Bill O'Reilly did his best Gene Simmons imitation and then pulled a Monica Lewinsky on today's Fresh Air (you can listen online).
It is hard to describe what happened, but O'Reilly was his usual charming self (in other words, an asshole). Terry Gross asked him about his attacks on Janet Maslin about her review of Al Franken's book which included this passage:
Note to Bill O'Reilly, the de facto publicist for ''Lies'' thanks to Fox News's hapless efforts to block its publication: Never say ''Never said it'' or ''You can't find a transcript where I said it'' when a man with 14 researchers is on your trail. In a book that baits its targets with varying degrees of success, Mr. Franken makes a bull's-eye out of Mr. O'Reilly. First the prize: he shows how Mr. O'Reilly's erroneous claim that he won a Peabody Award evolved into even bigger fibs once it was challenged.Then the porn: a mortifyingly stilted erotic passage from Mr. O'Reilly's novel ''Those Who Trespass'' is sent up repeatedly here. Then the political affiliation: a 1994 voter registration form is dug up, courtesy of National Public Radio, and reprinted to contradict Mr. O'Reilly's 1996 claim that he was not enrolled in a political party. (The form counts him as a Republican.) And finally the provenance: accounts of a childhood in Levittown, N.Y., are contradicted in The Washington Post by ''an inside source (O'Reilly's mother).''
He also calls Maslin's review of Michael Moore's new book positive (Gross accurately calls it mixed) and claims he doesn't want the Times to review his books (but comes off as angry they've ignored his best selling prose).
He complains that Gross wan't as hard on Franken when she interviewed him though he didn't hear the interview. She admits she probably wasn't, but fails to let O'Reilly know one reason was Franken was polite and funny while he is just belligerent.
O'Reilly lectured Gross numerous times before launching into a tirade and walking out of the interview. Some people can dish it out, but can't take it.
And Gross didn't really ask critical questions about his politics, they were more about his style and hypocrisy. O'Reilly claimed he didn't have anything to do with the Fox lawsuit (though he thinks he has grounds to sue Franken), was right to to cut Jeremy Glick off, only told people to shut up six or seven times (the rest of the time he was just joking).
Franken also told his own Gene Simmons story (which is a way to get on her good side) during an earlier Fresh Air interview (full transcript or audio at the bottom). See the Blogcritics version of this entry for the transcript of the Simmons story.
Gross was interviewed by the Sac Bee last month.
Hmmm... It's interesting to see that I'm not the only person to compare other Fresh Air interviews to Bill O'Reilly's... On another blog, someone posted about the O'Reilly interview and mentioned the Norquist interview. And here, you compare it to the Gene Simmons interview. I compared both to it in a letter I wrote to NPR. After seeing other people blogged about it, I posted it on my weblog.
One thing you might be interested in is that in my letter, that I posted, I said: But to be honest, for some reason, I just can't help thinking that Bill O'Reilly went on "Fresh Air", with his eyes wide open, rubbing his hands together... ;)
Posted by: Chloe | October 19, 2003 at 03:15 AM