Let us consider Mr. O'Reilly. Now, please understand, this writer really doesn't know much about Mr. O'Reilly's personal life, but he does know that Mr. O'Reilly was, at one time, a public school teacher, is a Catholic, and has been caught up in a couple of personal scandals that made the news for about five minutes. He has hired ghost writers to write his "Killing..." series of books and has, apparently, done little of the research done in the books. Sometimes one wonders if he has even read the books to which his name is attached.
Mr. O'Reilly, as a Catholic schoolboy of his time, would have been taught that the Jews killed Jesus. In the intervening years that particular view has become unpopular, and the blame has shifted from the Pharisees and the Jews of Jerusalem to Pontious Pilate and the Roman or we all did because of our sin nature. Having not read Mr. O'Reilly's book on the matter (after all, one only has so much time to read bad books, and that time is usually best used for old pulp novels and penny dreadfuls), but your faithful correspondent assumes that in the book Mr. O'Reilly blamed the Romans and/or us. If he could he probably would have named the man who thrust the spear into Christ's side so he have a "scoop." Can you imagine the headlines? "O'Reilly claims that Biggus Dopus killed Jesus! Jews worldwide breathe a sigh of relief!"
The reality of the matter with Bill O'Reilly is that he is no more intelligent, informed or wise than the average man or woman. He's got the gift of gab and a loud voice. One gets more informed opinions from one's barmaid or barber simply because they live lives at the ground floor. And O'Reilly is one of the most condescending men on television. His constant use of the word "folks" instead of "people" or "the population" is a bad attempt to appear caring and folksy. Well, he is, in the New York sense. He's like a CUNY ethnic musicologist who puts up with by a sung version of Barbary Ellen sung by a 90 year old man in the Ozarks who has never heard another version of the song, but considers it nonsense because it doesn't line up with Jean Ritchie's version. The "folks" are supposed to line up with his version of what "folks" are. The man is a fake populist. He wants no more to do with a real Texas cattle rancher or aerospace worker or clerk at Wal-Mart than any of us do want to do with the crazy homeless guy at the corner befouling himself while waving away djinns and muttering about the Pythagorean theorem.
The man is a clown of the August type (look it up). Just fool who pretends to be serious; in fact, super serious of almost Thomas Aquinas type. But it's easy for a fool to pretend to be wise. Politicians have done it for centuries. Serious men and women do serious things. They have serious thoughts. They write serious books (by themselves and not with ghostwriters). And they speak seriously. O'Reilly does none of these things. He's incapable of doing so. Peter Finley Dunn, in his Mr. Dooley articles from the early 20th century, wrote more seriously than does O'Reilly.
And so, Mr. O'Reilly gives his twin, Donald Trump, a lot of air time. Trump, like O'Reilly, is a snob while pretending not to be one, not wise, not smart (except in money --- and that can be disputed), a fake populist, and very, very loud. And while Mr. O'Reilly may occasionally rail against Mr. Trump, he knows that his money is to be made from Trump. And that means that Mr. O'Reilly is no better than the people than Mr. Trump and he rail against simply because the two of them are the people they rail against. Neither one has been a stone mason like Socrates, a tinsmith like John Bunyan. They've been school boys, college boys and then professionals. The non-professionals are there to serve them and they are not loath to get what they want by pretending to kowtow to those they really think their lessers
Trump is a modern Mussolini and O'Reilly is his D'Annunzio
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