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Please. O'Reilly vs. Geraldo? We saw this coming years ago. Check out this excerpt from our
Nostradamusesque book, Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly:
Close Encounters of the Murdering Alien Kind
If there's one thing that really gets Bill's hemorrhoidal tissues inflamed, it's illegal immigration.
And guess what sort of illegal immigration most enrages O'Reilly? If you said Quebecois
separatists pouring over the Vermont border or salty fisherfolk from the coasts of Nova Scotia
rafting to Bangor, move to the back of the cramped, 120-degree hidden compartment with the
other undocumented Mexicans.1
No, it's not the subtle swarthiness of Montreal that's the burr in Bill's britches but the ruddy
chocolate-brown of our neighbor to the south.
This is one of O'Reilly's pet issues that—no matter how much he flogs it—never quite catches on
the way he thinks it should. And boy does he flog it. He knows it hasn't gotten the traction he'd like,
and make no mistake about it, this irritates him no end.
Of course, many commentators believe passionately in certain pet issues and set out to build
their case meticulously, appealing to the good sense and logic of their audience while relying
from time to time on the emotional resonance of their cause. But that's not O'Reilly's style.
O'Reilly's style is to lose all sense of perspective and, when this doesn't work, his feeble grip on
reality.
Bill tried to resurrect the immigration issue in September 2004 during his heavily promoted
interview with President Bush, remarking that "every year, 3.5 million illegals come over." But this
startling fact was accompanied by no outrage from the masses—no public outcry. The issue was
at a simmer, but Bill wanted a rolling boil.
On November 15, 2004, O'Reilly turned up the heat: "terrorists have an open invitation to attack
America from the south." Now the game was changing. O'Reilly was deemphasizing the grim
specter of brown hordes spilling over the border and was playing the terrorist card. Surely the
nation would throw a massive conniption fit. But nary a conniption was to be found.
On May 4, 2005, O'Reilly trotted out his biggest guns to date: "A micro-9/11. Mary Nagle allegedly
killed by an illegal alien. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo."
Yes, Bill had at last found his terrorist threat, and it was a micro-9/11. That's right. A micro-9/11.
Now everyone who was alive at the time remembers where he or she was when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor, when JFK was assassinated in Dealy Plaza, and when commercial
airliners piloted by Muslim terrorists crashed into Manhattan's World Trade Center. But we'll
wager that few of us can recall what we were doing when Mary Nagle of suburban New York was
attacked by an undocumented Guatemalan worker from a power-washing company.
Of course, any incident like this is a tragedy. It's a terrible tragedy for Mary Nagle and her family.
But it's not a micro-9/11. It's not a nano-9/11. It's not a pico-9/11. It has nothing to do with 9/11. It's
another murder in a country that, sad to say, sees thousands of murders each year.
But Bill is a classic scaremonger. He has to know that in a country of 300 million people with
millions of illegal aliens among us, eventually one of them is bound to murder a suburbanite. He
also knows that a suburban mother of two kids getting killed by a brown person with an accent is
worth barrels of ink—more so than if, say, one of those Nova Scotian scoundrels knifes a black
guy in a bar.
Bill's solemn duty as a journalist, then, is to find the one-in-ten-million story and make it sound
like a trend. He has no evidence that illegal aliens kill suburban mothers at a greater rate than do
naturalized citizens or natural-born citizens or even at a greater rate than suburban mothers kill
illegal immigrants. But he knows how the idea of Hispanic foreigners infiltrating homes with
murder in mind plays to his audience.
Unfortunately, this is the same kind of subtle racism that makes people buy the argument that
because brown, Middle Eastern Muslims attacked us on 9/11, we should invade a country full of
unrelated brown, Middle Eastern Muslims. Indeed, not since the Frito Bandito has one media
figure done more to advance Hispanic-white relations than Bill O'Reilly: "So Mary Nagle becomes
yet another victim of illegal alien killers. She is no less a victim of our government's failure to
protect us than all of those who died on 9/11."
Yes, and not since the killer bees scares of the seventies has there been a sillier campaign than
this. To say that this murder is analogous to 9/11, you basically have to argue that there's a
concerted effort on the part of illegal immigrants to kill U.S. citizens. Bill found one illegal-alien
killer among millions of illegal aliens living in the country. Of course, as Bill has no solid numbers
to back him up, the Mary Nagle murder is pretty much a worthless factoid. There's no evident trend
here, much less anything remotely like the organized hostilities of al-Qaeda. Whichever side you
come down on on the illegal immigration issue, it's hard to deny that.
Indeed, if you pored through Mexico death records, chances are it wouldn't take long before you
found an account of a drunk underaged Californian who plowed his SUV into a Mexican
grandmother on his way back from Tijuana. That would hardly make it a micro-Mexican-American
War—unless of course you're Bill Jorge O'Reilly-Gonzales of Mexico's fiercely patriotic Noticias del
Zorro Network.
1. Or "wetbacks" as O'Reilly calls them (The O'Reilly Factor, February 6, 2003).
2. Of course, if terrorists wanted to enter the country secretly, there are no doubt easier ways to do
it than hopping a crowded delivery truck to the border and swimming across the Rio Grande. The
government has also done little to address the prospect of al-Qaeda operatives dressing as
bears and drifting over the border from Saskatchewan. But you have to set your priorities, such as
protecting nuclear and chemical plants, which we haven't done quite enough about either.
