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Hot Heir

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ANOTHER VIETNAM Olbermann takes W. to task
You were among several popular figures who were recently sent white powder-laced hate letters. The sender called Nancy Pelosi "cuntface" and wrote to Viacom chief Sumner Redstone, "Fuck You Mr. Monopolist." To you, he offered this comparatively tame note: "There are too many demagogues in America. All of you are poisoning the well! Time to give your kind a taste of your own medicine." Did you feel a little let down that he didn't have the same vitriol for you?
No, because you have to remember that after the first letter, I didn't even open any of the subsequent ones. It was another letter to me that he was mailing when they caught him. I opened one, but he sent at least five. I wasn't the least Worst Person in the World to him. This guy [Chad Conrad Castagana] obviously has a lot of problems, and one of them probably is a disturbing hero-worship of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Plus, Sumner Redstone? Not being able to identify the fact that someone you write to is a leading conservative.... He sort of missed the point of the whole red state/blue state thing.

Speaking of that polarization, one of the most entertaining features of your diametric opposition to Bill O'Reilly is the nicknames you've coined for him. Can you name them?
Well, Bill-O is the best one.

Where did that come from?
[Former ESPN colleague] Dan Patrick actually suggested that. "Bill-O" kind of represents a flag with one of its stems ripped off flapping in the wind. It's reminiscent of his style on the air. There's "Bill Orally," which was a complete typo. I was looking for something on a website and typed in "Bill O'Reilly" on a search engine, and it came back with no matches and asked: "Did you mean to search for Bill Orally?" And I thought, Well that's perfect. And there's "The Big Giant Head," a Third Rock From the Sun reference. And obviously, "Ted Baxter," because one day I was trying to do an impression of O'Reilly to read some quotes on the air and it came out as Ted Baxter, and I thought this would probably be very offensive to [actor] Ted Knight, but it's still appropriate. Those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

images/2006/12/ted-knight-bill-orielly.jpg
BLOWHARDS Could Ted Baxter be O'Reilly's on-air inspiration?
What about "The Sideshow Bob of Commentators"?

That was more a specific reference to him perpetually stepping on the proverbial rake and hitting himself in the forehead wherever he went. By not simply ignoring me, he not only failed, he became a caricature of himself.

"The Sisyphus of Morons"? "False Patriot"? "Worst Person in the World"? "Slappy"? "An Evil Un-American Shark With a Frickin' Laser Beam on His Head"?
Well, look, I'm confident he'll never get his tiny little mind around this, but the whole premise of the country is exactly the opposite of what he thinks it is. It is not conformity. It is not standing up and saluting a flag. It's standing up and saluting ideas. Most importantly, it's standing up and saying, "I don't agree at all with what you're saying, but you have the right to say it." To which his response is (in O'Reilly/Ted Baxter voice), "Shut up!"

"The whole premise of the country is not standing up and saluting a flag. It's standing up and saluting ideas. Most importantly, it's standing up and saying, 'I don't agree at all with what you're saying, but you have the right to say it.' To which O'Reilly's response is, 'Shut up!'"What's O'Reilly's biggest on-air mistake? You've offered "special commentary" on his invocation of the World War II battle of Malmédy, where, in defending torture, he accused U.S. soldiers of committing atrocities when in fact they were the victims.
I think the one that strips through the rhetoric to reveal what he is all about is the Malmédy. It's so easy to correct that. Everybody who has ever been on the air has made a mistake of that proportion. You mis-remember a story and wind up telling it horribly backwards. You make the victim the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer the victim. Everybody has done it—including me. My point being that even from that you can come back and say, Hey, I told the story backwards. O'Reilly is insistent that he has it right and therefore you have to treat him at his word.... It really does get down to the core of who he is. The subject of his show is him. And the subject of history is him. And it's true because he said it.

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