A Further Thought About Bill O’Reilly and Very Loud Men

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

There is a staggering irony to Bill O’Reilly inflaming the anger and suspicion that people have for Muslims.

Because it wasn’t all that long ago–just the middle of last century, in fact–that plenty of people opposed the notion of electing a Catholic to the office of President of the United States, on the assertion that he would simply take all his marching orders from the Vatican. Very Loud Men declared that a Catholic President would be nothing more than a puppet of the Pope, promoting the secret Catholic agenda (whatever that was.)

And a hundred years before that, when desperate Irish people were flooding our shores to escape the Potato Famine, Very Loud Men decried it, stating that the Irish would ruin our country. And the Very Loud Men got people very upset, and signs when up at places of employment declaring “Irish Need Not Apply.” And there isn’t any polling data available that I know of, but I’ll wager far more than seventy percent of Americans didn’t want those dámņëd Irish, not to mention their dámņëd Irish places of worship, anywhere on our fair shores.

And I’ll bet that a lot of those Very Loud Men looked and sounded a lot like an Irish Catholic man named Bill O’Reilly.

PAD

49 comments on “A Further Thought About Bill O’Reilly and Very Loud Men”

  1. The new American motto is: Fear Thy Neighbor.

    With all the lies, half truth and fantasies made up by politicians I am surprised that colleges dont change the course name to Poly Sci Fiction.

    I am a man in his 40s who loved politics as a youth, worked for the UN for a few years and volunteered in a number of campaigns. I’m an independant who thinks the best person should do the job regardless of party, but now I get sick when I hear anything coming out of politicians mouths.

    Republicans are evil who hate my people and spend every waking hour trying to deny us the ability to marry, adopt, teach, make love or join the military.

    Democrats are clueless and spineless and so disjointed that can never get anything done.

    Libertarian- have you been to an Indian Reservation? They are Libertarian, no thank you.

    Instead of choosing smart people we choose people who can get us the most afraid of our neighbors and yell the loudest. We deserve the politicians we have now.

    My only hope is that a Republican becomes President with a full Republican congress behind him. He makes it a law that every man, woman and child own a gun and then one day after that someone yells BOO!!! really loud and half the county shoots the other half.

    Maybe then we can start over.

  2. I have to wonder how much of what ORLY says is stuff he actually believes, and how much is just playing to his demo (who are the Loud Angry Men who really do believe). Has he gotten so far into character that he can no longer turn off the facade? At least with Colbert, you can be pretty sure it’s an act, but ORLY and Beck really sell their personas without a hint of irony.

    1. Every time O’Reilly goes on the Daily Show he acts like a WWE villain. He insults Jon and the people who watch the show, but in a playful, over the top way. A crowd that starts out hating him ends up laughing with him.
      .
      He’s an entertainer. He certainly has his beliefs and forms his entertainment around them, but he knows he’s putting on a show. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than the guys like Beck who are 100% sincere in their batshit craziness.

      1. When you go to a taping of the show, the guys who warm up the audience for the show routinely refer to Stephen being “in character” for the program.
        .
        PAD

      2. “Actually, there are people who think Colbert is not an act.”
        .
        I don’t think that’s really true.
        .
        It comes from a study a few years ago. Reporters wrote headlines saying “Some people think Colbert is for real” and everyone took that at face value, but the truth was more complicated. What happened in the study was that the researchers showed one segment to groups of people (including some people who hadn’t seen the show before) and asked them if what Colbert was doing was an act.
        .
        Here’s the thing: the segment they showed was an interview. Colbert is different in an interview, he often doesn’t have nearly as much over the top stuff as he’s trying to get something out of the guest. I watched the particular interview they showed and it was actually much less “in character” than usual. Often bits of Colbert’s real personality does come through in an interview and this was one of those times.
        .
        So it’s really not surprising that many people in the study thought that some of what Colbert was doing was real, since in that case some of it was real.

  3. I just wish someone would go on their shows and ask them why they feel it’s okay to promote the spread of racism. Just to see how they respond.

      1. Some people use “racism” as a ‘catch-all’ for any bigotry based on race, religion, or ethnicity. Linguistically, they shouldn’t. But they do. There isn’t a good term, though, for religious or ethnic hatred.

      2. Unfortunately, people don’t make the distinction between people who practice the religion and people who are of middle-eastern heritage.

        So they are, essentially, going out of their way to say “these people are okay to discriminate against”, even if they AREN’T Muslum or extremists.

