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The O’Reilly Factor for Kids
A Review
By Tom Breuer
A Review
By Tom Breuer
Simply click on the amazon link each
time you want to shop and 5% of your
purchase goes to support SJIHBO, Intl.
time you want to shop and 5% of your
purchase goes to support SJIHBO, Intl.
The first line in the foreward to Bill O’Reilly’s latest opus starts out “I wish I’d had this book when I
was a teenager …”
Really Bill? You wish you’d had a book written by you as a 55-year-old man? You know, I also wish
that as a teenager I’d had a book written by a future me. The first line of my book would have been, “In
about 20 years, a spectacularly obtuse TV personality named Bill O’Reilly will write a piece of dreck
called The O’Reilly Factor for Kids. Whatever you do, for the love of Jehovah, DON’T READ IT.”
While Bill’s ridiculously inflated ego is more than evident in the first line of this piffling waste of pulp,
one would have thought it impossible even for someone as delusional and self-important as O’Reilly
to think he could actually pull this off.
Indeed, it may not be all that much of a stretch to say that Bill O’Reilly, in the Year of our Lord 2004,
has written the worst book in the history of publishing.
This is an impossibly stupid effort. Seriously, I’m waiting for God to come jumping out of a closet any
second to tell me my entire life has been one long, embarrassing practical joke and this is the punch
line.
Honestly, if you were a publisher casting about for someone to write a book that speaks to teens
frankly and in their own language about the pitfalls of growing up, it’s hard to imagine a worse choice
than Fox News’ loudest, dumbest and most meretricious newsman.
I myself have spent a good part of the morning trying to imagine a worse choice and all I’ve been able
to come up with so far are Rip Taylor, Pope John Paul II, John Holmes and Fred “Rerun” Berry.
Unfortunately, Taylor had prior commitments, Holmes and Berry are dead, and John Paul is probably
too busy, so O’Reilly, working for the Bizarro wing of HarperCollins, apparently got the gig by default.
The O’Reilly Factor For Kids’ putative purpose is to give teens some honest, straightforward advice
from a guy who’s been there and who, as a father himself, knows how to rap with the kids. Instead, it’
s a deeply confused tract on everything from sharing to reasoning with bullies to proper skin care (we’
ll get to this one later). At times, Bill sounds like he’s talking to 5-year-olds (“You have to learn -- and
believe me, I know how awful these words can be when you want something -- to share.”);
sometimes he appears to be counseling the elderly (“But excessive sun exposure, according to the
U.S. Office of the Surgeon General, can lead to skin cancer and other skin growths, cataracts,
premature aging of the skin, and several other types of health problems”); but most of the time he
sounds like a deranged Carmelite nun trying to relate to teenagers on their own level (“The adult
doesn’t have to be in the room snappin’ to OutKast, but one of these specimens must be
somewhere on the premises …”)
Is this a joke? Wait, perhaps I haven’t explored that possibility thoroughly enough. Bill, seriously, is
this a joke? Well, it must be a joke, because there’s a belly laugh on every page. Don’t believe me?
Page 3 (following the above-mentioned, stunningly idiotic foreword): “Almost everybody watched
the TV show Friends on NBC. Unfortunately, some kids think that’s what real friends are like. … In
real life, true friends stand by you when things get rough.”
(Yes. Now let’s go visit Mr. Green Jeans and see what he thinks.)
Page 4: “Okay, you know I’ve made money. It was a long time coming, so I don’t usually spend
much of it and I certainly don’t show it off.”
(OK, Bill, obviously you do show it off. You’re now averaging one reference to your huge salary every
two pages. [Page 1: “I have a career that’s lots of fun and makes me a lot of money.”] For God’s sake,
Bill, these are kids! Can you possibly be this insecure? Do you flash a fat roll of Benjamins in front of
the dog every morning, cooing, “Who’s your daddy?”)
Page 5: “Now, I don’t want you to think that I sat around when I was your age and carefully chose
my companions because of their virtues.”
