Media & Wingnuts Posted by christian h., 30 Mar 2007 05:40 am

I apply for a job at the O’Reilly-Factor.

Anybody who has looked for a job - and I recently spent several months doing just that - has probably asked herself: “that’s all there is? I’m so tired of it. I really want to do something different!”

Now, maybe you’ll think “easy - I’ll just become a professional humorist - how hard can that be?” Well, as the writers for FOX News Channel’s fake fake news show The 1/2 Hour News Hour can tell you - it’s really hard.
So, what else is out there? Hoping for the big lottery win? Busing tables? Swindling companies out of their ill-gotten gains by offering management seminars? Working as minor functionary in the WAAGNFNP?
Meet the insults writer. Now, the only one who’s ever held that job is, as far as I can ascertain, Orson Scott Card - the science fiction author turned wingnut. But our esteemed readers won’t be surprised to hear that I believe this to be a growth sector - maybe one of the few left that can’t be outsourced. After all, to insult a person effectively, you need to understand that person. That’s why insults aimed at someone you don’t understand are really slurs, not insults. Case in point: Bill “Papa Bear” O’Reilly. He constantly aims to insult liberals - and fails miserably. Who isn’t tired of hearing about the “fascist ACLU” or the “secular-progressive war on Christmas”? It’s pathetic, really. And it is the direct result of Bill’s lack of understanding of the liberal mind.

So it’s lucky for Bill that I’m here to help out. I used to be a liberal. And I have decided to apply for the job of insults writer at the Factor.

Dear Bill,

I rarely watch your show, but whenever I flip through the channels - tired from a day of bashing liberals, conservatives and anybody else who isn’t insane and radical like me - and happen upon one of your segments, I see you trying to insult liberals. Sadly, you regularly fail at this worthy goal. In fact, your insults are so bad that Al Franken’s books practically write themselves. You are, quite frankly, the worst liberal-insulter in the business. Colbert is doing a better job than you, and he is only acting! Bill, you need to get your act together or liberals will just tune you out and attack Howie Kurtz instead.
You need an insults writer. And what do you know, I believe I’m perfect for the job. I have impeccable credentials; I have insulted liberals for years now. And I used to be a liberal - I know how they think, and what they believe.

You need to understand the basic rule of insults: they are only really insulting if the target believes there is some truth to them. That’s why you and your conservative friends are so insulted when liberals call you armchair-warriors or chickenhawks. Calling liberals fascists over an over again won’t insult them one bit - they believe they are the polar opposite of fascists! Much better to insult the liberal by alluding to the fact that his liberalism is really just a rationalization of his own privileged status. He used to be a radical, but now he’s too comfortable in his position - so he’s become a liberal. So, instead of calling him a fascist, thank him for protecting the establishment. Tell him you appreciate his helping out in keeping the working class down. Let him know how happy you are he agrees with you that America is really a force for good in the world.

Instead of accusing a liberal that she’s undermining the troops, use her guilty conscience about the fact that she is really not undermining the US war effort anywhere in the least. Ask her if she believes in the White Woman’s Burden, and which country we should invade next. If she’s radical… well, you’ll have to hire somebody else for that, because I’m not blabbing. If you can’t think of anything else you can make any liberal sweat by asking the classic question: Are you, or have you ever been, a subscriber to The New Republic?

Bill, in conclusion, let me emphasize that if you want your show to break out of the stereotyped market of the audience to stupid too understand the commercials, you’ll have to get some liberals to watch. And no better way to get them to tune in, than to come up with new and better ways of insulting them, so they have some material to be upset about. In this spirit, I look forward to a long and fruitful cooperation in the liberal-insulting business.

Sincerely yours,

christian h.

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Responses to “I apply for a job at the O’Reilly-Factor.”

  1. on 30 Mar 2007 at 7:22 am 1. jimmiraybob said …

    …fake news show The 1/2 Hour News Hour can tell you - it’s really hard.”

    I saw the first two episodes and I’d go for really hopeless in that specific case.

    As far as O’Nutball* goes, don’t mess with the formula. If one day his material suddenly appears to make any sense at all, even slightly, then the base viewers will skeedaddle faster than a cockroach jubilee when the lights are turned on. As far as the potential liberal viewer, why watch the show when we have Crooks and Liars (the intertubes in general) and Keith Olbermann to bring us the spectacular highlights?

    If you do get the job though, as a loyal Party member I will start watching. Good Luck.

    *no offense is intended to nutballs

  2. on 30 Mar 2007 at 8:04 am 2. Amanda French said …

    Angelina thinks to herself, “Yes, but am I doing enough to undermine the troops?”

  3. on 30 Mar 2007 at 9:07 am 3. JP Stormcrow said …

    To me, the interesting thing about O’Reilly is that he actually is a bit of a maverick. A vain, pompous, lying, misogynistic, bullying, demagogic, hypocritical, self-serving** creep of a maverick, but a maverick nonetheless. At least by Fox standards, in that he does not strictly hew to the day’s Repub talking points like a Hannity, or the utterly corrupt Brit Hume - the fact that Hume still has any “credibility” as a newsman among the national political media is as concise an indictment of the group as I can imagine.

