.Bill O’Reilly constantly tells his viewers that he grew up in the Levittown section of Westbury. Al Franken swore that Levittown didn't exist there to trash his nemesis, but I can prove Levitt homes exist within the Westbury zip code, for I lived in one of those post-war family homes less than three blocks from Bill O’Reilly. Same house, yet different address and though I concur with Franken's belief that many of O’Reilly’s beliefs are antithetical to the American dream, I am not writing this to excoriate Bill, but rather, to try to understand him.
My first vivid memory of O’Reilly was at Little League game at Carmen Avenue. It was a June night in 1962. I remember that night for two reasons. The first is that my best friend, Snooky Goldberger, was playing for the opposing them and in the 6th inning ran down a routine fly ball in left. The centerfielder was trying to be a star and collided into Snooky, breaking his ankle. Snooky's father carried his shrieking son off the field and I was forever traumatized by the sight of what appeared to be a bone protruding through his skin.
Nearly everything else about the rest of the game is a blur. I may have even been the person who hit the ball leading to Snooky’s accident. I just can’t remember, but the last pitch of the game remains stuck in my memory like Snooky's broen ankle, because Bill O’Reilly was pitching with me at the plate.
Bill O’Reilly was a tall, gawky boy. He was a year older than me and came perilously close to throwing, the worst of all boyhood sins, ‘like a girl’. O’Reilly was a joke to me, even though I was a foot shorter. Hitting .500 is an amazing boost to a boy's ego.
It was the last of the 9th. We were down 5-4 with runners on second and third. Bill'Reilly wound up and threw a floater, which I laced close to the same spot where Snooky had fallen and we won 6-5. My team-mates mobbed me although the shadow of Snooky's injury prevented my joining in the celebration. After he was my best friend.
Several years later my Babe Ruth coach moved me to pitcher in the 13-15 year old league. My first game was against Bill O'Reilly's team. He seemed a foot taller than the last time and his pitching had improved as his body adjusted to the spurts in height, but I had four pitches, curve, change, screwball and fastball. All my 13 year-old confidence evaporated after the first batter singled sharply off my fastball, the second doubled deeply on a curve ,and the third homered like Redford in ‘The Natural’ on a screwball that screwed only me. The manager came out and said to stop throwing every pitch down the middle. I don't know why he didn't tell me that before the game, but I settled down to give up only two more unearned runs in a 5-1 loss to O’ freakin Reilly. I remember looking over at him with his smug face under a red hat and thinking, "How can I lose to O’Reilly?
Another couple of years passed and I went on my first date with a girl at the Roosevelt Field mall. As we walked by the skating riunk, we heard a commotion and went over to investigate. Bill O’Reilly was in the goal. Behind the net in the stands a group of boys were taunting, howling and screaming vile things at him. The tears in O’Reilly’s eyes were another mortal sin amongst teenagers. I didn’t think much about it at the time since I was in the throes of puppy love. Later that winter I was asked to play in a hockey game. I couldn't even skate, so the team put me in the goal. At the other end of the ice was O’Reilly. Somehow the score didn't stick in my head.
In my senoir high school years I came across O’Reilly on the frozen December turf of the Caddy House football field. He had organized tackle football games with the participants wearing no equipment. By this time he had come into his own as a quarterback. On defense he ferociously leading with his shoulders into the mid-sections of those of us still a head shorter than he. Though he was adversarial, bossy and a wise guy, I kind of liked him, because we liked sports and that was enough for me.
In the late-60s and 70s I lost track of O’Reilly. I had transitioned into a hippie and then a post hippie, earning my living as a musician. One night before a gig in Hartford, Connecticut. I turned on the news. Bill O’Reilly was the anchorman. I thought he was great. Later that year, I met up with him at a Christmas party thrown by a mutual friend in Leviittown. I said that I couldn’t believe how good he looked on T.V. and asked how much make up he needed to accomplish that. He didn’t think that was funny. I don’t think we argued that night, but throughout the 80s years we would meet at my friend’s annual party, and after a few drinks argued about subjects ranging from Ronald Reaganomics to Tawana Brawly to the Howard Beach lynchings and other issues pertinent to those days.
My stance was what O’Reilly would now call ‘progressive secularist’ and accuse of bringing down America. O’Reilly would counter my attacks by claiming that, as an insider, he was privy to secret information, that commoners suc as myself couldn’t know, and thus my logic was flawed.
In 1985, my mother was dying. At our mutual friend’s Christmas party. O’Reilly kindly invited me to his Christmas party several nights later. By this time, O’Reilly was with CBS national. My wife and I was amazed that practically no one was there. No girlfriends? No babes of any kind? Only three guys from the neighborhood whom he had known for over twenty years? He insulted my father-in-law, who was an editor for The Boston Globe but I bit my tongue. After all, it was a party at his house.