(Carefully chose my companions because of their virtues? Are you kidding with this? Who are you
talking to? ‘Cause I guarantee you, all the kids have left. You sound like Truman Capote, for God’s
sake. Can you possibly be this tone deaf? You might as well quote Ralph Waldo Emerson while you’
re at it.)
Page 7: “’Keep your friendships in repair,’ warned Ralph Waldo Emerson …”
(Bill, I can’t prove it right now, but I’m pretty sure you plagiarized that from Tiger Beat.)
Page 6: “If a kid lies to his parents, he or she will lie to you.”
OK, Bill? I haven’t used the word gaywad in probably 25 years. Please don’t force my hand.)
Page 8: “Growing up on Long Island just a few miles outside New York City, I had tons of friends in
the neighborhood. They were all guys, because at that time women’s lib had not kicked in and the
girls played differently than we did.”
(Think. Who is your audience? The last time anyone said “women’s lib” these kids’ parents’ were
zygotes. Just stop talking. You are beyond embarrassing. I guarantee your kids are plotting your
death right now.)
It’s actually quite stunning that this book ever saw print. It’s certainly not intended for kids -- not any on
this planet anyway. In fact, there’s no question this has to either be a cynical ploy to sell books to
those O’Reilly fans who are still teed off about NBC’s decision to cancel Bonanza, or O’Reilly is
irretrievably insane and is sincerely hoping to reach today’s teenagers with lines like, “If you knew
that a few minutes spent with an older person could ease his loneliness, why would you ever choose
to spend those minutes playing Game Boy instead?”
I can say with confidence there is not one teenager in the nation who will read past page 3 of this
book and want to continue … or at least there are very few. And when I say very few I’m talking roughly
the same number of death row inmates who subscribe to Redbook.
Indeed, if I were a PR flack and had my choice between taking a job with Union Carbide’s Bhopal
office circa 1984 or being responsible for promoting this crap, I think I’d take the Union Carbide gig.
While he claims to believe he’s helping kids out, what O’Reilly has actually just done is consigned
hundreds of innocent children of Factor viewers to the worst Christmas break they’ve ever had.
Honestly, this should have been published as one introductory chapter and 178 blank pages. No one
but O’Reilly and me, who was assigned this review by SJIHBO co-founder and modern-day
Torquemada Joseph Minton, would have been the wiser.
There’s absolutely nothing interesting, fresh or insightful here. The entire book is little more than an
assortment of dull anecdotes from O’Reilly’s childhood alongside regurgitated bromides from
elementary school health classes and old ‘50s hygiene films. The thing makes Reefer Madness look
cool.
Throughout the book, for example, there are “instant messages” from O’Reilly where he delineates
the difference between “pinheads” and “smart operators.”
According to O’Reilly, “a pinhead is a kid who brags about how much money she has or how much
money she’s spent on something.” (No argument there.)
“A smart operator is a kid who gets a decent night’s sleep so that everyone else doesn’t have to
suffer with him the next day.”
He’s got four whole chapters full of this crap. It looks like he lifted stuff straight out of a 1946 copy of
Boy’s Life and then removed all the edginess.
In Pinheads and Smart Operators: Instant Message Number 3, Bill writes “IMNSHO (which O’Reilly
and all teens apparently know means ‘In my not-so-humble opinion’), a pinhead gets sunburned.
Okay, a nice even tan can make you look healthy and sexy. Or it can advertise to your friends that
you’ve had a great winter vacation at the beach. But excessive sun exposure, according to the U.
S. Office of the Surgeon General …” -- and then on he goes about those legendary teen bugaboos
cataracts as well as studies from Boston University and the Centers for Disease Control. (Or the BU
to the CDC as O’Reilly might put it.)
First of all, Bill, I hate to be crass, but have you seen your skin? You look like something Ed Gein
made after he was finished upholstering the settee. Do you think you’re really going to reel kids in
with your thoughts on proper skin care? If they didn’t bail out after your take on gangsta rap (page 85,
I’m not even kidding), you’ve definitely lost them now.
