Bill O’Reilly: Public Intellectual
Once again, O’Reilly brings the stupid as only he can, but the sad reality is that the demographic that watches his show nodded their heads in agreement.
The dumbing down of public schooling, the childishness of public discourse, and our apparent dislike of learning has real world consequences. Are we really that far away from watering our crops with Gatorade… “because it has electrolytes“? As for O’Reilly, Kevin Drum nails it:
Note that this wasn’t just an off-the-cuff howler. O’Reilly chose to air Gillies’ letter and had his response all teed up on the prompter. Here are the alternatives for how this happened: (a) Not a single person on his staff noticed that this was nonsensical. (b) Someone noticed but didn’t have guts to tell O’Reilly he was wrong. (c) Someone noticed, told O’Reilly, but was unable to convince him that he’d flubbed his fourth grade arithmetic. (d) O’Reilly does this stuff all by himself and doesn’t show it to anyone before airtime. I’m going with (b).
I’m taking (b) as well…
Posted: July 29th, 2009 under Popular Culture, Public Intellectuals.
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Comment from asp
Time: July 29, 2009, 12:26 pm
I wish hard for (d). Who would willingly allow him to spew mindless chatter under the guise of journalism? Lest we forget his recent ridiculous rant on Amsterdam. I wanted to choke him through my computer screen. My only solace comes from convincing myself that no one is giving this maniac a green light to vomit misinformation and call it news. Sadly, reality sets in and I know the real answer is (a).
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