http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/329567-oreilly-accusers-lawyer-fox-news-host-fired-because-we
The upshot being that advertisers - perceiving a latent toxic mix - bailed in droves from the one time big mouthed big shot, leaving him with barely 4 minutes of adverts before he left on a trip to Italy April 11th.
O'Reilly's early career included teaching at my high school, Mgsr. Edward Pace, as per a Wikipedia reference 'Early life':
"O'Reilly moved to Miami, where he taught English and history at Monsignor Pace High School from 1970 to 1972."
When I attended a Pace High Class Reunion (class of '64) in December, 1971, all the buzz from the fellow Spartans focused on this "history teacher" who was making a name for himself trying to insert his ideology into class content. Evidently, the skinny was he had some way out notions on a number of historical events including the JFK assassination. It seems he also used some of the class periods to hone his white identity shtick that figured so prominently on 'The Factor'. One guy who had a sister in O'Reilly's English class asserted(according to his sis) the approach and teaching style was mostly irritating - often barking incoherent questions at random. Half the time he didn't even know the students' names.
All of this preceded his mostly annoying jabber once he arrived at FOX. It seems - as one commentator observed last night on MSNBC, O'Reilly "pitched his 'Factor' to an imaginary 70 year old white male who felt besieged on all sides by cultural enemies". Oh, and black and brown races!
Some may disagree but I think O'Reilly using his prominent FOX 'Factor' profile to peddle his absurd history books was an even more outrageous insult. Indeed, I skewered his farcical book, 'Killing Kennedy' . Perhaps the biggest and most easily disproven lie of O'Reilly's was his claim of tracking George de Mohrenschildt (Oswald's Dallas handler for the CIA), to his Florida home then being there to hear the gunshot that killed him.
To paraphrase investigator Jefferson Morley: "No way could O'Reilly have heard a gunshot from 1200 miles away."
As I observed, if O'Reilly would lie about this event what would stop him from lying about any aspect of the JFK assassination?
There were also these additional distortions and misrepresentations:
- O'Reilly's claim that the death of de Mohrenschildt was a "suicide" when it was a hit, to keep him quiet so he couldn't testify before the HSCA about his mentoring of Oswald for the CIA;
- Describing an argument between Oswald and Cuban consulate officer Eusebio Azcue. (p. 219). Omitted is that Azcue went to the movies two weeks after the assassination and saw a newsreel of Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. Azcue was stunned because the man he saw being shot in the newsreel was not the man he argued with in Mexico City.
- Totally leaving out any mention at all of the Zapruder film which, despite some nominal defects, IS the real time recording of the assassination. It can be argued that ANY author that omits this film - often called the "Rosette stone" of the assassination - can't be considered a serious contributor to body of knowledge about the Kennedy assassination.
- Unable to come to grips with the fact Oswald was a lousy shot (called "Maggie's drawers" by Cpl. Nelson Delgado- most familiar with his ability) O'Reilly and co-author Dugard simply changed the facts and wrote that “Oswald was a crack shot in the military.” (p. 15) Total absolute nonsense. See, for example:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-fhe-jfk.html
As author Jim DiEugenio notes: "The authors source this to the Warren Report. However, upon finding the relevant section — pages 681-82 — the reader will see that nothing even approaching this kind of description appears on those pages."
To be blunt, O'Reilly and his writing assistant Dugard were making it all up.
O'Reilly fared no better in his later book 'Killing Reagan' in which even the title betrays a wrong-headed take since Reagan didn't die from the assassination attempt on him! But O'Reilly used the same lies and sloppy scholarship to translate wounds into a "death" - meaning he construed the wounds to Reagan were so traumatic they converted Reagan into a member of the walking dead for the next 23 years.
George Will, in his article 'Bill O'Reilly Slanders Ronald Reagan.', delivered an initial takedown of this piece of trash in his WaPo piece. He wrote::
"The book’s pretense of scholarship involves 151 footnotes, only one of which is even remotely pertinent to the book’s lurid assertions. Almost all contain irrelevant tidbits (“Reagan’s hair was actually brown”). At the Reagan Library, where researchers must register, records show that neither O’Reilly nor Dugard, who churn out a book a year, used its resources. The book’s two and a half pages of “sources” unspecifically and implausibly refer to “FBI and CIA files,” “presidential libraries” and travel “around the world.” They also cite Kitty Kelley’s scabrous 1991 Nancy Reagan “biography,” a sewer of rumors and innuendos that probably is the source of the sexual factoids O’Reilly and Dugard recycle."
All this alone would put the book on the same level of faux history as the earlier Kennedy book. But what would you expect from a clown that had been the star at FAUX News?
All one can say is 'good riddance' especially as Billo will no longer be able to annoy and sexually harass female co-workers or use his privileged perch at FOX to hawk his faux history crap.
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