Monday, March 30, 2009

The O'Reilly Factor

Bill O’Reilly is boycotting Sean Penn. O’Reilly acknowledges that Sean Penn is a great actor but apparently this has everything to do with Penn’s political leanings and not because O’Reilly felt “it” move during some of the romantic scenes in Penn’s recent film, Milk.

Nope. O’Reilly is exercising his “right as an American” because Sean Penn doesn’t jibe with O’Reilly’s neo-conservative point of view. According to Reilly, Penn “…gives aid and comfort to people like Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein…”

Apparently O’Reilly’s been paying more attention to Sean Penn’s political affiliations than I do. I’ve always thought of Sean Penn as a brilliant actor with a quick temper and a rather reclusive personality. Even though I consider myself to be a liberal, I don’t necessarily view Sean Penn as somebody I would want to take sociology lesions from. I admire his work, but I really couldn’t care less what his politics are. I also liked Ron Silver even though I found his conversion to rabid conservatism to be a little disturbing. But Silver really took the 9-11 attacks to heart and wanted to set the world on fire so everybody else could feel his pain.

Actors aren’t always very smart. Some are brilliant people with tremendous talent that spans several genres. Like Bruce Willis who combines the ability to portray deep characters as varied as a hard-nosed New York cop who thwarts an international terrorist group to playing a rough-around-the-edges Pittsburgh cop who ultimately captures a familial serial killer…but Willis is also a recording artist. So is John Goodman, Billy Bob Thornton and Lindsay Lohan. But not everybody swims in pools of talent so deep. For every Hilary Duff there’s a one dimensional clod like Phillip Seymour Hoffman who just “acts”.

Sean Penn is just an actor and clearly not as multitalented as most of his peers. He’s been in a couple of decent movies and actually turns in a good performance more often than not, but he is still just an actor. He lacks depth and versatility, clearly a byproduct of his beatnik upbringing which was only exacerbated by a lack of formal education. A person would be crazy to listen to him.

Bill O’Reilly, on the other hand, went to college. He earned a degree in History from Marist, got himself a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University and later went to Harvard to get another Masters degree, this one in Public Administration. Granted, none of those degrees is particularly valuable. An MA in Public Administration is a step above making your own degree out of construction paper and Broadcast Journalism is what you get a degree in if your text books are yellow and entitled "The Idiot's Guide to..." I'm not saying these aren't real degrees, but real and possessing substance are two totally different things. They are the sort of courses one takes when they simply have a lot of time and money on their hands. They are also the sort of courses people took during the Vietnam era when they didn't have the balls to dodge the draft like real hippies. Big Bad Bill, by the way, graduated from high school in 1967. Convenient, no?

Now there are those who might say that a man motivated to collect all those sheepskins must be overcompensating for something, but that would only be the case if that man was so enthralled with himself that he would edit his own Wikipedia page to make sure that all of those degrees were mentioned, especially if that page included references to specific teachers and overseas studies. Hey everybody come see how smart I look. That would be sick.

Bill O’Reilly learned a lot in college too. Unlike Sean Penn, who is a notorious hot head, O’Reilly is a skilled debater who never loses his cool. Penn’s been in and out of trouble his whole life, but O’Reilly has never been taken to task for his lack of decorum. Which one do you trust?



Sean Penn: “Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.”


Bill O’Reilly: “If I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, 'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”



Sean Penn’s pretty stupid isn’t he? Especially when you compare him quote for quote with Bill O’Reilly. See what a difference an education makes? Sean Penn’s clearly better off if he sticks to acting where other people—educated people—write his words for him. He’s just not equipped to deliver his own thoughts off the cuff and, based on his temperamental history, it’s probably best not to engage him in any sort of debate. He’s likely to scream at you to shut up or even go so far as to have a producer cut your mic off. That’s the kind of childish behavior you’d expect from a pampered Hollywood fat cat. Bill O'Reilly would never resort to such childish tactics.

You’d think somebody as brilliant and better than everybody as Bill O’Reilly wouldn’t see the need to waste his time boycotting the likes of Sean Penn, but that’s just the kind of guy Bill O’Reilly is. He’s not doing it for himself, he’s doing it for America. Sean Penn is evil. He loves communists and hates America. Somebody has to call him on it, and Bill O’Reilly is just the man for the job. He's a real American hero.

Rather than close by writing something poignant I’m going to offer up one more pearl from Bill. Remember, America, he’s the only guy with the guts to stand between Sean Penn’s leftist agenda and our wholesome values.


"So anyway I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda' kissing your neck from behind...and then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I'd just put it on your pussy but you'd have to do it really light, just kind of a tease business..."

Way to go, Bill!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

well said.

although i'm not a fan of either.

Steve said...

I think Penn can be a little full of himself at times, but if I had to choose I think I'd rather have a beer with him. Mostly because I don't think I'd feel inclined to punch him in the face.

Anonymous said...

Maybe THIS will change your mind about having a beer with Bill O'Reilly:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/03/off_with_those.php