The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Peter Hart, �The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel�s Bill O�Reilly�

Started January 25 � Finished January 27, 2003; 157 pages. Posted 29 February 2004

I am so sad that Howard Dean dropped out of the Democratic Presidential Race. Not that I liked the guy, but when we had the Democratic Convention in San Jose a little while back, everyone was walking around with buttons saying, �Dean�s the Man.� To which I would point and wink at them, saying, �thank you for noticing!�

This means there were some very confused people wandering the streets of San Jose.

Bill O�Reilly is a little too popular with the monkey masses right now. I don�t watch him. I don�t read his books. But I have had more than one obnoxious fat unwashed fucktard come in spouting O�Reilly witticisms. So, like how I read the media watchdog critique of Rush Limbaugh, I figured I�d read this. Better to know your enemy than to just have passing annoyance of them.

Frankly, I don�t understand why people would watch this guy. To me, he just seems like an asshole.

Actually, I�m betting that�s exactly why people watch him.

To me, it�s akin to Howard Stern. Stern acts like a dick and people listen to him in some sort of mob rule mentality. He says things that others don�t dare. Not because what they�re saying is particularly insightful or interesting, but because their being a bunch of caustic pricks. Both Stern and O�Reilly (and Limbaugh, for that matter) bully their audience and then cut off their microphones if they dare to respond, and people cheer them for �raising their voice for the voiceless,� which makes their refusal to let others talk all the more hypocritical.

But what�s worse than the people watching these schmucks is the fact networks feed us this crap. Think about it. Why is O�Reilly considered an authority on anything? Or why would you take political advice from Limbaugh, who never voted until a reporter found out he wasn�t even registered.

So why are they on air? Because they�re pushy and rude. So why the hell don�t I have my own talk show? I can tell people to shut up along with the best of them? Hey you! Shut up!

Ahhhhh, everything related to news is depressing the hell out of me lately. Columbia�s application process is even longer than I expected, meaning I have to wait until April before I get rejected. News stories today are only concentrating on Oscar night, even though Aristide has apparently just fled Haiti.

And it doesn�t matter anyway. People aren�t listening, even when a good story does come out. My cold, dark journalistic heart is crumbling and losing what little faith it once had.

See, the entire reason I became interested in journalism stemmed from me being a stupid little mallrat over a decade ago. Bored, homeless, and alone, I picked up a Metro and read the cover story.

The article dealt with lower-level IBM workers who were exposed to toxic environments with little-to-no safety gear. I was reading this expose, thinking how it was incredibly cool that this one writer was getting a major corporation in a LOT of trouble, providing important information, and to top it all off, he was PAID for it! Brilliant! From then on I claimed I wanted to be a reporter so I could expose those who did wrong. Eventually, I started working toward that goal.

So imagine how I felt the other day when I discovered the first two people who brought a lawsuit against the San Jose IBM plant just lost their case in a unanimous vote. This means that either the article was not presenting their facts correctly, which I doubt, or it doesn�t matter what the reporter presented � IBM still gets away with doing wrong.

I don�t have a central point (surprise!). I�m just annoyed. I want a boat, goddamn it. Buy my book.

And shut up.


Rating: Worth working in a used bookstore and getting for cheap.

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