I've always somewhat liked O'Reilly despite his being a huge, ignorant blowhard about a variety of matters. But by substituting rage for coherent talk, he's lost a lot of casual fans. I'll bet O'Reilly doesn't know five percent as much as Rush does about how the nation's economic system works. O'Reilly is a populist hellraiser and not a cogent thinker. Attacking everybody is an ignorant person's way to make an argument. His tirade, which I listened to in its entirety, didn't sound much different than that of the drunk at the end of the bar.
But when he thinks of himself as a self-appointed guardian of us "folks", as if us "folks" are incapable of managing our own affairs and we need him to look out for us -- when he combines that folksy populism with an ignorance of basic economics and how the marketplace works; has fits of anger over some columnist that's critical of him, yet routinely calls people "pinheads"; it's a bit much for me to swallow.