The O’Reilly Fracture: It’s Fun to Pick on Dead Pop Stars, and Good for Ratings, Too

So Bill O’Reilly had some harsh things to say about Michael Jackson’s passing, and the whole thing has spiraled into a shouting match on his show. And this is news? No, it’s kickass television entertainment, ladies and germs!

You want news? Here it is: Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and their ilk are dead, worthy of playing the ghouls in the sequel to the “Thriller” video. Maybe Sarah Palin can sub in for Vincent Price on the voice over.

O’Reilly is dead, dead, dead. Dead as in irrelevant, as in trying to rescue the rootin’, tootin’ tough-talkin’ ways Repubs used to dominate discourse during the Puppet Government of the Worst President Ever. But those nightmare days are gone, and with them (thank God) we have a return to civility in our national discourse, whether the topic is foreign policy, politics or pop culture.

Do I sound harsh? Well, just as if I were, say, a sociologist stranded in rural Iceland trying to talk to an isolated band of blubber fisherman who only spoke ancient Icelandic, I fear the only way to reach the O’Reilly Posse is to adopt a vernacular they understand: tough talk and loud, sneering bluster.

First, let’s remind ourselves how guys like O’Reilly, Limbaugh and Coulter work. (You can call Coulter a guy because she’s so anti-feminist, I don’t know how else to classify her.) These are ENTERTAINERS, much like Jackson himself. They do not moonwalk, but they do try to defy laws of gravity and reason by using the fancy footwork of rhetoric to sustain points a mediocre high school debate team could shoot down in 48 seconds. If logic were plastic surgery, this triumvirate would look more freaky than Jackson at his baby-dangling worst.

Second, O’Reilly isn’t dumb. You can’t make headlines and get publicity saying and doing what everyone else is saying and doing in regards to Michael Jackson. You must be different somehow, even if that means being a cruel, uncivil jerk … which he was, and likely knows he was. In O’Reilly’s universe, it’s all about ratings. And you have to believe that if you could convince him that wearing a pink tutu and repeating those comments while sitting atop a Sonic Burger spire would get him even more publicity, he’d mull it over.

Yes, O’Reilly has offended many people loyal to the King of Pop Culture (see my blog on Jackson’s passing here), saying, among other things, that “Why is he being held up in the African American Community as a pillar of Black America when he bleached his skin?” Maybe in a twisted way, O’Reilly kinda sorta has a point–the way that evil people, for example, kinda sorta have enough truth sprinkled in their lies to make you think that they may be truth.

Not that O’Reilly is lying, mind you. But just as Newt Gingrich cannot stand for family values, having dumped his wife while she was in a hospital bed; nor James Dobson hate gays and stand for compassionate Christianity; nor Coulter be a standard bearer for the party that gave us Lincoln; nor Rush Limbaugh pass up a free hamburger; Bill O’Reilly is incapable of following the rules of Fair Op-Ed Journalism 101.

If there is such a thing as an O’Reilly Factor, this is parsed into pie slices of emotion ranging from contemptuous sneering to organic, free-range hate. It is also the kind of ignorance that treats Michael Jackson like an object, even while the proverbial paint is still fresh on his casket.

True, I have said I cannot mourn Jackson. But I would never taunt or bait those who do. Those who loved him deserve their unhindered opportunity to pay their respects.

But Bill O’Reilly, having lambasted Jackson, has treated him as less than human, an object. And based on the charges not long ago leveled against O’Reilly for sexually harassing a work colleague, it makes sense to me. People as objects for your own fun, gain and selfish ends. Par for the course, you might even say.