reilly's going to put on his best reputable journalist and decent human being face and aloofly insist that he had nothing to do with Tiller's murder. That he never once advocated the shooting of someone he claimed over and over again was a one-man-holocaust -- a guy who went around killing kids with impunity thanks to the protection of a justice system corrupted by elitist liberal pussies. O'Reilly's going to deflect blame away from himself -- to wash his hands of the whole ugly tragedy.

He shouldn't be allowed to, though. Not for a second.

For years, groups like Operation Rescue have been permitted to terrorize abortion providers and, worse, their patients. They've never fully been taken to task for inciting and justifying criminal behavior through hateful rhetoric -- for creating wrath-of-God nightmares like Eric Rudolph and Paul Hill. They've been allowed to get away with being complicit in violence against people who, like it or not, are innocent citizens in the eyes of the law. It's always been sickening that the motto of some within the "pro-life" movement seems to be, "Life begins at conception -- and ends in cold blood at the moment of our choosing." But it's even more sickening that this kind of barbarism, while decried by most of the civilized world, is still held up as a merely extreme opinion within a legitimate political debate.

Operation Rescue and the religious right in general have helped to foment the special brand of righteous outrage that would make the most whack-job among their ranks kill or wound in the name of God -- but they've always needed media coverage to push their agenda.

O'Reilly actually is the media. He has a forum that reaches millions of people, including an undeniably substantial number of highly-strung white guys nursing persecution fantasies. They're people just looking for a way to physically fight back against the encroaching secular liberal darkness that they've been warned about (by none other than O'Reilly himself), and all it takes is a little push from the face on the TV to motivate them to action. I've said this before, but it bears repeating over and over again: If you know that even a small part of your audience is susceptible to suggestions of violence -- that it can be easily moved to take the law into its own hands at the behest of the right kind of rhetoric -- then engaging in that kind of rhetoric without considering the potential consequences is like shouting fire in a crowded theater. It's the textbook definition of incitement. Likewise, to deny that there can be an equal and opposite reaction to your actions is intellectually dishonest -- which is a fancy way of saying that you're entirely full of shit if you try to pretend that you can spend years accusing someone of being a murderer among us, then blithely evade accountability when some psychopath takes what he feels is the logical step to correct this injustice.

Put yet another way: I think Bill O'Reilly's not just an arrogant windbag -- I think he and his rotten ilk are fast becoming an outright danger, that they're putting lives in jeopardy.

So does that mean someone should kill him?

Don't answer that.

Related:

DXM: Revolutionary Goad/4.7.09

The Huffington Post: "How I (and Other 'Pro-Life' Leaders) Contributed to Dr. Tiller's Murder/6.1.09

Bill O' the Belt

For obvious reasons, I don't pay much attention to anything Bill O'Reilly says.

He's little more than a puffy buffoon doing a nightly Vaudeville routine and I've always sort of felt that to rage against his silly shtick would be to give his opinions validation they don't deserve. O'Reilly's a comedian, nothing more -- and his bombastic sense of self-importance just makes him all that much funnier and renders his views that much more inconsequential.

Admittedly, though, over the past couple of months an interesting thing has happened: Bill O'Reilly has become something of a kitschy comfort. The far-right, which once hijacked run-of-the-mill conservatism, has itself been hijacked by farther-right splinter cells pushing anti-Obama-themed lunacy so outrageous and unhinged that, by comparison, O'Reilly looks like the voice of reason -- a harmless relic of a bygone era when all it took to get a spiteful mention in Media Matters was a little fact-twisting and interview intimidation. I mean, think about it: Compared to the laugh-out-loud ridiculousness of the "Tea Bag Revolution" and "Going Galt," Rush Limbaugh's hostile takeover of the GOP, and Glenn Beck's Hyde Park-style paranoid ravings about the impending collapse of civilization, O'Reilly seems positively timid -- like William F. Buckley hopped up on Red Bull.