Secondly, these kids are 14 and 15; they weren’t born in 1914 or ‘15. Honestly, what do you think you’
re accomplishing? Why not just write, “A pinhead finds blood in his stool and ignores it. A smart
operator gets regular colorectal screenings and eats a diet rich in fiber”?
Unfortunately, this book will impress no one -- not the teens whom it’s supposedly written for nor the
grandparents whom O’Reilly was probably actually hoping to fleece. It’s just plain too stupid.
I’m 39 now, and I know it’s sometimes tough to remember what it was like to be a kid, and trying to
make heads or tails out of teens’ culture, attitudes and beliefs years removed from your own painful
adolescence can be a Sisyphean task to be sure.
But that’s hardly the point. I remember fondly my grandmother on my mother’s side. She and I hardly
had anything to talk about other than the typical grandma/grandson stuff. As O’Reilly himself might
say, she was “squaresville.” For instance, she had a picture of Pope Paul VI on her wall -- 10 years
after he was dead. When I was a teen I used to mow her lawn; she’d give me $5 and some cookies
when I was finished. I’m fairly certain that when I was 23 she still thought I was in Scouts.
I wish she were alive, principally because she was my grandma and I loved her dearly, but close
behind that would be the opportunity to show her this book. I’m almost certain that by page 2 she
would have started rolling her eyes and done one of those “I’m masturbating” pantomimes.
I have to admit now, in the interest of fairness, that I didn’t read all of The O’Reilly Factor for Kids. I
took a cue from O’Reilly himself, who walked out of the middle of Fahrenheit 9/11, and ditched before
I was done with it.
Yeah, I can almost hear O’Reilly now -- “a pinhead reviews a book he hasn’t read in its entirety while
a smart operator gives it an honest shake.” But c’mon, Bill. It’s not that difficult to extrapolate from
beginning to end. If I didn’t get your wisdom on searching for changes in moles and freckles you’ll
just have to forgive me. But the truth is, there’s nothing here even remotely worthwhile. If your book
had been a TV show, it would have been canceled at the first commercial.
You had to know that. Or is it possible you’re really just this dense?
Previous Columns:
O'Reilly vs. Hillary: The Race That Never Was (and still he lost)
Bill O’Reilly -- Portrait of a Teat-Sucker
was a teenager …”
Really Bill? You wish you’d had a book written by you as a 55-year-old man? You know, I also wish
that as a teenager I’d had a book written by a future me. The first line of my book would have been, “In
about 20 years, a spectacularly obtuse TV personality named Bill O’Reilly will write a piece of dreck
called The O’Reilly Factor for Kids. Whatever you do, for the love of Jehovah, DON’T READ IT.”
While Bill’s ridiculously inflated ego is more than evident in the first line of this piffling waste of pulp,
one would have thought it impossible even for someone as delusional and self-important as O’Reilly
to think he could actually pull this off.
Indeed, it may not be all that much of a stretch to say that Bill O’Reilly, in the Year of our Lord 2004,
has written the worst book in the history of publishing.
This is an impossibly stupid effort. Seriously, I’m waiting for God to come jumping out of a closet any
second to tell me my entire life has been one long, embarrassing practical joke and this is the punch
line.
Honestly, if you were a publisher casting about for someone to write a book that speaks to teens
frankly and in their own language about the pitfalls of growing up, it’s hard to imagine a worse choice
than Fox News’ loudest, dumbest and most meretricious newsman.
I myself have spent a good part of the morning trying to imagine a worse choice and all I’ve been able
to come up with so far are Rip Taylor, Pope John Paul II, John Holmes and Fred “Rerun” Berry.
Unfortunately, Taylor had prior commitments, Holmes and Berry are dead, and John Paul is probably
too busy, so O’Reilly, working for the Bizarro wing of HarperCollins, apparently got the gig by default.
