It’s way past time that someone published such a punishing and honest appraisal/takedown.
In Rolling Stone, Jeb Lund wrote a must-read piece called "Go Ahead and Call Bill O'Reilly What He Is: A Pathological Liar":
"O'Reilly isn't a newsman, he's a blue-eyed cirrhotic cyst erupting acid onto the brass rail at the Now I'll Tell You What the REAL Problem Is Pub. He's the guy who sits next to you and brags about how he'd kick the hell out of any thugs daring to bring violence into his neighborhood, stumbles off his barstool, goes outside, reflexively crosses the street to avoid two black kids on the sidewalk two blocks up, then drives home drunk. He's the guy who picks a fight with you if you correct him, then refuses to throw down because he 'was Gold Gloves in college and doesn't want to end you, man,' then backs away toward his driveway while trying to make eye contact with anyone he thinks is a friend and saying, ' feel sorry for him! I have a pool in my backyard...
Bill O'Reilly is all ad hominem because he has nothing else. In an atmosphere devoid of facts, a legend will have to do, and those who challenge it must be shouted down, threatened or "sanctioned" to intimidate anyone else who might threaten to puncture him next. '
Because that's the other school of thought about Bill O'Reilly, and something that explains why he leapt on Brian Williams with a predatory recognition of common weakness. O'Reilly long ago turned up the volume on his Real American Thug schtick to drown out the fact that almost everything he has to say is either a lie, bullying or a deracinated piece of non-data."
Of all the bloviating minions gainfully employed by Right Wing oligarchs for the sole purpose of sowing fear, hate, confusion, doubt and bigotry into gullible lemmings in order to deflect away from the real cause of their problems, this Fox News scumbag faux reporter is one of the very worst.
Just as Sen. Joe McCarthy’s fascist Red Scare congressional committee had to have its sheet pulled away to reveal a sociopathic madman, the same for O’Reilly and the rest of these serial liar/fear-mongering “Real American” bigots. Limbaugh, Savage, Beck, Hannity, etc all get paid handsomely by their 1% masters expressly to keep us divided and conquered, inciting xenophobic reactionary behavior toward “these people” (i.e. gays, liberals, academics, anti-war protesters, social movements, Hollywood, immigrants, the unemployed, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, etc) who want to take “our” country away.
David Letterman had the temerity to speak for the vast majority of the country when he told this blustery buffoon to his face, “I think you’re a goon”:
People, we need to start taking a page from this type of approach. If we want to have a society that works for everyone we each also need to take the personal responsibility of calling out and blasting all of these fuckers in a similar fashion whenever possible.
Here's some of author's best molten eviscerations of this chronic liar and his poisonous modus operandi, worthy of the best of Mencken, Taibbi and Thompson takedowns:
"...constant churning of preposterous shit runs through O'Reilly's career like discarded picnic food through geese, a steaming heap of compensatory fantasy meeting defensive wish fulfillment."
"He turned a comfortable childhood in the post-war suburban planned community of Levittown (with regular Florida vacations) into an Oliver Twist-tinged struggle, to complete the Horatio Alger arc corporealizing him as the American dream: "You don't come from any lower than I came from on an economic scale." Those who would dare wake him from it are met with violence. 'I am coming after you with everything I have,' he told the New York Times' Emily Steel. 'You can take it as a threat.'
The dream subsumes the rest of the world. Fact has been so incorporated into the fictive in O'Reilly's mind that he genuinely seems incapable of distinguishing between the two."
"By this point, O'Reilly has trained his audience to consider digesting independent news an act of race treason on par with slaveowners letting negroes learn to read.
O'Reilly needs his opponents to quail at the endurance needed for challenge. He needs them to feel too sheepish about drawing attention to themselves (and risk being flagged by endowed right-wing media watchdogs for "bias") and to want to slink away before conspiracy can be applied to mere professionalism. The response will be the same no matter the offense, so go ahead and call Bill O'Reilly what he is. A pathological liar and a paper tiger elevated to a glass desk in front of millions of people he wants to be as scared as he is of the intruding world. "
Time to start hitting these people in the mouth.
As George Carlin said to Keith Olbermann about RW Conservatives, "I like moving in and really hurting them. I don’t like this ‘let’s be cute, let’s be clever.’ I like smashing them, because that’s the only way to take care of them...This country’s finished. It’s been sliding downhill a long time. And everybody’s got a cell phone that makes pancakes so they don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to make any trouble. People have been bought out by gizmos and toys. No one questions things anymore.”
Fellow comedian Eddie Izzard just said, "I hate the right wing’ — and so does 80 to 90 percent of the world." He's right too.
Isn't it about time we start learning how to stop pussy-footing around with these malignant assholes? If left alone this kind of hellbroth forms the base for the stew of fascism.