Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [31]
A little while later, O’Reilly told Glick to “shut up, shut up!” When Glick tried to explain his point, O’Reilly told his engineer: “Cut his mic. I’m not going to dress you down anymore out of respect for your father.”
Once the microphones and cameras were off, Glick later told Harper’s magazine, O’Reilly sent him on his way with some words of fatherly advice: “Get out of my studio before I tear you to fucking pieces!”
Rap artist Ludacris never had the pleasure of being a guest on O’Reilly’s show. But as Ludacris himself might say: This member of the hip-hopcracy was a victim of the man’s hypocrisy.
After Pepsi featured Ludacris in an ad for their world-famous soft drink, Pepsi, O’Reilly called on his viewers to start a boycott.
I’m calling for all responsible Americans to fight back and punish Pepsi for using a man who degrades women, who encourages substance abuse, and does all the things that hurt particularly the poor in our society. I’m calling for all Americans to say, Hey, Pepsi, I’m not drinking your stuff. You want to hang around with Ludacris, you do that, I’m not hanging around with you.
The clarion call brought an immediate result. As he said the next day on his show, “Because of pressure by Factor viewers, Pepsi-Cola late today capitulated. Ludacris has been fired.”
Now, I don’t hold any brief for Ludacris. My son loves his stuff, as do many members of TeamFranken. Also, my daughter dated him for a while, and I have to say, he seemed like a nice enough fellow.
It’s just that, ignoring the obvious evidence of his name, O’Reilly insists on taking Ludacris’s profane lyrics about prostitutes, street violence, and drug use at face value. According to my son, Joe, what he enjoys about Ludacris is his gift for playful and irreverent hyperbole. That’s how Joe put it in his tenth-grade essay, “Ludacris and The Mayor of Casterbridge,” for which he received a B+.
In his own artistic efforts, however, O’Reilly doesn’t display the same deft touch. Especially when writing about teen crack whores, pimps, vicious murders, and something that O’Reilly calls “fellatio.”
I’m referring to his 1998 suspense thriller, Those Who Trespass, about “a serial killer who will exact revenge on everyone who has sabotaged his rising TV career.” Believe it or not, this is a real book written by the real Bill O’Reilly.
Here is one of my favorite scenes, in which the killer, Shannon Michaels, seduces Ashley Van Buren, a tabloid reporter. I should warn you, because of the turgid, pedestrian prose and frank sexual nature of the following, young children and English majors might want to skip ahead.
Ashley was now wearing only brief white panties. She had signaled her desire by removing her shirt and skirt, and by leaning back on the couch. She closed her eyes, concentrating on nothing but Shannon’s tongue and lips. He gently teased her by licking the areas around her most sensitive erogenous zone. Then he slipped her panties down her legs and, within seconds, his tongue was inside her, moving rapidly.
In Ludacris’s hit album Word of Mouf, which my son tells me means “word of mouth,” there are depictions of four murders. In Those Who Trespass, there are six murders, one of which involves jamming a spoon through the roof of the victim’s mouth and up into his brain stem. O’Reilly’s book also depicts a fifteen-year-old crack whore performing this “fellatio” business on her pimp, Robo. (“Say, baby, put that pipe down and get my pipe up.”) While Ludacris, like O’Reilly, enjoys describing oral sex scenes, there are none on his album involving a teen crack whore.
However, when it comes to the use of the words “fuck” and “bitch,” O’Reilly simply can’t compete, managing a mere 51 variants of both words. Ludacris, on the other hand, achieves a commanding lead with 109 “fucks” and “bitches,” a better than two-to-one advantage.
Perhaps, in light of their similar taste for profanity, oral sex, and hos, O’Reilly had second thoughts about his jihad against Ludacris, because five months later, O’Reilly denied that