“Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run.” — Steve Miller Band
I guess Bill O’Reilly is at a point where he’s not even going to try and fake it anymore, “it” being that he actually knows something or is proceeding from an ethical place. Good for him. It’s refreshing when people confirm that they’ve actually been doing exactly what you know they’ve been doing all along.
You have undoubtedly heard by now of the little dust up that Trump had with the base on his History Tour with O’Reilly when he admitted to O’Reilly that he had gotten the third COVID shot and the audience booed him. That upset Trump. He wants unyielding loyalty from his minions at all time. The base hurt Trump’s fee fees. They also may have scared him a bit, because like all lion tamers he realizes that one day, one false move, and the ferocious creature heretofore under his control could turn on him and rip him to shreds.
O’Reilly visited Dan Abrams on his show and Abrams asked O’Reilly, in so many words, why the base is crazy. O’Reilly’s response in essence was, not my problem, man, I just take the money and run and suggest that you do the same.
Dan Abrams asked Bill O’Reilly why he and Trump will tell audiences that they got the booster, but won’t encourage them to get vaccinated. O’Reilly says it’s pointless: “If the conspiracy people want to go into the ozone layer, they have a right to do it.” pic.twitter.com/LHs6jmrXKq
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 21, 2021
Obviously, O’Reilly is being disingenuous here. Fox News set up the anti-vaxx lies in the first place and runs with them 24/7. Fox News has zero intention of setting the record straight, ever, because it’s not in their pecuniary interest to do so. What this conversation seems to be about is that since Trump and O’Reilly had a five second exchange wherein they actually said something sane and useful, they apparently feel they’ve done their job. O’Reilly has no problem saying that it wouldn’t have done any good to argue the point and stress the importance of vaccination, because somebody will find a reason to find fault with it and do what they want anyway — ergo, not his problem, man. He tried.
It’s analogous to throwing a spoonful of healing salve in the direction of a gaping wound that one has been rubbing salt in and saying, “I gave him the medication. I did the right thing.”
I guess morality is relative. O’Reilly and his mentor Roger Ailes and all of them can argue that what they’re saying and doing is correct and moral with respect to one cultural standard and not with respect to another. An the cultural standard that they follow is the same one P.T. Barnum did, “nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public,” and “never give a sucker an even break,” because “there’s a sucker born every minute.”
Or, here’s an even more precise moral relativism for you: the world consists of only two species, sheep and wolves. Which do you want to be?
That’s O’Reilly’s justification I’m pretty sure and I’m absolutely certain that it is Trump’s. And it couldn’t be any other way. They’ve both made the big money by being con artists. If they had to play an honest game and compete on that level, learn a profession, heed the ethics of said profession, etc., they wouldn’t have made the money. Or at least they believe they wouldn’t have and it probably never even crossed their minds to try, in point of fact.
O’Reilly’s rationalization may help these guys sleep at night, but Trump’s slumber is now disturbed by the sound of iron doors slamming shut. 2022 is going to be something.
Thank you, Bill O’Reilly, for confirming what we already knew.
