FEAR FACTOR - Bill O'Reilly's baroque period.

National Review Online ^ | March 23, 2006 | Johany Goldberg / Nicholas Lemann

[Cboldt]

Nicholas Lemann has a very interesting piece on Bill O'Reilly. Fans, like Derb, may not enjoy as much as I did. But one thing I think everybody would find interesting is that O'Reilly wrote a revenge-fantasy novel in which a serial killer (and the cop who pursued him) was based on O'Reilly himself. ...

... In 1998, after the launch of "The O'Reilly Factor," but before superstardom, he published a thriller called "Those Who Trespass," which is his most ambitious and deeply felt piece of writing. "Those Who Trespass" is a revenge fantasy, and it displays extraordinarily violent impulses. A tall, b.s.-intolerant television journalist named Shannon Michaels, the "product of two Celtic parents," is pushed out by Global News Network after an incident during the Falkland Islands War, and then by a local station, and he systematically murders the people who ruined his career. He starts with Ron Costello, the veteran correspondent who stole his Falkland story:

The assailant's right hand, now holding the oval base of the spoon, rocketed upward, jamming the stainless stem through the roof of Ron Costello's mouth. The soft tissue gave way quickly and the steel penetrated the correspondent's brain stem. Ron Costello was clinically dead in four seconds....

[Cboldt]

Pretty funny hit-piece on O'Reilly at http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?060327fa_fact, long, and the excerpt here does not do the piece justice.

[Echo Talon]

Don't steal Bill's story! sheesh! :)

[spetznaz]

O'Reilly doesn't like to inflict pain. At least not all the time. After all, he did offer the use of a certain 'buzzing device' to a female employee.

[sinkspur]

I can't remember where I read it, but I remember someone writing that it was a characteristic of the Irish in New York that they "like to inflict pain."

And the American public apparently likes to see pain inflicted.

[rcocean]

Girly-man Goldberg is just jealous. And he shares the elite dislike of anyone - like O'Reilly - who talks about border security, War on Christmas, Out-of-Control Judges, etc.

That's why he gives free publicity to a Left-wing, New Yorker, hit piece on O'Reilly.

I skimmed through it, and found it an unfunny rehash. The purpose of bringing up the novel, was to make O'Reilly look somewhat nutty. Its really irrelevantly to O'Reilly's show. The story also distorts reality by making it appear that BOR is running around getting into disputes with people. In fact, the Left is engaged in a compaign of nonstop criticism against him, and he occasionally fights back.

[joylyn]

If this author is correct, then I secretly want to do all the things that my characters do in books I've written -- especially if those characters resemble me in some respect.

[nutmeg]

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