Welcome to the No-Spin Zone

Posted on May 27, 2003

David Brake points to an amazing transcript of a recent interview on Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor” between anchor-slash-blowhard Bill O’Reilly and Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the 9-11 attacks and who signed an ad opposing the war in Iraq.

(Note that the transcript is hosted by a liberal news site, so its veracity may be suspect — Brake reports it’s been confirmed in the latest issue of Harpers’, but their site doesn’t have that confirmation online yet, so I can’t say for certain. If it isn’t confirmed by a reliable source soon I may shell out the $9.95 to Fox for a copy of the official transcript to see…)

If this is for real, it’s an amazing read. O’Reilly comes off as the biggest jerk on the face of the Earth — he actually at one point berates Glick by arguing that he knows what Glick’s father would have wanted better than Glick does:

O’REILLY: You’re entitled to it, all right, but you’re — you see, even — I’m sure your beliefs are sincere, but what upsets me is I don’t think your father would be approving of this.
GLICK: Well, actually, my father thought that Bush’s presidency was illegitimate.
O’REILLY: Maybe he did, but…
GLICK: I also didn’t think that Bush…
O’REILLY: … I don’t think he’d be equating this country as a terrorist nation as you are.
GLICK: Well, I wasn’t saying that it was necessarily like that.
O’REILLY: Yes, you are. You signed…
GLICK: What I’m saying is…
O’REILLY: … this, and that absolutely said that.
GLICK: … is that in — six months before the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, starting in the Carter administration and continuing and escalating while Bush’s father was head of the CIA, we recruited a hundred thousand radical mujahadeens to combat a democratic government in Afghanistan, the Turaki government.
O’REILLY: All right. I don’t want to…
GLICK: Maybe…
O’REILLY: I don’t want to debate world politics with you.
GLICK: Well, why not? This is about world politics.
O’REILLY: Because, No. 1, I don’t really care what you think.

Wow. “I don’t really care what you think.” So I guess the only reason he invited Glick to be on his show was to bully and berate him. To Glick’s credit, though, he more than holds his own. I’m glad to see that politeness and tolerance for opposing viewpoints are alive and well in the fair and balanced No-Spin Zone!