Thursday, April 20, 2017

Why Bill O'Reilly is gone

Bill O'Reilly had a good run.  But it was bound to end, and end it did.  I would have preferred that he had gone out under indictment, or otherwise frog marched in front of the cameras with his sport jacket over his head, but at least he's gone.

Bill is not unlike others of his mold: basically a big bully who has gotten everything to go his way for his entire life.  His downfall was a cumulative effect of how he lived his life:

Ivy League educated.  How he got into Harvard is anybody's guess, based on his background.  He grew up in a working class neighborhood in Leavitttown, NY, with a working class father scratching out a living.  But once he graduated from Harvard, he had that arrogance that all the Ivy League schools imbue in their graduates: they are our betters, they know everything and should be given whatever they want in life.  These Ivy Leaguers are for the most part insufferable.  And Bill O'Reilly is no exception. I hate Ivy League graduates.

He is a good looking guy.  It's no secret that good looking people have a leg up in society.  Notice that there are no bald, fat, short people reporting the evening news.  No, that just will never happen.  As he got older, he got uglier (don't we all), but in his youth he was a dashing figure, and he moved to the front of the line at all times, whatever line he wanted to cut.  I hate good looking people.

He is 6'4" tall.  Tall people always seem to think that because they can look over the crowd without a step stool, they know everything.  It starts in grade school or junior high: once these guys get to be that big, they assume the 'bull of the woods' mentality: don't you know I'm bigger than you?  And because I'm bigger than you, I am right and you are wrong.  True, not every tall guy is like this, but most are, or at least most tall guys that are 6'4" or taller that I've ever known are. All these tall guys were born on third base and think they hit a triple.  I hate tall guys.

And finally, he got wildly rich and famous.  That was the final nail in the coffin for Ivy League educated, good looking tall guys.  They think their poop doesn't stink.   I hate wildly rich and famous guys.

Bill O'Reilly had all of these things 'going for him,' or so he thought.  He would yell down his guests when they started getting the best of him, such as Barney Frank and Geraldo Rivera.  Screaming matches is how these guys get their way.  And with women, they just assume since they are Ivy League educated, good looking and tall, the girls will just swoon as they work their magic.

In Bill's case, a few of these gals he ran into didn't buy into all of his charms, and probably told him to go pound sand.  Big, Ivy League educated handsome tall guys don't put up with that, and his handlers had to pay up some significant monetary settlements to smooth over his misdeeds.

I will not miss Bill O'Reilly.  He was a big, nasty bully, and finally was held to account.  

26 comments:

LL said...

Ok, I take your point.

However, O'Reilly managed to keep substantial ratings by entertaining people, because that's why they tuned in to see him. Most of the cable news celebs are bullies (whether they're dwarves like Rivera or weird lezbos like Maddow, or big guys like O'Reilly). Fox does not have a deep bench of people who can sit in the chair and entertain the way that O'Reilly did.

I would have preferred for Fox and O'Reilly to have told the accusers - "take me to court" - but that's not how it's done these days. The corporations pay people off when it's 'harassment'. Whether the accusations were legitimate or not, is something that we'll never know. Harmless banter and locker room exchanges between the genders turn into "evil" activities when there is a big purse involved. I've seen it myself from my days working in those environments.

Which is why I don't employ anyone on a permanent basis and I don't employ women. I've seen it happen all too often. If I need to employ a woman, I say, "Fredd, hire woman X to do this or that", and I pay Fredd, and let Fredd deal with it... (in a metaphorical sense).

Fredd said...

LL: I agree with everything you said. Especially the women subordinate thing. There is no way to come out on top in those circumstances, if you run into a woman who knows how to work the system.

If you are a guy, go ahead and try to discipline a woman employee who has gone astray, I dare you. And that metaphorical situation above would never happen, as Fredd may be dumb, but he ain't THAT dumb.

sig94 said...

Reilly was never my kind of guy. Stopped watching him years ago and just started again with the 2016 elections. He does make at least one good point usually in his broadcast but he is an arrogant p***k. Still, who will replac him?

As for women in the workforce, I saw it coming coming as a young cop when a federal court ordered the city to hire a certain percentage of women and blacks back around 1978 or so. The lesbians came with that package and the Third Platoon Patrol (1500 to 2300) became the Love Platoon. Lesbos fighting over women, female cops fighting over males cops (shots were fired in one instance) and the constant bullshit. As a patrol sergeant I had a female cop demand time off because she just got her navel pierced and it hurt to wear a gun belt. A few years later I had a civilian community service office come to me saying she found a pistol in the ladies room. That same cop with the piercing had left her duty .45 on top of the shitter and walked out.

One day I walked into the 1st Deputy Chief's office and there was this attractive female officer with huge tits giving him a back rub; him with this disgusting leer on his face, door wide open so anyone could see what was going on. We had several high command personnel get reprimanded or fired because they received sexual favors from female cops. Some on duty...

