Watching Bill O'Reilly on David Letterman last night was, to say the least, a bittersweet experience. Each made sort of a fool of himself, but each also did just well enough that partisans on both sides predictably declared their guy the winner of the skirmish. Ho hum.
I was quite disappointed, though, that Dave didn't debunk Bill when Bill pulled out the fully discredited story about the "Silent Night" lyrics at a school in Dodgeville. Dave, that could have started the segment out with a slam-dunk. Try preparing for interviews next time, OK?
But mainly, I have a message for Bill. Hey Bill: if I want to change the lyrics to fucking "Silent Night," or fucking "Good King Wenceslas," or whatever, I'm going to fucking do it. If I want to have an "Atheist Holiday Solstice Pageant" like on South Park, where the cute moppets run around in grey jumpsuits holding up cardboard face masks of Noam Chomsky wearing a Santa hat, I'm going to fucking do it.
(now there's an idea!)
2 comments:
Bill O'Reilly is an obnoxious asshole, but David Letterman ties up the whole interview saying this: "I'm not smart enough to debate you point to point on this, but I have a feeling about 60% of what you say is crap, but I don't know that for a fact."
That was cute and got a laugh, but is a telling symptom of what ails debate in this country: emotion-based theories rather than critical thinking.
Letterman proved himself uninformed and rude, childish. I was disappointed and lost some respect for him. I've always liked David Letterman. I've never been a fan of Bill O'Reilly, but he was the superior in this exchange.
As I've said, I pretty much agree with you, Anonymous. All Dave would have had to do was the smallest amount of research and he could have easily won the segment.
As I've also said, though, I don't think either was "the superior." They both acted like asses, and Dave did his best to navigate through the "doesn't it matter how we got there" segment, even if he was somewhat inarticulate doing it.
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