I continued to see him practically every Christmas. He was usually taciturn and morose, sitting by himself with an air of remote formality, in a sports jacket when everyone else was in jeans. Then, after some drinking(at least by me), we would go at it. One year, my best friend from high school got into it with him in the first five minutes. They almost came to blows. I can’t remember what it was about, but my friend left immediately and I ran outside after him. He asked me how I could stand to be in the same room as O’Reilly. This was coming from a man whom had joined the Skulls at Yale Law School.
"I don’t know. I like to argue."
I especially like to argue about politics, religion and sports. O’Reilly was more fun to argue with than…than…almost anyone. Just as he does now, he blustered, waxed prosaic, bullied and annoyed the heck out of me but I loved it.
The last time I talked to him, was on the phone. He called to ask if I wanted to join the old gang in a game of touch football out at the Caddy House field. He said that they played every Saturday. I was a hipster. I had better things to do. I was afraid I’d break a finger and wouldn’t be able to work(as a keyboardist). After all, I was almost forty years old and O’Reilly was even older. They still played touch football every Saturday?
Around 1990, our mutual friend’s mother death ended the Christmas parties and I lost touch with my Levittown friends. I’m so bad at keeping in touch. I never saw O’Reilly again as his career soared. I rarely watched his T.V. program because I was working nights. In the last few years, however, my schedule has changed and while I am driving home in the late afternoon, I listen to O’Reilly’s show. I can’t stop myself. As much as he infuriates, he entertains. It’s the same thing with his TV show. It’s not boring. He has surpassed every news analyst(or whatever you want to call them) in the country. He’s everywhere.
He’s everywhere and now he’s in my head. At least, long ago, I could have at him. Now, with several years of his voice, in my car, saying the most mundane and startlingly, badly thought through things about the most important issues of our day, I’ve had enough. I must do something. But what? The best I can do is to have a Rupert Pupkinish faux ‘Christmas debate’(circa 2005) with him, like I did in the old days. You’ll have to fill in the blanks for O’Reilly but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
“Bill, how’s it goin'? Should I genuflect? Wow! You are the most successful Levittowner of all time next to Billy Joel.”
“Yeah, you’re right. You’re bigger than Billy. Listen. Can I borrow ten grand?”
“What? Ten grand is nothing to you. I heard you made over fifty million last years.”
"$10,000."
“O. K. I wasn’t that close a friend. But you know, it’s kind of irritating to hear you go on and on about income redistribution every night. Do you realize that in the sixties, the average CEO made eight times more than his average employee and now the figure is 347 times more(actually I believe it’s 411 now). That sounds like income redistribution to me, but not the kind you don’t like. You’re right. You have worked hard but do you really think you’ve worked harder than the hundreds of people on the ‘2 Line’ going home to Brooklyn right now after their second job. No, no. Of course I think you deserve your success. Your shows are simply better than everybody else’s. But we’re not talking about success. We’re talking about money. Let me get this straight. You claim to live in a modest house and that you drive a five year old car, so you’re not really putting money back into the economy like Bush says is the reason for these gigantic tax breaks that you’ve been pimping for years.”
“I know. You’re very generous but you have said that you’re simply trying to create a family legacy and that’s not what Bush says these breaks are for. The real problem that I have is that you claim to be a patriot but you don’t want to pay your fair share of taxes to the country you say you love.”
“Oh, so you can’t get by on say, 20 million a year? You know Bill, you should wear a hat with the initials USA. All that junk you sell, Factor toothbrushes or whatever, you really think you could do that somewhere else? Oh that’s right. That’s all for charity. All these people have to do though, to contribute to your charity, is wear a ‘Factor’ golf hat. You think they pay 50 million a year anywhere else in the world for someone to ‘analyze’ the news as you call it. Say in Africa or Asia. You should get down on your knees right now and kiss the ground and say thank you a million times over or 50 million times to allow you to live in a place where your opinion is worth in a day and a half than what many of your loyal fans make in a lifetime of real hard work.”
“NO. You can’t just push a button like on the radio and make me shut up. Bill, I knew you when. Those books you write, about dating and raising children and whatever topic rolls out of that mediocre mind. Do you really think you could do that anywhere else in the world but here? Do you realize that our National Debt, which didn’t exist when Bush came into office, is now 27 thousand per person. And you don’t want to pay taxes. But you do want our country to shell out 300 billion dollars to ensure Iraq is democratic, right? All those books and doormats and your shows and everything about you came about because you live in a country that allows for it. And all the wealth in this country that has taken centuries to accumulate is what you tap into to get your 50 million. Redistribution? The sucking sound we here is the top 1 percent licking the bones dry off the rest of us and it is all greased by you and your beloved conservatives. That’s redistribution.”
