“O’Reilly, Ailes, and the Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture”

“O’Reilly, Ailes, and the Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture”

Amen.

And, again, amen.

I’ve watched with horror as we’ve descended from William F. Buckley, Jr., to Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.

I’m not accusing Savage (whom I cannot abide and to whom I’ve never really listened) or Hannity (to whom I no longer listen) of sexual misdeeds or immorality.  But I do think that current political discourse — with its coarse, bare-knuckle brawling and its name-calling and its demonization and its utter and unforgiving partisanship — is a disgrace and that it has been a disgrace for years.  Ann Coulter can be funny, but she’s no replacement for Jeane Kirkpatrick and doesn’t exactly augur well for an American Margaret Thatcher.

I occasionally watched Bill O’Reilly while doing something else in one of the rooms where we have a television set.  He was good at what he did.  He could be entertaining.  But, not a few times, I winced as he walked right over guests, cut off reasonable points, brushed aside valid concerns.  And I’m horrified by what seems to have been a long-standing pattern of misbehavior on his part and — understandable, given the money he brought in, but hard to pardon — a similarly long-standing pattern of covering up for him on the part of Fox News management.

I’m a serious conservative.  A really serious one.  But it’s a matter of principle to me, not just a matter of “my team” winning.

Posted from Park City, Utah