The O’Reilly Factor For Kids’ putative purpose is to give teens some honest, straightforward advice
from a guy who’s been there and who, as a father himself, knows how to rap with the kids. Instead, it’
s a deeply confused tract on everything from sharing to reasoning with bullies to proper skin care (we’
ll get to this one later). At times, Bill sounds like he’s talking to 5-year-olds (“You have to learn -- and
believe me, I know how awful these words can be when you want something -- to share.”);
sometimes he appears to be counseling the elderly (“But excessive sun exposure, according to the
U.S. Office of the Surgeon General, can lead to skin cancer and other skin growths, cataracts,
premature aging of the skin, and several other types of health problems”); but most of the time he
sounds like a deranged Carmelite nun trying to relate to teenagers on their own level (“The adult
doesn’t have to be in the room snappin’ to OutKast, but one of these specimens must be
somewhere on the premises …”)
Is this a joke? Wait, perhaps I haven’t explored that possibility thoroughly enough. Bill, seriously, is
this a joke? Well, it must be a joke, because there’s a belly laugh on every page. Don’t believe me?
Page 3 (following the above-mentioned, stunningly idiotic foreword): “Almost everybody watched
the TV show Friends on NBC. Unfortunately, some kids think that’s what real friends are like. … In
real life, true friends stand by you when things get rough.”
(Yes. Now let’s go visit Mr. Green Jeans and see what he thinks.)
Page 4: “Okay, you know I’ve made money. It was a long time coming, so I don’t usually spend
much of it and I certainly don’t show it off.”
(OK, Bill, obviously you do show it off. You’re now averaging one reference to your huge salary every
two pages. [Page 1: “I have a career that’s lots of fun and makes me a lot of money.”] For God’s sake,
Bill, these are kids! Can you possibly be this insecure? Do you flash a fat roll of Benjamins in front of
the dog every morning, cooing, “Who’s your daddy?”)
Page 5: “Now, I don’t want you to think that I sat around when I was your age and carefully chose
my companions because of their virtues.”
(Carefully chose my companions because of their virtues? Are you kidding with this? Who are you
talking to? ‘Cause I guarantee you, all the kids have left. You sound like Truman Capote, for God’s
sake. Can you possibly be this tone deaf? You might as well quote Ralph Waldo Emerson while you’
re at it.)
Page 7: “’Keep your friendships in repair,’ warned Ralph Waldo Emerson …”
(Bill, I can’t prove it right now, but I’m pretty sure you plagiarized that from Tiger Beat.)
Page 6: “If a kid lies to his parents, he or she will lie to you.”
OK, Bill? I haven’t used the word gaywad in probably 25 years. Please don’t force my hand.)
Page 8: “Growing up on Long Island just a few miles outside New York City, I had tons of friends in
the neighborhood. They were all guys, because at that time women’s lib had not kicked in and the
girls played differently than we did.”
(Think. Who is your audience? The last time anyone said “women’s lib” these kids’ parents’ were
zygotes. Just stop talking. You are beyond embarrassing. I guarantee your kids are plotting your
death right now.)
It’s actually quite stunning that this book ever saw print. It’s certainly not intended for kids -- not any on
this planet anyway. In fact, there’s no question this has to either be a cynical ploy to sell books to
those O’Reilly fans who are still teed off about NBC’s decision to cancel Bonanza, or O’Reilly is
irretrievably insane and is sincerely hoping to reach today’s teenagers with lines like, “If you knew
that a few minutes spent with an older person could ease his loneliness, why would you ever choose
to spend those minutes playing Game Boy instead?”
I can say with confidence there is not one teenager in the nation who will read past page 3 of this
book and want to continue … or at least there are very few. And when I say very few I’m talking roughly
the same number of death row inmates who subscribe to Redbook.
Indeed, if I were a PR flack and had my choice between taking a job with Union Carbide’s Bhopal
office circa 1984 or being responsible for promoting this crap, I think I’d take the Union Carbide gig.
While he claims to believe he’s helping kids out, what O’Reilly has actually just done is consigned
hundreds of innocent children of Factor viewers to the worst Christmas break they’ve ever had.
Honestly, this should have been published as one introductory chapter and 178 blank pages. No one
but O’Reilly and me, who was assigned this review by SJIHBO co-founder and modern-day
Torquemada Joseph Minton, would have been the wiser.
