O'Reilly barely maintains order as show nearly descends into blond-on-blond catfight chaos!

by Smitty (h/t Gateway Pundit)

Bill O'Reilly weathered a severe attack from Megyn Kelly. He was attempting to moderate the dispute with Lis Wiehl over whether or not the move to discipline Joe Wilson in the House was hypocritical.

Confronted with references to Rep. Pete Stark calling George W. Bush a liar, Lis Wiehl resorted to the Gibson Doctrine. This blog has never heard of the Gibson Doctrine either, which is entirely the point.

It was truly a tough moment for O'Reilly. Years of hairsplitting had taken their toll, but he was willing to sacrifice one of the dwindling supply of follicles just for the sheer joy of being chewed out by Kelly for appearing to give Wiehl a pass on the point.

63% of male viewers admitted to living vicariously through O'Reilly.

Bill O'Reilly is an obnoxious douchebag

"Talking Points Commentary," Aug. 26, 2008, with my notes in italic:

• Early this morning Ted Kennedy died from brain cancer, leaving behind a 46-year-record legacy in the U.S. Senate.

Also leaving behind a 28-year-old civil rights activist in an Oldsmobile he drove off a bridge while drunk.

• Unfortunately, there have been some vicious postings on the Internet about Senator Kennedy and they are disgraceful.

I think this is a reference to this "Talking Points Commentary" about Kennedy being "posted on the Internet." "Vicious" and "disgraceful"? Couldn't have said it better myself!

• If you're a religious person, you know that personal judgments should be made by God alone.

Unless you post negative things about Ted Kennedy, in which case God has deputized Bill O'Reilly to condemn you as "vicious" and "disgraceful." Moral Consistency [TM] is a registered trademark of Bill O'Reilly LLC; patent pending; all rights reserved.

• All of us are flawed and none of us have the right to demean a public servant who has just died. . . .

Saddam Hussein should have tried that "public servant" defense before they hanged him. Obviously, the Bill O'Reilly Principle here is that, once somebody becomes a "public servant," this negates whatever First Amendment rights you might otherwise have.

• There is no question that the Chappaquiddick incident where a young woman drowned in his car haunted Kennedy throughout his life.

Classic use of passive-voice construction to obscure Kennedy's active agency in the euphemistically described "incident." Also, as noted previously, she didn't drown, she asphyxiated. But you, Bill the Bozo, wouldn't know anything about the facts of this case, because your "talking points" were prepared by your underpaid 26-year-old staffers while you were playing racquetball at the health club. "Vicious" and "disgraceful."

• Kennedy was responsible for some excellent legislation . . .

When you've got the kind of wealth and privilege that can turn an open-and-shut case of vehicular manslaughter into a misdemeanor "leaving the scene of an accident" charge, it's a piece of cake to get yourself elected and re-elected to the Senate for 46 years, during which time, yeah, you might be "responsible for some . . . legislation." Anyone who's willing to accept Bill the Bozo's judgment as to what constitutes "excellent legislation" should avoid becoming involved in politics, or even voting, and for that matter, you probably shouldn't operate heavy machinery, either.

• Talking Points believes the Senator was well-intentioned in public policy . . .

Also "well-intentioned": Robert Mugabe, Timothy McVeigh, Pol Pot, Charles Manson . . .

• Like him or not, he was a patriot . . .

Who conspired with the Soviets to undermine Ronald Reagan's policies during the Cold War.

• . . . who was well thought of by many conservatives.

Name one. You can't. There aren't any.

Because you, Bill the Bozo, are not a conservative. You are an obnoxious douchebag and we understand that you are bound by the Douchbag Honor Code, which requires douchebags like yourself to say nice things about fellow douchebags when they die.

So if you, Bill the Bozo, get run over by a bus tomorrow, this means that Geraldo Rivera will be obliged to denounce me as "vicious" and "disgraceful" when I write "postings on the Internet" reminding people what an obnoxious douchebag you were.

On the other hand, if Geraldo Rivera gets hit by a bus tomorrow, this means that when the Grim Reaper comes for you, Bill, there may not be a douchebag sufficiently obnoxious to defend you.

O'Reilly vs. Kelly, the rematch

In one corner, an idiot, in the the other corner, a well-informed hottie. It's no contest:

Via Hot Air.