Okay - I'm done bitching.

Fredd said...

Sig: I understand your bitching.

Anybody who has been involved in this women's equality thing has gone through it. Myself, I was an enlisted guy in the U.S. Army, and in 1974 as a buck private, I saw how this all was not going to work out. They started integrating women into what were previously all male military jobs, and immediately the women started taking advantage of things, and you know how this all goes down: men fight for the affections of women, women see this and exploit their situation. Women got all the good gigs, didn't have to pull the shit details, and got off work whenever they wanted (Woman: 'I have a women thing, Sarge, I can't pull guard duty.' Sarge: 'that's ok, sweetie, you just take care of whatever you need to do...' And the rest of us dudes pull double guard duty.

And on and on. And don't think for a moment that this shit was only on occasion; it happened all the time, every damn hour of every damn day in every damn unit....

Ok, I'm done bitching.

LL said...

O'Reilly is worth $80 million. The Fox pay-off on his contract will be on the order of $20+ million. He's 67 years old and the income from his best selling books (which he won't be able to pimp on the air anymore) is significant. True, he's lost the people kissing his ass on the air, etc. but there will still be plenty of ass kissing going on.

He needs to take the money, run, and don't look back. If NBC was smart, they'd put him on to attract a conservative audience and boost their slagged ratings.

Fredd said...

LL: Bill won't be hurting, that's for sure. I'm not convinced that he's as big of a reprobate as those women suggest, since nobody will probably ever know what happened. His story is that he has deep pockets which attract extortion, and there's nothing to any of this. That could very well be. As they say, where's there's smoke, there's fire. The Bill Cosby saga looked very similar: revered old guy with lots of dough gets served with pervert charges. Old guy pays up.

All of this aside, Big Bill O'Reilly has always rubbed me the wrong way just by being himself. That, and I get sick of his self promotion and shilling his dumb books on his show. "Killing O'Reilly," now that might be a book I will order on my Kindle.

Gorges Smythe said...

I wouldn't want him for a neighbor, but I liked his show. At least he had some backbone to go with his arrogance, something severely lacking with most TV personalities.

LL said...

Bill O'Reilly reminded me of an old boss of mine, who rubbed me the wrong way a lot, but I had a soft place in my heart for him - and some of that rubbed off on my view of O'Reilly. He was #1 in cable news for 16 years running, so he did something right. Sure, he chased skirt. He's a heterosexual male, a rarity in broadcast journalism these days.

You and I both come from a generation where men were allowed to be men. Today they're largely neutered by the androgynous society. My daughters say that I'm hopelessly outdated. If a woman hands me her purse to hold, I have ALWAYS set it on the ground. They ask why. I said/say, I'm guarding it but I'll be damned if I'll hold it. That sort of talk gets a man into trouble these days. I got in trouble the other day (with one of my daughters) for calling a Japanese person a "Jap". I said that "Jap" isn't an insult. I was raised calling them Japs. Seems that's no longer politically correct. And the daughters also told me that referring to local Mohammedans as "dune coons/rag heads/camel jockies, sand ni***rs, etc" isn't proper either. And this is my point, I guess. I have a lot more in common with a bloated, fat cat like O'Reilly than I do with the children who 'read the news'.

I'll miss him...shameless self-promotion notwithstanding.

Most of the news that I'm interested in comes in the form of feeds from different sources that I use for work, so cable TV news isn't essential to my daily digest.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Who cares, just one more professional blowhard. More successful than most, but a blowhard none the less.

Fredd said...

Gorges: I watched him, mostly just to yell at the TV when he was on. "LET HIM TALK, BILL!" "LET THE GUY FINISH A SENTENCE, BILL!" "SHUT UP, BILL!" Or words to that effect.

Fredd said...

Fool: a reprobate blowhard at that. Good riddance. People kept wondering why I detested the guy, as he was a conservative, just like me. Hold on there, Hop Sing: Bill O'Reilly was no conservative. He was a centrist, or independent. Which in my book means he's a liberal, and takes no side on many hot button issues. I've got no use for a pinko like Bill O'Reilly.

Fredd said...

LL: yes, he's old fashioned. He opens doors and pulls chairs out for women, says sir and ma'am. But he is certainly more liberal in many areas than I like, and he never held Obama's feet to the fire on his program, or not as much as he should have. Unforgivable, in my book. Obama was an outright crooked sumbitch, a lying sack of shit, and took Americans for as much as he could before he left office. The scumbag. And Bill never went that far, but should have.

neal said...

There is an old nun with a ruler somewhere thinking "I tried, I really tried!"

I hope she saves me for last.

Kid said...

Who the hell would be working at 65+ years of age and more than 100 mil in the bank?

Not me.

LindaG said...

We enjoyed his show, and I don't know if I believe the accusations. As you say, most women play the system, especially if they are minorities.

