I’m not sure what forum this belongs in, as it could be equally comfortable in CS, GD, IMHO, and the Pit. Since it concerns a TV show, I’ll start it off here in CS.
So who watched 60 Minutes last night? Mike Wallace interviewed Bill O’Reilly. What was entertaining was that Wallace was able to hold his own against the Big Bully, and called him on his BS without ever caving. What surprised me was that O’Reilly claimed to have a number of liberal beliefs. This was news to me. Gun control, gay civil unions, the environment, and more. An astonishing number, actually. But he still came off as a jerk.
What was surreal was that he told the viewing audience that if they didn’t like him, Wallace was to blame. When growing up, it never occurred to him to be a journalist (yeah, yeah), but Wallace inspired him to do so. It was a sort of odd admiration couched as genuine contempt and blind hatred.
I enjoyed the interview. I have always found Bill’s show to be very interesting and entertaining – there is nothing else quite like it on television! I know that a lot of people like to demonize him and make him out to be some horrible, nasty ogre just because he does not share their political views. He angers both Democrats and Republicans because he does not feel the need to toe any particular party’s line!
I didn’t think it was very hard hitting. Wallace acted the part of a tough interviewer in rhetoric, but never delivered any actual goods.
Nonsense. What people don’t like about him is that he is in every respect a demagogue. He doesn’t let facts or reason intrude on what always comes back to a bullying emotionalisms. He’s just the biggest and most bloated of right wing pundits and a few token positions that he never really advocates for and always negates the underlying reasons for doesn’t change that.
It was a pretty softball interview. Wallace didn’t confront him on the various lies exposed in Franken’s book. He didn’t ask him about the salacious phone calls to the woman he was trying to set up a sexual liasion with or his revisionist WW II history were he made the Nazis the heroes.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1013043mackris1.html No confusion.
He is an ill mannered bully. He yells over people he disagrees with and shouts them down patting himself on the back for another fine debate. A classless act.
The one I heard was about gay couples and adoption. He’s supposedly a supporter but I caught one of his shows on this issue and it turned out that he places adoption by a gay couple as a last resort option just above keeping the kid as a ward of the state.