Why You Should Enjoy Bill O’Reilly’s Suffering

by Jesse Berney

Bill O’Reilly continues to deny that he has ever told a lie in his entire career as a reporter, no matter how much evidence piles up against him. And I still believe this strategy will work for him. O’Reilly isn’t going to be fired, or suspended, or miss a single broadcast because of the latest controversy.

Fox News doesn’t care about his credibility. He doesn’t have credibility. What he has is an audience who believes every word he says, and reports from Mother Jones or The Washington Post aren’t going to change that.

But even if O’Reilly keeps his show until his entire audience dies off — which given their age, could be any day now — this is still a great story that you should enjoy. Why?

Because O’Reilly is a genuinely bad person.

If you’ve watched his show for more than 10 minutes, you already know that he is not a nice man. He yells at people. He makes stuff up. If you don’t agree with him, you are a pinhead or worse.

But maybe that’s just the character he plays on TV? Maybe in real life he’s warm and cuddly, kind to puppies and children.

Except the most remarkable thing about the stories that have surfaced recently has been the flood of former co-workers — at CBS, at that station in Dallas — who have come out and spoken on the record, under their own names, about how O’Reilly is a jerk, a liar, and a crappy reporter. That’s not something that happens to nice guys.

Of course, O’Reilly is already famous for accusations of on-set tantrums, sexual harassment, and even using the local police as his own personal private detective agency. There never has  been any serious question about whether he’s a nice guy.

Look, he is keeping his job at Fox; you can bet on it. But you can also bet he is furious that he has to defend himself from public accusations of being a liar — and that people he worked with don’t see the hero he sees when he looks in the mirror.

So take a moment, and imagine how terrible the last week has been for Bill O’Reilly. That’s something we can — and should — all enjoy.