  4. John:
    “There isn’t a good term, though, for religious or ethnic hatred.”
    .
    Bigotry comes to mind. So does prejudice.
    .
    “Some people use “racism” as a ‘catch-all’ for any bigotry based on race, religion, or ethnicity.”
    .
    I suspect these people are the same ones who think that “would of” means “would’ve.”
    .
    As to the matter at hand, these Loud Men PAD mentions (there are Loud Women too)… They all serve the same purpose: to divide us. I believe they are ranked with those who constantly proclaim, “There oughta be a law.”
    .
    Cheers!

    1. No, bigotry and prejudice aren’t good terms for religious or ethnic hatred. If one wants to say ‘apple’ one doesn’t say ‘fruit.’

      Xenophobia and Theophobia come close, but while fear is often the root of prejudice, it’s not the same thing.

      1. Bigotry and prejudice is exactly was it is. They may not denote the specific demographic being targeted, but there’s nothing wrong with a general catch-all.

      2. Hiya John,

        I admit that the smart-ášš in me wants to call you on your point by taking an extreme position by asking how we would accurately classify someone who has an unreasonable hatred of of left-handed Lithuanian malcontents with an addiction to spicy brown mustard, but I’ll spare you and everyone else that pile of B.S. because I honestly don’t believe that’s where you were going in the first place.
        .
        I am curious, though… Are you in search of accurate terminology or do you take issue with the idea of a ‘catch-all’ to describe irrational hatreds?
        .
        I hope that first paragraph didn’t put you off. It’s the comedian in me. If I don’t write stuff like that from time to time I’ll start pinching people again.
        .
        Salutations!

    2. As to the matter at hand, these Loud Men PAD mentions (there are Loud Women too)…
      .
      Yeah, I know. And we’ve got plenty of them nowadays, too. But O’Reilly is the one who keeps tossing around the 70% as if it means anything, and also “Very Loud Men” just sounded punchier to me than “Very Loud People.”
      .
      PAD

      1. Hiya PAD,
        .
        I wasn’t trying suggest anything there. I just had some manner of afterthought in the middle of typing. But if it was in the middle of typing is it still an afterthought? Perhaps it’s more like a parallel thought process… Shìŧ. Now my head hurts.
        .
        Cheerio!

  6. Was going to list the many many Islamic terrorist threats that we “know about” that have been stopped but really…why bother.

    Read an essay about the persistent failure of postmodern intellectuals to perceive and understand the world as it is, rather than as they would prefer it to be.

    It was good.

    1. Yes,, yes….but why bother with facts? You’re mind is made up.

      The persistent failure of many folks today is that they are criticizing postmodernist thinking without realizing they are employing the same type of thinking themselves.

      1. Whats interesting about your post is that I did not “bother” to post the MANY incidents because – you’re mind is made up, well if not yours, others……

        no one would care, you’d mention the Crusades, Spanish inquisition Abortion bombers, though there are more abortion attacks on law n order then in real life…

        Your minds are made up. You have a default setting of “American WHite Christian Bad” and you move on from that point.

        Sure there are alot of nuances lately….it seems multiculturism trumps Black liberal- Juan Williams, but he commited a sin and went on Fox so he deserved it.

      1. Did she actually say that? I once tried to find the source of the quote and had no luck.
        .
        Sometimes I wonder if there’s some poor bášŧárd out there coming up with all kinds of great quotes and having to watch everyone else get credit for them.

      2. It’s a theme in a number of her writings; whether she actually said it in print word for word, I couldn’t say. Lord knows I’ve never seen it attributed to anyone else.
        .
        PAD

  7. If the Papal Inquisitions of the Middle Ages were still in full swing in many parts of the world circa 1960, I think Kennedy would have had a hard time securing the Democratic nomination, let alone getting elected president. And that’s the problem Muslims face today: millions of Muslims are living under bloody 12th Century rules, greatly overshadowing the more enlightened members of their faith.

      1. The point was that Papal Inquisitions of the past and Muslim extremist terrorism of the present did not/do not reflect well upon the remaining members of those respective religions, making overall acceptance by the rest of world that much harder.

      3. I just watched that Python episode the other day, and it’s just as funny as when I first saw it back in the early 1970s.

