Bill O'Reilly has been brought low by the same process that afflicted Jerry Springer. Once respected journalists, they sold their souls for higher ratings, and follow their siren song. Springer is honest about it: "I'm going to Hell for what I do, and I know it," he's likes to say. O'Reilly insists he is dealing only with the truth. When his guests disagree with him, he shouts at them, calls them liars, talks over them, and behaves like a schoolyard bully.
It pretty much goes on like that from there, with not-quite comparisons to Nazism and such, rhetorical attempts that are far below Ebert.
Ebert's biggest vulnerability: it's clear he doesn't regularly watch O'Reilly's show and didn't listen to O'Reilly's radio program when it was on the air. He peppers his essay with the same old tired references and clips to the occasions when, yes, O'Reilly lost it, but any regular viewer or listener would know those are the exceptions and that even O'Reilly himself pokes fun for those outbursts, though he makes no real apology for him. O'Reilly is O'Reilly so take him or leave him.
Though O'Reilly tends to lean Right, he's really a populist and has no problem at all with government stepping in and taking care of things for "the folks." But there's no one that's even close to him on the Left; the best anyone can come up with that might be O'Reilly's equivalent is Olbermann but watching only a few of Olbermann's shows will tell you Olbermann is just out of his league. There's a reason why O'Reilly regularly trounces his competition in the ratings.
On a drive to Colorado, we listened to O'Reilly's radio show throughout the afternoon as our reception moved from one station to the next. He makes a lot of sense under all of that bluster. Ebert won't be converted but if he did the same thing as we did, really gave O'Reilly a fair shake, Ebert would see how off-base his essay is.
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