30 November 2004 Blog Home : November 2004 : Permalink
Buzzmachine, Captains Quarters and others are all over this bizarre Bill O'Reilly column. The column is practically a textbook example of how to not argue a case. I can't say O'Reilly has ever appealed to me and ever since we learned about his phone sex issues his appeal has dropped even further. Just as Samizdata's Brian Micklethwait puts it while discussing Mr Blunkett's Ugandan Discussions:
Some people, of the sort who confuse (or who like to pretend for propaganda purposes that they confuse) libertarianism with libertinism, might expect a libertarian like me to rejoice at any collapse in marital fidelity. But my libertarianism is about the right to choose what promises you make, not about the right to break them with impunity, to the point where you are not even to be criticised for such cheating
In fact I go a bit further: the offense that really gets us is hypocrisy and this latest O'Reilly column is full of hypocrisy. Dan Rather, just like Bill O'Reilly, acted like he knew what was best for us. It was OK for real TV investigative journalists to investigate things and find out things, but it was unfair for bloggers to investigate the TV journalists.
We all make mistakes, the big question is do we come clean and admit them or do we attempt to hide it and shift the blame. Dan Rather did the latter during the bogus memo scandal. O'Reilly did the same when he tried to accuse his accuser of extortion. Both attempts failed. Compare President GW Bush, who has never denied that he was a drunk at one pont in his life, with his predecessor, who denied having "sex with that woman". Who is more credible?
There is a lesson here. It is not what O'Reilly thinks is it though:
Let me ask you something: In the future, do you think potential public servants and social crusaders are going to risk being brutally attacked within this insane system? I don't. I think many good people are simply going to walk away from the public arena.
Dan Rather did not get what he deserved in this case. He made a mistake, as we all do, but he is not a dishonest man.
Unfair freedom of speech did him in. This is not your grandfather's country anymore.
There was no unfair freedom of speech. There was a hitherto respected news anchor who attempted a sloppy hit piece and got caught when the sloppiness was fund out in a couple of hours. Just like there was a TV host who sexually harassed his underlings and got slapped with a sexual harassment suit. The lesson is that the general public doesn't like hypodrites and the pyjamahadeen can and does expose the hypocrisy of public figures in a way that the mainstream media doesn't.
It seems to me that Prof William Stuntz' advice to fellow academics, suggesting that they might learn from evangelicals, also applies to "potential public servants and social crusaders" as well:
Evangelicals like "testimonies"; it's common for talks to Christian groups to begin with a little autobiography, as the speaker describes the path he has traveled on his road to faith. Somewhere in the course of that testimony, the speaker always talks about what a mess he is: how many things he has gotten wrong, why the people sitting in the chairs should really be teaching him, not the other way around. This isn't a pose; the evangelicals I know really do believe that they -- we (I'm in this camp too) -- are half-blind fools, stumbling our way toward truth, regularly falling off the right path and, by God's grace, picking ourselves up and trying to get back on. But while humility is more a virtue than a tactic, it turns out to be a pretty good tactic. Ideas and arguments go down a lot easier when accompanied by the admission that the speaker might, after all, be wrong.
Bloggers, it seems to me, instinctively understand this. Bill O'Reilly doesn't.