  8. I was just thinking today about the fact that Delaware’s resident Christian lunatic Christine O’Donnell was talking about how she was praying that she would win or God spoke to her and said she would win or some such nonsense. But what I couldn’t thinking was, if she does indeed lose (and it looks increasingly likely that she will) does that mean that A) God decided he didn’t want her to win after all, or B) that an even greater number of Democrats were praying that she didn’t win? After all, if one is to use divine right as rationale for one’s actions, does that not mean you must follow that same line of reasoning through when one loses? I know, religion and logic are an uneasy pairing at best but it just makes me wonder: if ten people are praying for something to happen and twenty people are praying for it to not happen, don’t they have the strength of numbers?

    1. There’s a great Onion article (though I couldn’t find it) where a member of a losing basketball team places the blame squarely on God.

      Seriously, there are many religious people who see every victory as proof that God is on their side — and every defeat as proof that God is on their side but wants them to pray more or be more conservative. Either way, they convince themselves that God is 100% in their corner, no matter what happens.

      1. God is in their corner no matter what happens, it is something the faithless have yet to experience or refuse to accept.

      2. There’s a great Onion article (though I couldn’t find it) where a member of a losing basketball team places the blame squarely on God.
        .
        Comedian Jeff Stilson once said, “I don’t watch football anymore, I gave that up. I got tired of the interviews after the games, because the winning players always give credit to God, and the losers blame themselves. You know, just once I’d like to hear a player say, ‘Yeah, we were in the game, until Jesus made me fumble. He hates our team.”
        .
        PAD

      3. God is in their corner no matter what happens, it is something the faithless have yet to experience or refuse to accept.
        .
        I admit, I have never quite been able to wrap myself around the notion of people who have an earthquake tearing the ground from under their feet or a tornado bearing down on them, and they’re praying to God for help. Aren’t those called acts of God for a reason? If someone pushes you in front of an oncoming bus and then, at the last second, pulls you clear of it, just how much gratitude are you supposed to have?
        .
        But that might just be me.
        .
        PAD

    2. Well, Joe, the great thing about such thinking is that it’s eminently malleable. If O’Donnell firmly believes that God is in her corner, and she doesn’t win, then she will say that God is simply testing her resolve, and that she needs to redouble her efforts because God feels that she has to really, really, really want it.
      .
      PAD

    3. It’s all part of the Green Lantern Theory, which states that the main impediment preventing a goal from being realized is insufficient willpower. Conveniently, the theory cannot be disproved since any setback, military or otherwise, can simply be blamed on a lack of will, necessitating a redoubled effort with greater resolve.
      .
      The GLY was originally coined by Matt Yglesias to describe neoconservative geopolitical thinking, although I’ve seen it used to describe similar mindsets in different areas, such as financial regulation.
      .
      Basically, it comes down to “Clap louder!”

  9. “If the Papal Inquisitions of the Middle Ages were still in full swing in many parts of the world circa 1960, I think Kennedy would have had a hard time securing the Democratic nomination, let alone getting elected president.”

    Funny you say so; Catholic persecution of Protestants in Spain was ongoing back in 1960, courtesy of Generalissimo Franco, in the name of the Pope. And President Antonio Salazar had long been working to create his “Catholic Social Order”, “wherein the state, government and social institutions would base its laws of right and wrong on what the Gospels and the Catholic Church teach is right and wrong.” (Wikipedia’s entry)

    We won’t even mention South America…

    Point is, it wasn’t that far back in history when the Catholic Church was still in cozy relationships with theocratic regimes; many of our parents were alive. And the fear of JFK that existed, I’d say, even makes more sense than than fear of Muslims does now, since Muslims have no central figure considered the Man You Listen To Now That Mohammad Is Gone, whereas in theory, all good Catholics SHOULD take their marching orders from the Pope.

    We’re only fortunate that American individualism, combined with the heresy that naturally takes root when there’s no temporal power to pull out its weeds, and the pressures/comforts in adapting to a multicultural society, has resulted in modern American Catholics being less faithful than the Vicar of Christ would prefer. I guess the Democrats understood as much in the 60s.

  10. Olbermann made this exact same point last night at the close of ‘Countdown’. Great minds think alike, and, as an amazing coincidence, so do yours!

  11. If anything is going to ruin our country, it’s the Very Loud Men like Bill O’Reilly.

  13. Hmn… Very Loud Men… that sounds like a good name for a band…

    My mother has recently become anti-immigrant. I can only assume it’s a sign of senility. I remind her that her own mother was an immigrant, came here from Russia in 1904. “That was different,” my mother insists, “they came here legally.” Except that my grandmother always claimed that she was born in the US, and my mother said she lied about it because she came here illegally…

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