Bill O'Reilly: Pinhead

Notice how, in debating naysaying Megyn Kelly about the atheist display in Washington State, Bill keeps returning to the KKK as analogous to atheism:

Link:

Via Hot Air, where Allahpundit buys into the liberal mythology of the Establishment Clause -- but that's not relevant to O'Reilly's pinheadedness, which is my topic here. To O'Reilly, the anti-religious sentiments of the atheist display -- meant as "equal time" to a Christmas display at the state capitol -- are obnoxious, and therefore he gets hung up on the idea that the KKK could demand equal time with an MLK memorial.

Megyn tries to explain the current state of constitutional jurisprudence in the matter, an explanation which would probably be non-objectionable to Justice Scalia or any other conservative legal scholar. Yet O'Reilly won't let go of his analogy: The atheist statement is obnoxious, ergo, the Klan. It's like Abbott and Costello. "I don't know!" "Third base!"

What O'Reilly can't seem to get his mind around is the fact that religious expression has a special status under the First Amendment, a status that racial expression does not have. Washington State has granted a place in the public square to expressions of religious belief and therefore (at least so far as current precedents suggest), the state must do some CYA by allowing contrary expressions, or else they'll risk an ACLU lawsuit. The Klan is going to have a much higher threshold to cross in demanding equal time on MLK Day, because that's not a religious observation.

O'Reilly's repetition of the same irrelevant point indicates either (a) he hasn't bothered to study anything about First Amendment law, or (b) he's just baiting Megyn for the sake of "good TV."

Now, returning to Allah's notion of the Establishment Clause as forbidding state or local governments from recognizing religion: This is the "incorporation doctrine" view of the 14th Amendment that makes a mockery of the Founding Fathers' intent.

At the time the First Amendment was ratified, there were states (including Connecticut and Massachusetts) that had established churches. In forbidding the federal government ("Congress shall make no law ...") from legislating in "respect" to any "establishment of religion," the First Amendment not only forbade Congress from creating any official religion at the national level, but also forbade Congress from interfering with any of the official religions (i.e., establishments) in the various states.

The Establishment Clause, therefore, forbade the federal government from interfering with religion in any way whatsoever, while leaving the states absolutely free to do as they pleased. And at the time the 14th Amendment was proposed and ratified, no one suggested that the new amendment would change that arrangement. It was not until decades later that the "incorporation doctrine" was propounded as requiring the federal courts to compel state and local governments to abide by Bill of Rights restrictions that had originally been intended specifically to limit federal power.

This bait-and-switch is one of the dirtiest tricks in history. Instead of a limited federal government, as the Founders intended, we now have a Leviathan that was (according to the courts) literally compelled to interfere in the routine affairs of local government. We no longer have a union of states; the states have been abolished, except as mere administrative units of the all-powerful federal Leviathan. Had Madison for one minute imagined such a state of affairs developing as a result of the Constitution, he'd have told the Convention to go straight to hell, left Philadelphia and gone home to tell his constituents to take up arms if any such scheme were ever proposed again.

On hating O'Reilly

Very interesting, if true, especially the assertion that "last year's purchase of the Wall Street Journal [by Murdoch] 'was in no small way about wanting to trade the illiberal -- the belligerent, the vulgar, the loud, the menacing, the unsubtle -- for the better-heeled, the more magnanimous, the further nuanced.'"

This is another aspect of the "Fox Effect" I've written about before. Fox has its own combative brand that has in recent years tended to define the GOP brand. Two Irish Catholic guys from New York, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, have effectively become the face of the Republican Party. Is it unfair ethnic stereotyping to say that these two argue like a couple of Irish Catholic guys from New York?

Both O'Reilly and Hannity have a habit of bullying guests with whom they disagree. If you've ever seen this shtick -- constantly interrupting, badgering, insulting, demanding that the guest "answer the question!" but never giving them time to do so -- it is impossible to enjoy unless you have a sadistic streak. It's the same cacaphonous ugliness that I always hated about CNN's old "Crossfire" show, and every other "shout show" imitator. There is an audience for that confrontational style of TV (4 million tune into O'Reilly regularly) but you're never going to build a genuinely mass audience for rude disagreement.

When a David Brooks or a George Will or a David Frum sneers at Republican "populism," it is this belligerent mode of discourse that they have in mind. Hard-core Republicans may cheer when Hannity works his bully-boy routine on a liberal, but such acts of signification -- "I aggressively diss liberals, therefore I am a true conservative!" -- can never persuade the unpersuaded.

Most conservative Fox viewers don't notice this, simply because of their ideological affinity with the bully boys. But remember when Bill O'Reilly sneered at talk-radio "Kool-Aid drinkers" and "right-wing liars" who opposed the bailout?