Nostradamusesque book, Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly:
Close Encounters of the Murdering Alien Kind
If there's one thing that really gets Bill's hemorrhoidal tissues inflamed, it's illegal immigration.
And guess what sort of illegal immigration most enrages O'Reilly? If you said Quebecois
separatists pouring over the Vermont border or salty fisherfolk from the coasts of Nova Scotia
rafting to Bangor, move to the back of the cramped, 120-degree hidden compartment with the
other undocumented Mexicans.1
No, it's not the subtle swarthiness of Montreal that's the burr in Bill's britches but the ruddy
chocolate-brown of our neighbor to the south.
This is one of O'Reilly's pet issues that—no matter how much he flogs it—never quite catches on
the way he thinks it should. And boy does he flog it. He knows it hasn't gotten the traction he'd like,
and make no mistake about it, this irritates him no end.
Of course, many commentators believe passionately in certain pet issues and set out to build
their case meticulously, appealing to the good sense and logic of their audience while relying
from time to time on the emotional resonance of their cause. But that's not O'Reilly's style.
O'Reilly's style is to lose all sense of perspective and, when this doesn't work, his feeble grip on
reality.
Bill tried to resurrect the immigration issue in September 2004 during his heavily promoted
interview with President Bush, remarking that "every year, 3.5 million illegals come over." But this
startling fact was accompanied by no outrage from the masses—no public outcry. The issue was
at a simmer, but Bill wanted a rolling boil.
On November 15, 2004, O'Reilly turned up the heat: "terrorists have an open invitation to attack
America from the south." Now the game was changing. O'Reilly was deemphasizing the grim
specter of brown hordes spilling over the border and was playing the terrorist card. Surely the
nation would throw a massive conniption fit. But nary a conniption was to be found.
On May 4, 2005, O'Reilly trotted out his biggest guns to date: "A micro-9/11. Mary Nagle allegedly
killed by an illegal alien. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo."
Yes, Bill had at last found his terrorist threat, and it was a micro-9/11. That's right. A micro-9/11.
Now everyone who was alive at the time remembers where he or she was when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor, when JFK was assassinated in Dealy Plaza, and when commercial
airliners piloted by Muslim terrorists crashed into Manhattan's World Trade Center. But we'll
wager that few of us can recall what we were doing when Mary Nagle of suburban New York was
attacked by an undocumented Guatemalan worker from a power-washing company.
Of course, any incident like this is a tragedy. It's a terrible tragedy for Mary Nagle and her family.
But it's not a micro-9/11. It's not a nano-9/11. It's not a pico-9/11. It has nothing to do with 9/11. It's
another murder in a country that, sad to say, sees thousands of murders each year.
But Bill is a classic scaremonger. He has to know that in a country of 300 million people with
millions of illegal aliens among us, eventually one of them is bound to murder a suburbanite. He
also knows that a suburban mother of two kids getting killed by a brown person with an accent is
worth barrels of ink—more so than if, say, one of those Nova Scotian scoundrels knifes a black
guy in a bar.
Bill's solemn duty as a journalist, then, is to find the one-in-ten-million story and make it sound
like a trend. He has no evidence that illegal aliens kill suburban mothers at a greater rate than do
naturalized citizens or natural-born citizens or even at a greater rate than suburban mothers kill
illegal immigrants. But he knows how the idea of Hispanic foreigners infiltrating homes with
murder in mind plays to his audience.
Unfortunately, this is the same kind of subtle racism that makes people buy the argument that
because brown, Middle Eastern Muslims attacked us on 9/11, we should invade a country full of
unrelated brown, Middle Eastern Muslims. Indeed, not since the Frito Bandito has one media
figure done more to advance Hispanic-white relations than Bill O'Reilly: "So Mary Nagle becomes
yet another victim of illegal alien killers. She is no less a victim of our government's failure to
protect us than all of those who died on 9/11."
Yes, and not since the killer bees scares of the seventies has there been a sillier campaign than
this. To say that this murder is analogous to 9/11, you basically have to argue that there's a
concerted effort on the part of illegal immigrants to kill U.S. citizens. Bill found one illegal-alien
killer among millions of illegal aliens living in the country. Of course, as Bill has no solid numbers
to back him up, the Mary Nagle murder is pretty much a worthless factoid. There's no evident trend
here, much less anything remotely like the organized hostilities of al-Qaeda. Whichever side you
come down on on the illegal immigration issue, it's hard to deny that.
Indeed, if you pored through Mexico death records, chances are it wouldn't take long before you
found an account of a drunk underaged Californian who plowed his SUV into a Mexican
grandmother on his way back from Tijuana. That would hardly make it a micro-Mexican-American
War—unless of course you're Bill Jorge O'Reilly-Gonzales of Mexico's fiercely patriotic Noticias del
Zorro Network.
1. Or "wetbacks" as O'Reilly calls them (The O'Reilly Factor, February 6, 2003).
2. Of course, if terrorists wanted to enter the country secretly, there are no doubt easier ways to do
it than hopping a crowded delivery truck to the border and swimming across the Rio Grande. The
government has also done little to address the prospect of al-Qaeda operatives dressing as
bears and drifting over the border from Saskatchewan. But you have to set your priorities, such as
protecting nuclear and chemical plants, which we haven't done quite enough about either.
April 9, 2007 - O'Reilly vs. Geraldo... our prophecy fulfilled