Fox News 'culture warrior' Bill O'Reilly, who visits Dublin next week, tells Denis Stauntonwhy he's all fired up about lost values
When Bill O'Reilly visits Dublin next week to speak at Trinity College, the controversial broadcaster and self-styled "culture warrior" is expecting a sceptical response from a society he sees as in the grip of an irrational attachment to left-wing mores.
"Ireland is one of my favourite places to visit because the people's spirit is so large and their generosity matches their spirit. They're very, very benign folks. But when you get into a political conversation with them, it's like talking to people from Berkeley, California [ renowned for its liberal views] sometimes," he says.
O'Reilly, who covered the Troubles in the North as a television news reporter and has visited Ireland a number of times, is relishing the prospect of an argument over the apparent contradiction between Ireland's American-style economy and its European values.
"It amuses me because the Irish people are the beneficiaries of a very, very smart tax campaign which lowered taxes and encouraged foreign investment and gave the people the opportunity to keep their money, which is a very Republican principle," he says.
"That's why they have this dramatic and stunning turnaround in quality of life in Ireland, because of the Republican principle of self-reliance, small government. Okay? You earn it, you keep it. Okay. So you would think that, socially, these people would say, gee, this worked out pretty well for us, maybe we should re-evaluate our socialist impulses and take a look at the world the way it really is and not the way we want it to be, which is the Western European malaise."
At 57, O'Reilly is the most successful broadcaster on cable news and a bestselling author who, according to Forbes magazine, earns at least $9 million (€6.7 million) a year. Through The O'Reilly Factor, his nightly show on Fox News, a two-hour daily radio show and a weekly syndicated newspaper column, he reaches an audience of millions with his maverick form of populism.
To his critics on the left, who are legion, O'Reilly is a crude bully who peddles an aggressive, right-wing agenda by hectoring liberal guests and slanting the facts to fit his prejudices. His overblown rhetorical style - which he himself calls "bloviating" - has inspired comedian Stephen Colbert's hugely successful spoof The Colbert Report, which mimics the sets and graphics of The O'Reilly Factor as well as O'Reilly's personal mannerisms.
O'Reilly acknowledges that, during almost a decade of broadcasting three hours a day, five days a week, he has made his share of mistakes but claims that critics ignore the complexity of his views on public policy.
"I don't let anybody else define me, Okay? I feel that the United States press and probably the world press as well is lazy. I mean, they just don't care to listen enough to figure out what's going on. It's much easier to slap a conservative label on me and do no thinking and that's what they do," he says.
Born and raised on on Long Island, where he still lives, O'Reilly is the product of a classic Irish-American background - hardworking, devoutly Catholic and steeped in Democratic politics. Although his father was an accountant for an oil company, most of O'Reilly's extended family worked in public service jobs as firemen, policemen and teachers.
Educated at Catholic schools and at Marist College in New York, O'Reilly studied broadcast journalism at Boston University and started work as a television news reporter in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was a good reporter, winning awards for investigations into corruption before he moved to network news in the 1980s, first with CBS and later with ABC.
It was not until O'Reilly joined the newly established Fox News in 1996, however, that he found his destiny as a cultural crusader, eagerly embracing the channel's mission to present an alternative to a media establishment he describes as 80 per cent liberal.
"Fox News is a pretty big entity. I would never generalise that they are on one side. But they surely give traditional points of view much more exposure than any other television news outfit in America And that drives the left wing, far left, crazy because they used to be able to shut it out," he says.
O'Reilly has inherited from his Irish forebears the capacity to nurture a grudge for a lifetime and his book, Culture Warrior is, among other things, a catalogue of slights and wrongs committed against him by liberals. Despite his enormous personal success, he seems angry and more than a little bitter about the lack of respect he receives from America's educated elites.
"I've sold about six million books, alright? And this book, Culture Warrior, was number five last year in non-fiction sales, five months on the New York Times bestseller list. Three newspapers reviewed it. Okay? So, look, everybody knows the fix is in. Everybody knows that," he says.
When I ask whether he is angry, O'Reilly insists that his indignation is directed towards injustice and the erosion of the traditional values he cherishes.
"It's a war, you know," he says. "And you fight the war in a way that, I don't know if angry is the right word but you certainly fight it in a passionate way. I'm in it to win it."
"You know, if you enter the field of journalism and you don't have passion for what you're reporting on or analysing, then you ought to be a barber. You know, this is a profession that requires a person to be honest, to look at social injustices and sometimes to try to improve them but most of the time to expose them. And you have to have the fire in your belly to do that. So, the anger that you see, I call it passion."