There’s absolutely nothing interesting, fresh or insightful here. The entire book is little more than an
assortment of dull anecdotes from O’Reilly’s childhood alongside regurgitated bromides from
elementary school health classes and old ‘50s hygiene films. The thing makes Reefer Madness look
cool.
Throughout the book, for example, there are “instant messages” from O’Reilly where he delineates
the difference between “pinheads” and “smart operators.”
According to O’Reilly, “a pinhead is a kid who brags about how much money she has or how much
money she’s spent on something.” (No argument there.)
“A smart operator is a kid who gets a decent night’s sleep so that everyone else doesn’t have to
suffer with him the next day.”
He’s got four whole chapters full of this crap. It looks like he lifted stuff straight out of a 1946 copy of
Boy’s Life and then removed all the edginess.
In Pinheads and Smart Operators: Instant Message Number 3, Bill writes “IMNSHO (which O’Reilly
and all teens apparently know means ‘In my not-so-humble opinion’), a pinhead gets sunburned.
Okay, a nice even tan can make you look healthy and sexy. Or it can advertise to your friends that
you’ve had a great winter vacation at the beach. But excessive sun exposure, according to the U.
S. Office of the Surgeon General …” -- and then on he goes about those legendary teen bugaboos
cataracts as well as studies from Boston University and the Centers for Disease Control. (Or the BU
to the CDC as O’Reilly might put it.)
First of all, Bill, I hate to be crass, but have you seen your skin? You look like something Ed Gein
made after he was finished upholstering the settee. Do you think you’re really going to reel kids in
with your thoughts on proper skin care? If they didn’t bail out after your take on gangsta rap (page 85,
I’m not even kidding), you’ve definitely lost them now.
Secondly, these kids are 14 and 15; they weren’t born in 1914 or ‘15. Honestly, what do you think you’
re accomplishing? Why not just write, “A pinhead finds blood in his stool and ignores it. A smart
operator gets regular colorectal screenings and eats a diet rich in fiber”?
Unfortunately, this book will impress no one -- not the teens whom it’s supposedly written for nor the
grandparents whom O’Reilly was probably actually hoping to fleece. It’s just plain too stupid.
I’m 39 now, and I know it’s sometimes tough to remember what it was like to be a kid, and trying to
make heads or tails out of teens’ culture, attitudes and beliefs years removed from your own painful
adolescence can be a Sisyphean task to be sure.
But that’s hardly the point. I remember fondly my grandmother on my mother’s side. She and I hardly
had anything to talk about other than the typical grandma/grandson stuff. As O’Reilly himself might
say, she was “squaresville.” For instance, she had a picture of Pope Paul VI on her wall -- 10 years
after he was dead. When I was a teen I used to mow her lawn; she’d give me $5 and some cookies
when I was finished. I’m fairly certain that when I was 23 she still thought I was in Scouts.
I wish she were alive, principally because she was my grandma and I loved her dearly, but close
behind that would be the opportunity to show her this book. I’m almost certain that by page 2 she
would have started rolling her eyes and done one of those “I’m masturbating” pantomimes.
I have to admit now, in the interest of fairness, that I didn’t read all of The O’Reilly Factor for Kids. I
took a cue from O’Reilly himself, who walked out of the middle of Fahrenheit 9/11, and ditched before
I was done with it.
Yeah, I can almost hear O’Reilly now -- “a pinhead reviews a book he hasn’t read in its entirety while
a smart operator gives it an honest shake.” But c’mon, Bill. It’s not that difficult to extrapolate from
beginning to end. If I didn’t get your wisdom on searching for changes in moles and freckles you’ll
just have to forgive me. But the truth is, there’s nothing here even remotely worthwhile. If your book
had been a TV show, it would have been canceled at the first commercial.
You had to know that. Or is it possible you’re really just this dense?
Previous Columns:
O'Reilly vs. Hillary: The Race That Never Was (and still he lost)
Bill O’Reilly -- Portrait of a Teat-Sucker