The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly

God, I get sick of reviews from people who obviously haven't read a book.The book is good, an easy read, and very revealing about Bill O'Reilly's qualifications as a journalist . . . I mean infotainer. I personally find it very hard to watch him. He just radiates negativity, and I just don't like to watch negative people. This is a great book for people like me, who have seen a bit of O'Reilly, found him off putting and unpleasant, and would like to try and understand why he is so popular.

This book is like a scouting report for a baseball pitcher--in this case a righthander(read politically conservative) who claims to be ambidextrous (unbiased). It is not a penetrating study of Bill O'Reilly's inner psychology or motivation, and the author, Peter Hart says so. It simply tells viewers/batters what to expect each night when they face him.The late great lefty, Warren Spahn, said "the art of hitting is timing; and the art of pitching is disrupting timing." That is the first thing that our scout, Peter Hart, tells his readers. O"Reilly claims to be "no spin;" he is, in fact, "all spin." When you face him you are going to get a lot of off speed junk, curves. He is not going to put any fastballs where you can hit them. He does not have much of an arm (read facts) to go all with his pitch (read spin). To beat you--and I am talking about "the folks," his target audience of working people who vote conservative and against their own self interest--he has to make you believe him about being "no spin." You must buy his deception. Hart adds, do not waste your time preparing to hit (read listen critically) a guy that throws with both hands. This guy never really has pitched with his left hand (read seriously espoused progressive positions). He just says he does to throw you off. He is just a righty (conservative) spinning tales.That is Bill O'Reilly in a nutshell. And though it might be fun, I promise not to belabor this metaphor anymore. As a teacher of speech, I know that one of the first rules of rhetoric or persuasion is for the speaker to ethically tell people where he stands. To say that he is no spin does a disservice to his audience; they are not hitters he is trying to trick; they are people he should be trying to help and illuminate.This handbook then is a manual on how he does not help and illuminate.The first thing Hart does is give O'Reilly's positions on a bevy of social, economic, and political issues. Each position is deeply conservative. On the few issues that he claims a liberalposition, Hart shows that his position is either weakly held or a dissemblance. So now the reader knows how to listen to O'Reilly. Now Hart tells us what to listen for.In a section called "The O'Reilly Fact-Check," Hart offers "at least" 100 lies and distortions--mostly lies that O'Reilly has told, mostly on the "Factor" TV show. The section runs 66 pages pp.53-118. It is filled with statements O'Reilly has made on the show, then Hart provides an "Oh Really" response. O"Reilly says "dozens of police officers were injured" by protestors in Sna Francisco and Chicago during anti-war demonstration in those cities; The Oh Really response: "the facts" are that only two officers were injured in Frisco and none in Chicago. O'Reilly claims that the US never supplied the Iraqis with chemical and biological weapons and that Donald Rumsfeld never meant with Hussein to close the deal. He tells a radio caller that is a "crazy thing that goes out on the Inter

If the endless stream of inaccuracies, distortions, and self-contradictory statements aren't enough to wreck O'Reilly's credibility, I don't know what is. The picture painted here is one of a man who is beyond paranoid and convinced that anyone attempting to correct his inaccuracies is a threat that must be eliminated. He rarely corrects his distortions and inaccuracies, and when he does it's in a very combatative, I'm-still-right-despite-pulling-my-"facts"-out-of-the-air attitude. Bill O'Reilly probably believes all the myths he's concocted about himself. If he doesn't, it would be very difficult to explain why he is so defensive about them. For instance, despite claiming that he was not a member of any political party, he had been a registered Republican until 2000. When he was informed of this, he said, "There was no box for an independent. I left all the boxes empty. Somehow, I was assigned Republican status." Then, when confronted with a copy of his actual form, which clearly shows that there was a box labelled "I do not wish to enroll in a political party" and a nice, big check next to "Republican," he said that there must have been some mistake and that perhaps he was filling out the form too fast or something. With O'Reilly, you have to ask just how much disregard for the truth someone who fancies himself as a journalist can have before you can call him a liar.

It was everything Franken's book should have been: thoroughly researched, smart, sly, and even with a subtle, edgy humor to it. I particularly like the structure of this book: first he presents a quote from O'Reilly, and then he amplifies on it. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. You won't come away from this book believing you are supposed to now hate Bill O'Reilly (which, by comparison, seems to be a theme in Franken's) but you'll likely become a more discerning viewer, taking broad statements and statistics with a greater degree of skepticism. The facts are there. To quote Fox, "YOU decide." You can't get any more 'fair and balanced' than that!

In his confrontation with Al Franken on C-SPAN earlier this year, Bill O'Reilly tried to dismiss Franken by saying "Is that all you've got?"Peter Hart shows in great detail that there is no end to the distortions, contradictions, and outright lies emanating from the "No Spin Zone." From O'Reilly's ridiculous claim, "I'm not a conservative." (5/4/01)(p. 20), to his thuggish off camera comment to an anti-war guest whose father died in the World Trade Center ("Get out, get out of my studio before I tear you to f***ing pieces!" [2/06/03] [p.145]), Hart lays bare O'Reilly's brand of "journalism."The point by point refutations of O'Reilly's misstatements are the heart of the book and can't be waved away. But for those who will continue to insist, "Is that all you've got?", perhaps Mr. Hart can be persuaded to start compiling volume two!