    Ummm, where was I, oh yes, O’Reilly, maverick, insults. But I do agree, maverick that he may be, O’Reilly needs help, for instance I do not think he is likely to come up with anything like this any time soon.

    Have any of them, from Makiya through Hitchens to Berman and Berube had dark nights, asking themselves just how much responsibility they have for the heaps of dead in Iraq, for a plundered nation, for the American soldiers who died or were crippled in Iraq at their urging ?

    **[for full list of adjectives see here.]

  4. on 30 Mar 2007 at 9:35 am 4. peter ramus said …

    Wow, what a great image, Amanda.

    It’s the apotheosis of acqusition, or some such, isn’t it? — with the Higher Consumerism of babies taken up by Angelina sanctifying the everpresent unsatisfiable impulse of the plain people down below, connecting them as they reach for that bar of soap on sale with the forever thwarted, forever offered promise of beauty, completion, satisfaction that every purchase entails.

    I’ve got to go to the store.

  5. on 30 Mar 2007 at 9:37 am 5. peter ramus said …

    (I’ll be acquiring some some spell check)

  6. on 30 Mar 2007 at 9:41 am 6. Jams said …

    I’ve actually never seen the O’Reilly show. I guess I should at some point as a cultural awareness project. Strangely, from parodies, quotes, stills, and murmurings, I think I have a pretty good sense of the show without ever seeing it. I guess I should bite the bullet and sit through an episode on youTube or something.

    Does anything explode on it? I like when things blow up.

  7. on 30 Mar 2007 at 10:42 am 7. Heraclitus (Jeff) said …

    I’ve forced myself to watch a few segments of O’Reilly’s show, and my sense is that he’s actually no worse, and maybe better, than most other cable news show hosts (okay, obviously excepting Stewart and Colbert). He actually let his guests finish speaking; he just picks really dumb guests to argue with. But if I had to choose between him and Chris Matthews…well, let’s just say I’m glad I don’t have to make that choice. He definitely does shout people down, but the time I saw it, the guy was from the Cato Institute, and I was loving it. I think in form, his show is better than most, in substance, a little worse (again, this is based on my very limited exposure to it and any other cable talk shows).

  8. on 30 Mar 2007 at 11:20 am 8. JP Stormcrow said …

    Wow, what a great image, Amanda

    It’s the apotheosis of acqusition, or some such, isn’t it?

    A great image indeed. And I hereby claim it as part of the iconography of my Church of Transcendental Materialism described here on this blog. (Has anyone mentioned that comment-linking rules?) Apparently Transcendental Materialism has pre-existing uses as well, but following the wisdom of “doing it backwards”, those posers can go screw themselves.

    Consumer Christ from here (plus some discussion of the general topic.)

    Can we not just shop our way out of Iraq?

  9. on 30 Mar 2007 at 11:28 am 9. James Killus said …

    Nah, I’ve got a better one. See, Bill, the real Achilles’ heel of the liberal is the word “nuance.” Kosovo was humanitarian, what with the war criminal Slobodan (I mean, his name even had “slob” in it; that’s almost as good as “Sodom” Hussein) and Afghanistan was purely righteous, what with the Taliban being behind 9/11 and all, but Iraq is just wrong, wrong, right from the start, and all the liberals knew it, even those who weren’t saying it outright, because of nuance, those subtle differences that only liberals can get, like dogs hear the special whistles.

    So what we really need to do, Bill, is to start calling them “Nuancy Boys.” That sounds both French and gay! It’s a one/two punch. It’s sure fire.

    After that, we can go into why they’re called both flip-flops and thongs. That’ll perk ‘em up for the Viagra commercials.

  10. on 30 Mar 2007 at 11:55 am 10. Oaktown Girl said …

    Oh my.
    RE: JP and Amanda’s (very cool) images above, WAAGNFNP Patriot “Regular Guy” informs us on the previous thread that there are 150 graduates of Pat Robertson’s university now working in the White House.

  11. on 30 Mar 2007 at 12:19 pm 11. spyder said …

    Regent University law school graduates really know how to say: “I invoke my Fifth Amendment protections so that i don’t have to testify that i violated every one elses First, Fourth, and Fourteenth.”

    christian–you need to recraft that letter and send it to Dennis Miller. His comedy writing is falling into the category of extreme boredom mixed with bigotry and fascism. He is the perfect genetically engineered amalgam of Ann Coulter and Don Rickles. Seems to have no sense whatsoever about the overt racism and classism when it comes to writing out his bits in preparation for performance. He immediately denies he said something he said, when it is pointed out that it is inherently inhuman.

    There is also that other windbag of inane freakout, Glenn Beck; or perhaps crafting some spectacular lines for Savage may be more lucrative.

  12. on 30 Mar 2007 at 3:26 pm 12. JP Stormcrow said …

    150 graduates of Pat Robertson’s university now working in the White House.

    For some further info read this post Digby just put up with excerpts from a Garry Wills article in the New York Review of Books called “A Country Ruled by Faith”.
    Just priming the pump here for Blogging Against Theocracy next weekend.

    [Update: And for this weekend will have a new Open Thread up in a bit. Including an invite to join me in liveblogging the NCAA semis tomorrow night at 6:00 & 8:45 Eastern. - JP]