With friends like Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, who needs enemies?
Not Sarah Palin, that’s for sure.
When the former Governor of Alaska made her debut appearance as a ‘news analyst’ on last night’s edition of O’Reilly’s massively popular right-wing show, it was hard to avoid the impression that the red, white and blue studio wasn’t quite big enough for two American Patriots.
“You know, governor, the perception of you is that you’re not that smart?” was perhaps the most telling of O’Reilly’s we-can-be-blunt-because-we’re-friends questions. It came shortly after he showed his new colleague a montage of video clips in which rival pundits almost wept with mirth at her appointment (in one, Chris Matthews of MSNBC screamed, “How can she be a pundit, SHE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING!”).
Of course, this is what Fox – owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times – excels at doing: presenting itself as the lone voice of common sense, under a ceaseless and vicious assault from the Mainstream Media (populated exclusively by the Lunatic Left).
But the almost gleeful repackaging of that very same Mainstream Media’s ridicule of Palin (“There are a lot of conservative politicians . . . and none of them are attacked as personally as you,” pointed out O’Reilly) gave the impression that the host might actually be getting a vicarious thrill from it all.
Then again, Fox clearly wasn’t just buying an analyst when it hired Palin. It was buying the whole Wasilla circus.
And in all fairness, there wasn’t any shortage of compliments between Palin and O’Reilly. It’s just that they often sounded more like insults. In a reference to the vice- Presidential contest of 2008, for example, O’Reilly told the former governor: “You did very well against [Joe] Biden in that debate.”
Palin grinned. But then the old dog couldn’t help himself. “Although you did call him O’Biden at one point,” he added.
Palin’s grin – at this point in her career surely able to withstand anything barring a full-scale nuclear exchange - remained in place.
“I think the analysis after the debate was a surprise that Biden had more gaffes,” she countered.
But hang on a minute: isn’t Palin supposed to be the analyst? Doesn’t that allow her to simply state – categorically – that Biden made more errors, and that’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it, The End?
This, of course, is Fox’s problem with Palin: in spite of her rimless media mogul glasses and slick black studio outfit, she remains more candidate than pundit. Which means she wouldn’t take O’Reilly’s bait over whether the Obama Administration should invade Iran (“A military attack needs to be our very last option”). Neither did she want to call Harry Reid a racist, in spite of the Senator Majority Leader’s indirect reference to the President as a “Negro”. She couldn’t even spare an insult for Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker – practically a pantomime villain for conservatives these days.
But none of this matters, and Fox knows it. As long as Palin continues to be attacked by the left – and thus continue to feed the indignation of Fox News's most conservative of viewers, who feel slighted by proxy – she will be doing her new employer proud. And on that basis, her debut last night was surely a triumph.
No wonder such a master of invective as Bill O’Reilly seems to find it all a bit galling.
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