Bill O’Reilly’s megalomania reached new heights (or lows, depending on your perspective) last night as he announced – in all seriousness – that his program is “now mandated to keep American lunacy in check.” O’Reilly rattled off his accomplishments in that regard: freeing an American prisoner in Mexico, getting a Florida professor suspended for engaging in an intercultural exercise O’Reilly didn’t like and saving Easter in an Alabama school.
In his Talking Points commentary called, “Keeping Lunacy in Check,” O’Reilly said proudly:
It seems like this program is now in charge of stopping the madness. You remember in December, we had to threaten the Mexican government in order to get Marine Corporal Jon Hammar out of prison down there. He was thrown in jail for absolutely no reason. After we exposed the abuse, the Mexican president finally relented and the corporal was released. That was a very serious situation and we were happy that we could help. But there have been dozens of other things not quite at that level.
O’Reilly went on to cite an incident at Florida Atlantic University in which a student was punished for refusing to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” on it. “After we reported the story, the professor was suspended, the student reinstated by the university.” What O’Reilly failed to mention was that the “stomping” was an exercise in an Intercultural Communications class designed to make students hesitate and lead to a discussion about the importance of symbols in culture. O’Reilly also forgot to mention that he was not the only Fox Newsie to cover this story.
But then, O’Reilly got to what was surely his crowning achievement: saving Easter. He played a clip of a school principal in Alabama saying that they don’t say “the Easter bunny” in order to respect everybody’s differences. With a mean-spirited smirk, O’Reilly boasted, “Now after we brought you that, two days later, the Easter bunny was magically back on campus.”
I can assure you that while O’Reilly puffs out his chest now about having saved Easter, the enemies of the Easter Bunny will have resurfaced next year and need to be vanquished all over again. O’Reilly will get extra bunny points if he can find a public school to paint as the bunny villain.
O’Reilly continued,
So you get the picture. When strange occurrences break out, no longer do you call the Ghostbusters, you call The Factor.”
Now that puts some pressure on me and my producers because we can’t right every wrong and we have to be very careful about the story we take up. …But it is true that the Factor is now mandated to keep American lunacy in check.
No wonder the ratings are plunging.
NOTE TO BILLY
Tell the masses how you treat your own family, you crazy loon.
The Jon Hammar case was discussed at length here and elsewhere. Hammar broke Mexican law by trying to bring his shotgun into their country. His family says he tried to clear this with US Border agents, but the Mexican government correctly responded that the no guns policy is clearly stated for anyone going there. Hammar knew this and thought he could get away with bringing a firearm into a foreign country. Since he broke Mexican law, he was then imprisoned by the Mexican officials while his case took an agonizing amount of time to go through the normal channels. During that time, it’s clear that the Mexican officials took pains to separate him from other inmates and not endanger his life. The point of the exercise is that he broke the law and there was a penalty. After this had been going on for some time, Hammar’s family reached out to government officials, GOP legislators and pundits, trying to build up the same uninformed groundswell that happened around the Ramos and Compean mess 7 years ago. In the end, Hammar was finally released by Mexico just before Christmas, once his case had been processed. It was not due to Bill O’Reilly or any other pundit, and it’s shameful of him to be trying to take credit for it.
The two school situations are each unique. The first one is an obvious attempt at fanning outrage over a classroom exercise. The second one is just flat out ridiculous. Both demonstrate why it’s never a good idea to let a pundit into your classroom – inevitably they get trounced by the five year olds.
Sorry — but I seriously doubt the ability of someone who reacts like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy-Y3HJNU_s
to keep all of America sane.
And BillO: the only “mandate” you have these days is the man dates you’ll be going on now that your divorce is final . . .
.
And what was it he said the other day – something about how the so-called liberal media fear him and Limbaugh?! Bwaaah! Nah, no fear, litttle man, as we’re usually laughing too hard to be fearful of you and your antics. Besides, it really looks more like you’re the one who is fearful. Liberals counter your bullsh!t with facts and you pathetically resort with your patented “I’ve been taken out of context” whine. Now THAT’S a guy who is afraid of dealing with the truth and his critics in an honest manner. Repeatedly hiding behind the bogus claim of “being taken out of context” is the refuge of a coward and a fool.
And here’s a little nugget of info that was revealed by Chafets (who wrote the rather fawning Ailes biography)…
“Within Fox News, reports Chafets, there’s “widespread criticism of [O’Reilly’s] relentless promotion of his bestselling books and public appearances.” LOL!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/03/29/hannity-interviews-an-author-of-killing-jesus/
He doesn’t seem to realize that his maudlin bullshit about "Baby Jesus and the Easter Bunny "is of no concern to anyone other then himself.I wonder sometimes what his cronies really think of him when he goes of on these absurd rants,do they just placate him to keep him half way calm,or are they taking bets on when his head is finally going to explode.
“POS borally has been mandated by the voices coming out of his electrical outlets.”
Hmmmmmmm, that explains his recently disclosed VERY BITTER divorce, because obviously his ex-wife found his perennially obnoxious behavior to be positively “shocking” — and you can bet she certainly didn’t get a “charge” out of it!
:^)