For O'Reilly, America is in the midst of a culture war between traditionalists like himself and "secular progressives" who elevate individual rights over the common good. O'Reilly reveres the traditional family and opposes gay marriage because he thinks it could open the way to legalising polygamy. He favours same-sex civil unions, however, and as a passionate campaigner for the protection of children, believes gay couples should be allowed to adopt.
"I mean, what's the greater good for a child? To have the child whipping around the system in foster home after foster home or two responsible gay parents who want to raise the child in a way that's beneficial to the child? I mean, come on. Everyone knows what the best thing is, so drop the nonsense and do what's best for the child," he says.
O'Reilly also favours gun control and opposes the death penalty, although he believes that serious criminals should be sent to a "gulag" in Alaska for the rest of their lives. An early supporter of the invasion of Iraq, he now admits that the war was a mistake that has driven George Bush's presidency onto the rocks.
"What happened was that the Bush administration made a calculation that the Sunni and Shia in Iraq would behave the same way the Sunni and Shia behaved in Kuwait and Afghanistan after the United States liberated those countries with the help of their allies," he says.
"They did not, for a variety of reasons. A tactical mistake. I made the mistake."
O'Reilly professes to have no interest in either political party and he does not endorse candidates, although he sometimes denounces their opponents, which amounts to the same thing. He predicts that Hillary Rodham Clinton will win the Democratic presidential nomination and that she will choose Barack Obama as her running mate.
"44 per cent of Americans say they'll never vote for her no matter who runs against her. So Putin could run against her and they'd vote for him or they'd stay home," he says.
"That's a tough negative to overcome. So she's going to have to basically define herself in a very vivid way in order to become president. Now she's capable of doing that. Whether she will do it or not remains to be seen."
No matter who becomes president, O'Reilly will continue his campaign against a secular-progressive spectre that is bent on destroying marriage, undermining America's global power and banning Christmas.
"If you don't feel that there's a war on and you don't feel that society's going in the wrong direction, then you can't bitch. If you compare your upbringing 30 years ago to what's going on today, there's no comparison in this country. It's a totally different game. Now you might think it's better now, Okay? If you do, you do. I don't think it's better. I think it's worse," he says.
"But I can only say what I believe. If you don't believe the way I do and you're honest, I respect that. I'm not one of those guys who dislikes people who disagree with me."
Factor this:Bill O'Reilly on...
Irish-Americans and African-Americans (The Radio Factor, October 4th, 2005)
"My people came from Co Cavan in Ireland. All right? And the British Crown marched in there with their henchman, Oliver Cromwell, and they seized all of my ancestors' lands, everything. And they threw them into slavery, pretty much indentured servitude on the land. And then the land collapsed, all right? And everybody was starving in Ireland. They had to leave the country, just as Africans had to leave - African-Americans had to leave Africa and come over on a boat and try to make it in the New World with nothing. Nothing. And succeeded, succeeded. As did Italians, as did - and I'll submit to you, African-Americans are succeeding as well. So all of these things can be overcome I think."
Crime and punishment (Syndicated column, June 14th, 2001)
"Killers, rapists, drug kingpins and terrorists should all be subjected to life in prison without parole in a federal work camp. This special prison system would be run military style and be located on federal land in Alaska. It would be in effect a gulag. Here the worst criminals in the country would be banished and forced to labour eight hours a day, six days a week in the harsh climate. They would be denied television, computers, exercise equipment (as if they'd need it) and most other comfort items. Their mail would be screened, and they would only be allowed a few visitors per year. If the criminal did not co-operate with the work detail, his food rations would be cut, and he would be placed in solitary confinement."
Not saying 'Merry Christmas' (The O'Reilly Factor, November 18th, 2005)
"I think it's all part of the secular progressive agenda to get Christianity and spirituality and Judaism out of the public square. Because if you look at what happened in Western Europe and Canada, if you can get religion out, then you can pass secular progressive programmes like legalisation of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage, because the objection to those things is religious-based, usually."
The homeless (The Radio Factor, April 18th, 2006)
"The ACLU [ American Civil Liberties Union] wants to force society to house people who will not support themselves, who will not do it, because they want to get drunk, or they want to get high, or they want - they don't want to work, they're too lazy. They say, 'Okay, that's a person's choice. The government should give them a house, and food, and walking-around money, and everything else.' "That's what it's all about. This is the hidden agenda."
Bill O'Reilly will speak at the Philosophical Society in Trinity College Dublin next Wednesday