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http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060327fa_factDuring what you could call Bill O’Reilly’s classical period, the first few years of “The O’Reilly Factor”—which débuted in 1996, at the same time as Fox News—O’Reilly seemed to be a recognizable member of the conservative-talk-show-host species, like his Fox stablemate Sean Hannity, or like Joe Scarborough, on MSNBC. He attacked Bill Clinton and Al Gore relentlessly; the Monica Lewinsky scandal was his signature subject. Now, ten years later, O’Reilly has become baroque, and “The O’Reilly Factor” is a complex affair, dense with self-references, obsessions, and elaborations, even though it still delivers a satisfying punch.
O’Reilly is the most popular host on cable news; his average nightly audience is about two million people, while Larry King, on CNN, has an audience about half that size. O’Reilly is most successful in attracting attention when he feuds with other media figures, which happens, in part, because they attack him and he is not one to turn the other cheek. He has started a petition campaign calling on MSNBC to replace Keith Olbermann, one of its prime-time hosts, with, oddly, the paleo-liberal Phil Donahue; he recently threatened a caller to his radio show—someone who mentioned Olbermann’s name—with “a little visit” from “Fox security.” Olbermann has repeatedly conferred on O’Reilly the top place in a “Worst Person in the World” competition, and, probably more to the point, when discussing O’Reilly he often finds ways to work in the word “falafel.” That is a reference to a sexual-harassment suit that a former Fox News producer named Andrea Mackris filed against O’Reilly a couple of years ago. (The case was settled out of court, but not before it got extensive press attention.) Mackris produced what she said were quotes of O’Reilly on the phone discussing things that he imagined they might enjoy doing together. The most notorious of these was a scenario in which they would be in the shower and he would massage her with a loofah, a scrubby sponge—but then, as he went on talking, he slipped up and referred to it as “the falafel thing,” which is funny not only because the picture of smearing wet mashed chickpeas on someone’s body is profoundly unerotic but also because the mistake seems to be a peculiar by-product of O’Reilly’s suspicion of things non-American. That’s why, for O’Reilly, “falafel” is a fighting word.
O’Reilly often proclaims, with glee, the coming demise of Al Franken’s “Air America,” which he says may be dropped by its New York flagship station, WLIB. (Several years ago, Fox News filed—and then dropped—a lawsuit against Franken’s publisher in connection with his book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” much of which was devoted to O’Reilly.) He had a testy on-air exchange with David Letterman a couple of months ago, which has not risen to the status of an ongoing feud but may yet. He has said that if the Times continues to publish “personal attacks” on President Bush, especially in Frank Rich’s column, “we’ll just have to get into their lives,” referring to Rich and the newspaper’s editor, Bill Keller. He has called on his audience to shun several news organizations, including The New Yorker—whose specific sin was questioning the assertion, repeated frequently on “The O’Reilly Factor” during December, that the country is in the grip of a “war on Christmas.”
A long time ago, the distilled essence of cable news seemed to be CNN’s high-energy, low-production-value coverage of the first Gulf War. Today, the essence is O’Reilly, who is firmly planted in his studio, and who begins his show each night by leaning into a camera that is tightly focussed on his upper body, and almost projecting himself out of the television set with the force of his personality.
Another baroque aspect of this moment in O’Reilly’s career is that “The Colbert Report,” on Comedy Central, broadcasts what is essentially a full-dress parody of “The O’Reilly Factor.” Stephen Colbert has obviously made a close study of O’Reilly’s mannerisms and opinions, just as Colbert’s producers have made a close study of the overblown red-white-and-blue swirled graphics that open “The O’Reilly Factor.” (Colbert adds eagles and flags.) But Colbert is too young and too thin to mimic the physical presence of the six-foot-four O’Reilly, and he appears to realize this. So he delivers O’Reilly’s brusque, jabbing hand gestures, and his primary-colored opinions, with a goofy half-smile, as if he were a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s clothes. Like O’Reilly, Colbert has guests, but he often uses his fake right-wing persona to score points for the left, as he did last week when he pretended to grill Keith Olbermann for his attacks on O’Reilly. . . . more
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