"I watch O'Reilly because he's passionate in what he believes in. He feels the same way I do on a wide range of topics. Unfortunately, I also think he's obsessed with the Clintons and Jesse Jackson and I think he should shut up and let people speak rather than interupting them as much as he does."
See, I can understand your take on why you would watch him...that's cool. I don't care about his politics and lots of people obsess over the Clintons and ol' J.J., they're easy targets and represent the "weird left" or what some may call extreme.
"I've never considered him a reporter or a journalist. Neither does he. His show is basically a vehicle for him to give his opinion. He gives his guest an opportunity to debate a particular topic. Then he'll "let the audience decide." "
Dale, it's your plain ol' New England style common sense that always works for me. You get it, it's just O'Reilly presenting an opinion. It was GA here that called him "The Last Real Journalist", a bizarre and I would have thought to be intentionally humorous statement. It's seemed though he may have meant it. As you stated above, there are some people out there that have a rather perplexing take on things. Leaning that heavy on the opinions of Bill O'Reilly to shape your take on current events seems a poor path to travel. This is how GA seems to be presenting himself. As I said Dale, I always feel I understand the bed of logic and good intentions from which your take on things seems to come, but GA seems to me to be a bit ah...whacky. Which is fine, but the same way people will challenge the comments of Kent, I feel the need to challenge what I see as a bizzarre statement.
"Can you give me an example of his "spinning current events"? Do you really watch the show?"
As you might expect I'm not a regular veiwer. I've seen the show maybe a total of 4 times and really only because you and Pat and some other folks I know like O'Reilly. I tuned in to check out what he was doing and saying. I mean I think I give everyone an even and fair shake and when anyone on this board throws out a recommendation for something, Kent included, I'll have a look or listen to see if there's something there to be learned. I've heard the O'Reilly radio show many times, mainly due to the fact that if I have the radio on in the car I like to hear talk radio. It's from this show that I really formed the opinion that I think the guy is a jackass. Guess what though...I still listen to his radio show because at the hour he's on there's nothing else on the radio I feel is worth listening to. I get a lot of laughs out of his radio show so that's always fun. See I hear him and think, what a joke this guy is, but if I'm laughing I guess you could accuse me of being entertained and I'll cop to that.
As for an example of his spinning things I'll just bring up a regular O'Reilly tactic. He likes to present to a guest two sides of an issue. Now he's chosen what these two sides are and how he will present them. It is his show after all so that's fine. Then he'll badger a guest to conform to one of the two choices he presents...if the guest trys to explain why O'Reilly may be missing something with the two takes he's presented well...then O'Reilly begins his wild eyed foaming at the mouth, "I'm not interested in this! You're skirting the issue! I'm asking you to choose here now which is it! What's your answer I'm not going to waste time like this!"...etc, ad nauseum. So, it's O'Reilly's two takes and you've got to chose one otherwise he'll paint you as "spinning the issue to your own political agenda", when in fact it was never meant to be a fair discussion...because it's entertainment. Does that make sense? I'm cool with all of that but I see it as what it is and so do you it appears.
We've got great weather down here so I hope things are sunny up there.
Reg
