In case, oh British readers, you don’t know who Bill O’Reilly is, he’s the most watched news anchor in the US. The O’Reilly Factor, which airs on Fox News – yes, you can watch it if you have Sky – lets O’Reilly interview and generally abuse people who don’t share his right-of-centre vantage point. He does it well, but he does get a little carried away some times – calling anyone who disagrees with his views in favour of the Iraq war, for instance, “a traitor to the country”. He is the man US lefties love to hate. Or just hate.
As well as videos on the Fox web site itself, there’s a great “Brief History of Bill” over on the New Yorker to help you get up to speed with Bill. Most interesting of all, it includes some excerpts from a novel he wrote. I thought I knew enough about and had been amused enough by O’Reilly that nothing could faze me, but if that’s an insight into his mind, there are some worrying, worrying things going on.
Consider this, the means of execution chosen by the anti-hero journalist (an obvious alter ego of O’Reilly) for the man who stole his Falklands War story (something that also happened to O’Reilly):
The assailant’s right hand, now holding the oval base of the spoon, rocketed upward, jamming the stainless stem through the roof of Ron Costello’s mouth. The soft tissue gave way quickly and the steel penetrated the correspondent’s brain stem. Ron Costello was clinically dead in four seconds.
Let’s back away from Bill slowly.