See? When O'Reilly points the obnoxious name-calling at you, it's not quite so enjoyable, is it? (My apologies, BTW, to any Irish Catholic New Yorkers who don't like being lumped in with O'Reilly.) This kind of rudeness gives the conservative intellectual class a pretext to disparage "populism" and to denounce Sarah Palin as a particularly divisive populist. The intellectuals, quite rightly, don't want conservatism to become so closely identified with rhetorical belligerence.

If Murdoch himself is concerned that the O'Reilly style is "vulgar" and "menacing," to what extent has the general public absorbed that general perception of conservatives that O'Reilly and his Fox cohorts have helped create?

On O'Reillyism

Allah's got audio of Mark Levin ripping Bill O'Reilly a new one. Levin notes O'Reilly's sneering references to "ideologues" and to Rush Limbaugh's cigars and private jet. Here's the clip via Breitbart:



Levin characterizes O'Reilly's arguments for the bailout -- like O'Reilly's previous bashing of "Big Oil" -- as "populism.," which is rather unfair to populists. As much as I hate to bring religion into this, I think O'Reilly is another of those Catholics who can't get over Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.

A distrust of raw capitalism runs deep in Catholic social teaching, and it is not unusual to meet Catholics who are profoundly conservative on issues like abortion and homosexuality but who, when the discussion turns to economics, are staunch defenders of statist interventionism.

The only cure for this ailment is large doses of Mises, Hayek, and Sowell. Christian socialism is still socialism, and government is not a charitable endeavor.

UPDATED: Via Liberal Conspiracy, here is O'Reilly ranting about "right-wing liars":

Sounds like O'Reilly doing a bad Michael Savage imitation.

'Kristen' gone wild!

Allahpundit describes the video as "a young, tanned 'Kristen' does the squat-and-grind with a pair of nubile pals," as captured by the "Girls Gone Wild" crew. Bill O'Reilly and an obviously embarrassed Mary Katharine Ham discuss:

Link: sevenload.com

Now, compare the 1817-year-old "Kristen" dancing in that video -- B-cups at best -- with this more recent bikini photo of "Kristen" (Ashley Youmans, a/k/a Ashley Alexandra Dupre). You can click the photo to enlarge it and, speaking of enlarging things, it's obvious from the new C-cups that "Kristen" displays in the bikini photo that some surgical augmentation transpired between the time the video was recorded and the time this photo was taken.

This proves my point: Boob jobs are for whores.

Just like tattoos and pierced navels.

Speaking of whores, O'Reilly had no legitimate reason to broadcast that video, as Allahpundit notes:

What exactly is the 'policing the Internet' angle here? As MKH says, it sounds like Girls Gone Wild is in the clear legally. O'R himself expresses no opinion aside from a bemused chuckle. Am I being cynical to think the whole thing is just an excuse to show the footage?

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! So O'Reilly engages in cheap exploitation, whereas I am engaged in investigative journalism, exposing how breast implants turn women into whores.

UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that this video was shot in Miami in March 2003, meaning that Ashley Youmans (d.o.b. 4/30/85) was only 17 at the time:



Ashley/"Kristen" got nude in the "Girls Gone Wild" video, but apparently there is some kind of loophole in Florida law where 17-year-olds are fair game for nude videos.

Final thoughts?

• Ashley was a slut before she was a whore.
• She's definitely had a boob job since 2003.
• Perhaps some blogger will pay the $30 to download the actual uncensored "Girls Gone Wild" video and then upload a few choice segments. Of course, that would be unethical -- copyright infringement is an immoral violation of property rights -- but it would (a) undoubtedly be a traffic magnet, and (b) probably be a tax-deductible business expense.

Somebody check with the IRS; I'll ask Ace to convene the Blogger Ethics Panel.

UPDATE II: Linked by Rusty at Jawa Report, who shares my disappointment in discovering that "what the American public wants are salacious stories to satisfy their prurient interests," while also mentioning that there was "some hot lesbian action" in that video. I will merely observe that (a) he did link me, after all, and (b) using the phrase "hot lesbian action" is probably good for 30 or 40 Google-generated hits a week.

Of course, it's not real "lesbian action," it's the kind of fake "lesbian action" that college coeds simulate when they get drunk in front of "Girls Gone Wild" cameras. I'm pretty sure that real "lesbian action" is not nearly as photogenic, if only because the average lesbian is not a 19-year-old Brazilian-waxed hottie. Add 20 years and about 40 pounds, and the "Girls Gone Wild" factor fades pretty quick.