Bill O'Reilly was never very dangerous to begin with; now he's seen himself outnumbered and thoroughly outgunned a host of Crazy Come Latlies willing to go the extra mile and tread delusional ground even he wouldn't dare set foot on. It's getting really fucking insane out there and, quite frankly, O'Reilly just isn't detached enough from reality to keep up.

But like any burlesquian hack worth his salt, O'Reilly still has the ability to entertain on occasion.

Take last Friday night, when, during the always amusing "Talking Points" segment of his show on Fox News Channel, O'Reilly warned of a "vast left-wing conspiracy" of "organized zealots" participating in a "daily morning conference call" designed to coordinate their pinko communist message and, more nefariously, dole out punishment to any media outlet not expressing full support for President Obama's plan to subvert our freedoms and turn America into an Islamo-socialist amusement park called "Jihadland." This little exhort -- delivered, as usual, with just enough false modesty and contrived acquiescence to be able to claim a lack of bias -- was pretty good stuff on its own (regardless of the fact that it had been cribbed wholesale from the Politico's resident silver spoon-fed douchebag, Ben Smith, who broke the "conference call cabal" story three days earlier). But then O'Reilly turned his ire on the actual individuals supposedly behind the call -- and that's when things really got interesting.

See, one of the occasional hosts of the morning conference call O'Reilly was talking about -- the 8:45AM teleconference of largely Democratic labor, health care, and environmental lobbies -- is none other than my good friend Jacki Schechner. Or as O'Reilly put it, in the kind of repulsed tone usually reserved for phrases like "Nazi sympathizer" or "registered sex offender": "Former CNN reporter Jacki Schechner." He repeated this ostensible epithet twice -- "Once again, a former CNN reporter" -- just to make sure the point was sufficiently hammered home that Fox's competition was and is a corrupt hive of gutless liberalism.


The icing on the cake, though -- really, the admittedly ballsy pièce de résistance of low blow pseudo-journalism -- was the picture of Jacki that O'Reilly's producers had chosen for the segment. Let this be a warning to anyone even tangentially involved in partisan politics these days: Your Facebook photos can be used by your enemies as a weapon against you. In Jacki's case, The O'Reilly Factor nabbed a picture off the internet of her at her birthday a couple of months back -- wearing a big hat covered in pink fur. So what you essentially had was a stern and serious Bill O'Reilly talking about some left-wing elitist who spends her days mounting attacks on freedom of speech from a K-street office, while onscreen was a photo of that very woman, looking like the grand marshal of a gay pride parade. As underhanded agit-prop, the kind of thing Fox just excels at, it was tough to beat.

I've since talked to Jacki -- who incidentally works for an obviously commie front organization called "Health Care for America Now" -- and she needless to say is shocked to have drawn the wrath of O'Reilly. Her response to the use of the pimped-out photo is mostly casual defiance. "Screw it -- it's a good picture," she laughs. But what she's not laughing at is the hate e-mail, Facebook messages, and phone calls she's been deluged with since the segment ran two days ago; all from O'Reilly's little myrmidons; all telling her in no uncertain terms that she should move to Cuba if she feels that health care is something everybody is entitled to.

The reason Jacki Schechner was specifically targeted by O'Reilly shouldn't confound anyone; it has everything to do with her former affiliation with CNN. There's a gargantuan amount of irony in the fact that someone who was fucked so royally by the network can now be impugned for ever having worked there in the first place. You'd think it would be harder for Fox to paint Jacki as being representative of some kind of liberal agenda at CNN considering that CNN let her go. But then again, this is Fox we're talking about. Logic and reason don't seem to be very big buzzwords with those folks.

If this is merely the first shot in a protracted battle between O'Reilly and "former CNN reporter Jacki Schechner," then Jacki will probably be called on to issue some kind of official statement about the whole stupid mess. For the record, I've already offered her a suggestion.

"O'Reilly, that's the sexual harassment guy from YouTube, right?"

I mean, you don't really think Bill O'Reilly deserves to be taken seriously, do you?