I remember back when I worked for Slowes in NC, there was one black lady employee that couldn't do anything right, so of course she kept getting promoted. I wasn't the only one who was annoyed by that, but I didn't let it bother me until the one night when I needed something done and couldn't leave my register to do it. She told me it wasn't her job and that was it. I gave them my two weeks notice and that was it. I had just gotten my 3 year pin, too, haha!

And of course one time when we went back to the store, she had gotten yet another promotion.

Fredd said...

Kid: sure, it's nice to think that once you have it made, you just kick back, smell the roses and fish all day. Or sit on the beach all day in St. Croix and sip girly drinks with umbrellas in them.

Doesn't work that way. Nobody is happy doing that in the long term. After awhile, the thrill of catching fish wears off, and those girly drinks get tiresome on that same old beach. People are what they do. If you do nothing, you are nothing.

I will work until I can't anymore. It gives me a sense of worth, of accomplishment, keeps goals in front of me. Even though I can retire now, I never will.

Fredd said...

LindaG: yes, most YOUNG women do play the system. Not all, but most from what I have observed. And I have observed a lot: I've been hired and fired 8 times, in 8 different states. I've scrubbed floors, washed dishes as well as managed up to 300 people, with ten direct reporting to me.

To my point, the younger and better looking the gal, the more she uses her charms to advance. The older and uglier, they know those days are over, and they tend to keep their noses to the grindstone. When comes time to hire, hire the old and ugly gals. They work out way better in the long run. Hiring the young cute gal, and you are begging for a sexual harrassment lawsuit, jut begging for it.

I'm not trying to come off as a sexist, pathetic pig. I'm just relaying what I have seen with my own eyes over a fairly diverse and lengthy working career. It is what it is.

Gorges Smythe said...

What I find amusing here, Fredd, is that I've always felt exactly the same way about you as you feel about O'Reilly, yet I enjoy BOTH of you and even agree with you both 90% of the time. Maybe you don't like him because you see too much of him in the mirror! - lol

LindaG said...

When I was growing up, there was a song. I had to look it up. It was recorded by Jimmy Soul. It went kind of like "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, get an ugly girl to marry you..."
Or something like that. I never would have considered you either of those adjectives. You are stating a fact that can't be helped but be true.

TGIF, be safe and have a blessed week!

Fredd said...

Gorges: I actually agree with myself about 90% of the time. And yes, Big Bully Bill held some positions I agreed with. But so did Adolph Hitler. And probably Mao.

Kid said...

I could be wrong because this is 2nd hand. I don't watch. But apparently 7 years in ORiely was saying obama needed time. That would have surely crossed ORiely off my list forever.

Ditto, and I heard Beck say it. Wasn't far into obama's term and I heard Beck's voice come across my radio "We have to support our bipartisan president" Click off an never back on again.

I have zero tolerance for that s*.

Fredd said...

Kid: I agree with you. We don't need to give people who's wrong headed and misguided philosophies spread chaos into our culture. We need to nip it in the bud, not give it time to see if things turn around. Simply don't elect pinkos and commies to public office.

People like O'Reilly and Beck are smart, so much so that they think that whatever they conclude on any issue is the correct one to foist on everyone else.

We have elections for that. And we do give these idiots time. Time until the next election.

Fredd said...

Pastor: sure, for Harvard it's Satan, for Princeton it's Ba'al, and Beelzebub is all the rage at Columbia.

There's just no salvation for those Ivy League guys. They go straight to hell sooner or later. They are what Hillary Clinton would call 'irredeemable.' Then again, the Old Crone has her own redemption issues; she went to Yale.

Z said...

You have a lot I disagree with, not sure you're right, about O'Reilly, or let me say what you've said is largely conjecture at this point. But I believe rejoicing in his leaving FOX is ill placed happiness; this is worse for FOX than any of us quite understand at this point, in my humble opinion.
You DO know that they're now saying Hannity did some harassing, and Jesse Watters just took the same kind of 'vacation' O'Reilly did after Gloria Allred's idiot daughter threatened with a tweet that "We got Bill O'Reilly, maybe if you don't watch it, you're next, Watters"

Ya, they GOT O'Reilly... He's doing a horribly tinny podcast now...here's one of them. it's pathetic, no video, tinny audio....I'm astonished he'd allow himself to do it...and he suggests there's plenty he and his people are working on that will show 'something'...what, who knows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLKs-YQ38-w&app=desktop

Fredd said...

Z: I am unconcerned with who 'got' Bill O'Reilly; I never liked the guy, not his style, his delivery, his nothing. Nothing about the guy did I ever like.

He was an abrasive jerk. And I would never, EVER consider tuning into whatever his message is now that he's exited Fox News. IMO, he was axed by the Murdock sons, for politically correct reasons, nothing that would ever hold up in court. That doesn't mean, however, that he didn't behave poorly from time to time. Yes, we disagree on this. Conjecture? Naw, just calling the balls and strikes as I see 'em.

Kid said...

Ok, Where's Fredd. ?