Bill O'Reilly is among the most annoying commentators on television, because of his smug sense of superiority, his braggadocio about his ratings success--he is, in sum, a douchebag of the highest order. You could call him the high priest of douchebagginess..
Well, David Letterman, a man not known for being either to the right or the left politically, just completely annihilated O'Reilly and a bunch of other conservatives for nearly 20 minutes last night. Choice excerpts below the fold....
To watch yourself, visit the lovely youtube here (part 1) and here (part 2).
After the initial pleasantries and required butt-kissing about O'Reilly's dominance in the ratings, Letterman says, "In my mind, I think of you as a goon." Letterman is looking at the picture of O'Reilly as a youngster (adorning the cover of his latest screed entitled "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity"), and he's worried, because O'Reilly at age 10 or so looks perfectly sweet and adorable. Letterman's worried that his own perfectly sweet, adorable son will grow up to be a goon like O'Reilly, and he tells him so, to O'Reilly's evident consternation.
The hilarious bit here is that O'Reilly is such a fame whore, such a pompous ass, he'll sit on Letterman's couch and take his crap in order to get more network facetime and sell his crappy books.
Letterman proceeds to ask O'Reilly about the promotion of Limbaugh as the voice of the Republican Party; when O'Reilly tries to say it's not a big deal, Letterman disagrees, saying he wants Limbaugh to be the face of the GOP, because..."He's tubby, and for a long time he had his housekeeper buying him illegal drugs."
When O'Reilly complains that Letterman shouldn't be taking cheap shots at Limbaugh, Letterman's response is "Whatever.....". O'Reilly tries to spin his argumentation skills as a reason behind his absolute media dominance, and the audience audibly groans with disdain. Letterman then proceeds to say that he puts Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Glenn Beck in the same category--people with the gift of gab, with a lot of smarts, who do what they do because there's a niche to fill, not because they actually believe any of the crap they say. Letterman says, "He's too smart to believe what he says, and I feel the same way about you--you're too smart to believe what you say."
And the crowd goes WILD.
Later, Letterman quotes Glenn Beck, who apparently said recently that anyone who takes his word for something is an idiot. O'Reilly tries to separate himself from Limbaugh and Beck by saying they are talk show hosts, but he's a journalist. When pressed on this by Letterman, he admits he is something of an entertainer, to which Letterman responds, deadpan, "You're not that entertaining."
And the crowd goes wild again.
Letterman then compared Beck, Limbaugh and O'Reilly to professional wrestling: entertainments that are in part fabricated.
In part 2, after a short discussion of the Minnesota senate race brouhaha, the conversation turns to President Bush's legacy. Letterman notes that the idea of prosecuting Bush for war crimes is gaining traction in some quarters. O'Reilly says we need to give Bush a break. Letterman isn't having it: "As far as I know, the only positive thing I've heard about this administration was he was a great supporter of Africa.....and then 500,000 Iraqis killed, 5,000 American men and women killed, and for what reason? To get rid of Saddam Hussein? To turn that country into a hotbed of terrorism...?"
And then Letterman goes on to criticize Paul Bremer's tenure as American administrator in Iraq. (I wonder if Letterman's read the piece by Naomi Klein, Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Pursuit of a Neocon Utopia. If you haven't seen it, it's one of the great pieces of journalism about the early days of our involvement in Iraq, and the absolute disaster made of the situation by the neocon idiots in Bush's administration.)
Then, after commenting on how Obama seems to be trying hard to do the right thing, Letterman drops the coup de gras: "To me, the United States government was essentially closed for eight years."
Nice.
Next up, a discussion of Darth Cheney. Letterman says, "Cheney's the venal one." And here, O'Reilly sort of agrees, for a stupid reason: because Cheney wouldn't deign to come on the O'Reilly Factor to talk about his administration's policies. Letterman basically calls out Cheney as a first-class elitist pig, saying his impression of Cheney was that he was a guy who said "Let's just get in, get as much money for our rich buddies, and get out."
At the end of the interview, which goes three segments on Letterman's show (a rarity), Letterman states that he has the infamous videotape of O'Reilly going off on the set of Inside Edition. Unfortunately, they don't air it; I think they ran out of time, but I also think Letterman felt he'd done enough damage to O'Reilly at this point and took a little pity on his guest.
Keep in mind: Letterman is not someone who makes a lot of political statements. He's a registered Independent, he's not someone you will see at rallies or out on the stump for any candidate. He generally stays pretty neutral, but will not hesitate to call out BS when he sees it.
I think he saw that he had a big steaming pile of BS sitting on his couch last night.