Ken Lawrence - The World According to Bill OReilly: An Unauthorized Portrait in His Own Words

The World According to Bill OReilly

Other Books by Ken Lawrence

The World According to Michael Moore

The World According to Trump

The World According to Oprah

The World According to Bill OReilly copyright 2005 by Ken Lawrence. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

OReilly, Bill.

The world according to Bill OReilly : an unauthorized portrait in his own words / [compiled by] Ken Lawrence.
p. cm.
E-ISBN: 978-1-4494-1333-0
1. OReilly, BillQuotations. I. Lawrence, Ken. II. Title.
PN4874.O73A25 2005
791.45028092dc22

2005048005

Design by Kelly & Company, Lees Summit, Missouri

ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES

Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write to: Special Sales Department, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

Introduction

______________________________

Love him or hate him, hero or huckster, one thing is for sure: Bill OReilly refuses to be ignored.

With the highest-rated cable TV news program, OReillys in-your-face style of interviewing has given him a popular platform to skewer his opponents and right the wrongs he sees around him. No doubt about it, OReilly is an angry man. Im angry about a number of things. Centrally, that the people who make this country work, the millions of people that get up at six in the morning, get home at six at night, dont have a lot of power. And the people that they give power to represent them, more often than not, sell them out. That really tees me off.

OReilly traces his indignation to his roots on Long Island, New York, where he says he ran with a tough crowd. You had to be strong and feisty. If you werent, life was not easy. He also says that listening to his fathers deathbed pronouncement that he didnt fulfill [his] potential steeled his resolve to help working-class people like himself who get stomped by what he perceives as a system stacked against them.

OReilly was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic setting and went to Catholic school. As a teenager, he mowed lawns and eventually established a house-painting business. This instilled his strong work ethic, which continues today.

He graduated from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, with a degree in history and taught high school for two years in Miami, Florida. OReilly then attended Boston University where he received a masters in broadcast journalism.

In 1975, he got a job as a reporter for WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, making $150 a week. In 1980, he anchored a show for WCBS-TV in New York and, later, he became a correspondent for CBS News and covered wars in El Salvador and the Falkland Islands.

Bill OReilly joined ABC News as a correspondent on ABCs World News Tonight in 1986. During his three-year tenure, he appeared on the show more than one hundred times, and received two Emmy Awards and two National Headliner Awards for excellence in reporting.

In 1989, OReilly replaced David Frost as host of Inside Edition, one of the earliest infotainment shows that combined traditional journalism with edgy comment, opinion, and titillation. In all fairness, wrote Chicago Tribune television critic Clifford Terry at the time, Inside Edition is more tawdry than trashy. With OReilly as anchor, the show soared in ratings against similar programs like A Current Affair, and OReillys aggressive on-air persona became more pronounced and popular.

OReilly decided to leave behind a reported million dollar a year salary in 1995 to attend the John F. Kennedy School of Government and earned a masters degree in public policy. He wrote a novel titled Those Who Trespass about the broadcast TV business. In it, the lead character, a TV anchor, gets fired because his enemies rig a survey to show hes losing popularity. Hes out to get the people who rigged the research, OReilly says of the thriller.

Although the book enjoyed modest success, his next move was the big one. He took a job in October 1996 as anchor of The OReilly Report, which later became The OReilly Factor, on then-upstart Fox News Channel. TV has never been the same since.

What followed was a torrent of OReilly offerings, including books (The OReilly Factor, The No Spin Zone, Whos Looking Out for You? and one for teens titled The OReilly Factor for Kids), a syndicated radio show called The Radio Factor, and a syndicated column carried in newspapers across the country.

With these successes came some tough times. In 2004, an associate producer threatened OReilly with a harassment suit, claiming that he directed inappropriate sexual behavior and lewd remarks toward her. OReillys lawyers charged that the woman was trying to extort money from the TV star. The two parties settled out of court with OReilly paying the woman an undisclosed amount reportedly in the millions of dollars. Speaking publicly about the matter, OReilly told his fans on the show: All litigation has ceased in the case that has made me the object of media scorn from coast to coast. Today, lawyers issued a statement saying there was no wrongdoing in the case whatsoever by anyone. The popular OReilly bounced back from this incident without missing a step and he continues to tilt at windmills.

For all his success, OReilly claims to be an everyday regular guy, still living on Long Island with his wife and two daughters and hanging out with his childhood pals. Theyre still my friendsfirst grade, kindergarten. I still keep in touch with those guys.

Here then, in his own words, are comments from someone who may be a regular guy, but who certainly is not ordinary.

On
Celebrities
and
Hollywood

M y latest jihad was to go after the Hollywood celebrities.

Kansas City Star, November 13, 2001,
citing a speech at a local Red Cross fund-raiser

Y ou know, I think the genesis of this is that Hollywood has been pretty much given a free pass forever by the television media. Very rarely have they been criticized. Now they know that that protection will never be afforded them ever again because what we do here is we watch the powerful and the famous and if they misbehave we report on it. No one is safe from our scrutiny.

New York Post, January 3, 2002

A ll I said to the movie stars was, Look, if youre going to go on a telethon and look at the camera and say 100 percent of all this money is going to go to the families, then youd better damn well make sure that that happens. They didnt like that. I respect George Clooney. I think hes a well-intentioned guy. But like so many people, he doesnt think things out. And his ego overrides his mind. These stars all have a sense of entitlement. They think theyre entitled not to be criticized.