“You’re right. I apologize. You do not have a mediocre mind but I’m right about the other stuff. And what about the 300 billion or whatever we’re spending in Iraq. There was no bigger Yahoo than you shilling the war. We spend ten cents on Homeland Security and what’s going to end up being a trillion to bring democracy to the camels. Once again, you want us to fight and spend as long as it’s not you fighting and not with your hard earned money. Isn’t there something wrong about that? I mean you were for the Vietnam War but you didn’t go over there, did you?”
“I guess you’re right. Finally, after it’s probably too late, now you care about protecting us here. Well, we both have kids now. It’s my biggest concern. Speaking of kids, you have been very vigilant about sexual predators. That’s a very courageous stand except you even have that wrong. You’re proposing the same sentence for a 19 year old boy with a 16 year old girl as a 40 year old man with a 5 year old boy.”
“No. I don’t disagree with everything you say, just most of it. For instance, every night after Hurricane Katrina you went off on all the looters. These were people who were trying to find some milk for their children while swimming underwater.”
“Yeah. There were some who were looking for a new stereo system but once again, you failed to make the distinction until after it was pointed out to you 25 times and who knows what happened down there with you adding flames to the fire. Looting? What about Bush with your help, looting the National Treasury, looting our environment so oil companies can make an even bigger profit, looting our sense of national pride by fighting an insane war and using torture which now puts our soldiers in greater peril, trying to loot our Social Security system and looting from all the middle class and lower class Americans by turning our country into a rich man’s paradise like any South American country”
“Oh, that’s right. Suddenly you take a stand against oil companies when you realize it’s the expedient thing to do but don’t you dare call me anti-American. You can do that on your show but not here. Not in Levittown. I believe in an America that only fights legitimate wars and that takes care of its environment and its weakest citizens and that insists that those whom have benefited most, pay the freight. That’s not anti-American Bill, no matter how many times you say it on your show. It’s just common sense.”
“Really? So I’m an anti-American because of the ACLU? What the hell do I have to do with ACLU? There right on some issues and wrong on others. What, do you think everyone on the left agrees with everything they do? Anyhow, Happy Holidays, Bill. I’ve had enough. Let’s talk about our kids.”
“There you go again. Everybody must say Christmas or what. Bill? I know you say you didn’t advocate a boycott of these American, for God’s sake, stores, but you sure were amping up a non-existent issue. And for what reason? Why Bill? Happy Holidays isn’t Christian enough? I thought we lived in America. It couldn’t be because everything you do is meant to divide people and intensify the so called ‘cultured war’ because that’s what’s good for your ratings. And, by the way, it’s pretty easy to take a stand with 80% of the population. I’d like to see you just once take a stand on a principle that is not popular.”
“Wow. You get really mad when someone questions your motives. Isn’t that what you do on every show? And another thing. You’re always going on about helping the ‘folks’ and all that ‘who’s looking out for you’ crap. What the hell have you ever done to help the ‘folks’? Every position you take is against their interests no matter how you try to spin it. Face it, you’re a shill for the RNC like everybody else at FOX.”
“I’ve gone too far, no Bill, you go too far every day. And what about that vibrator? You didn’t really do that to yourself like that girl said, did you? Ao,ugh, ahh, help! Help! Bill, you’re a foot taller than I. Somebody call 911!”
That is probably what would happen. I’d love to take a crack at him like I did that night, 43 years ago. Winning runs on, Bill on the mound, me at the plate. One last, personal note.
Bill. Seriously, how’s it going? I still think of that night at the Roosevelt Field hockey rink when all those kids were jeering at you and you were crying. You were a very unhappy and unsuccessful teenager and really, you carried that through a good part of your life. You sure never looked happy at all those parties in the eighties. I know you’re married now. Maybe some of that unhappiness is gone or is that why you remain so bitter especially towards people who disagree with you. Well, it’s water under the bridge. We both have kids the same age. How did we get started so late?
Bill, I’m begging you to take another look at some of the things you say. You are dividing our country from your bully pulpit. You constantly harp about ‘secular progressives’ who have some kind of sick agenda to undermine our country. We are just people whom disagree with you about our country’s direction. We don’t believe in abrogating every right that was guaranteed in our constitution. We don’t believe that we’re a ‘Christian’ nation. We don’t believe America should be fighting pre-emptive wars. That doesn’t make us disloyal. We believe in a better America than you envision, one that is rooted in the principles set down by our founding fathers. You’ve lost your way Bill, and that is dangerous for every American.
THE END
I've smoked pot with Andy and never with Bill. I've played basketball with Andy and never Bill. I don't know Bill. I do know Andy. We live in Florida. Bill O'Reilly does not live here.
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http://www.mangozeen.com/angels-on-a-pin-head.htm
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