Bill O'Reilly is losing it

This video is hilarious.

Bill O'Reilly has started an online petition to have Keith Olberman fired from his MSNBC show and replaced with Phil Donahue.

Keith Olberman has become one of he lone voices of reason on cable network news. When a right winger says or does something crazy, he isn't afraid to point out their ridiculousness.

Obviously this has rubbed O'Reilly the wrong way. Olberman has regularly poked fun at O'Reilly for his crazy jihads against "the secularization of Christmas," San Francisco, and anyone who deviates from the far-right party line.

Now O'Reilly is striking back. But instead of engaging Olberman on the issues or defending his own credibility, O'Reilly is trying to get Olberman fired with a petition.

Can you imagine the staff meeting where this was discussed? O'Reilly sat down with his team of producers and announced that he wanted to get back at Olberman. How? He was going to make MSBC fire him and replace him with Phil Donahue. Wasn't there anyone in the room who had the guts to tell O'Reilly that this idea was childish and silly? "Smith, get that on the web site. Put it right under my list of enemies and the list of newspapers that have defamed me."

When you have an overpaid bully running his own show, none of the peons working for him are willing to be the voice of reason, especially not the women on staff. They're just sexual objects. And the men? If they disagree, they'll be removed by security, like Jeremy Glick.

O'Reilly's ego has gotten so big no one has the guts to point out to him when he is acting crazy. This is the classic first stage of a major publiic and personal meltdown. Reminds me of someone from history, brought to life so vividly by Malcolm McDowell in the ledgendarily bad film Caligula. McDowell, speaking to the Roman Senate, bellowed this classic line:

I have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a God.

Eulogy for my father

My father, Robert, died on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, 2006. He was 61. What follows is the eulogy I delivered for his funeral on Saturday, Feb. 18. Much of what I said was improvised, but I've tried to recreate it as best I can for those who have requested a copy.

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I am Shamus, son of Robert.

At my father’s wake last night I shook many hands and saw many faces. Many of them were strangers, but all of them had nice memories of my father.

There must have been at least 50 or 60 people from the 99. As you know, that was one of my father’s favorite places to be. But after the wake last night some of us went to the 99 on Route 140. They were really busy. And they couldn’t seat us. So we had to go to Friendly’s. The service was terrible, but I was satisfied. So, thanks a lot!

As many of you know, until yesterday, I was a reporter for the Patriot Ledger. I start my new job at the end of this month.

The very last story I had a part in writing for the Ledger was my father’s obituary. It was a struggle for me, because I wanted to make him look good. I wanted his life to seem important. I wanted people to read the paper and say, Robert McGillicuddy was a great man.

But all I could remember are the little things.

He was the one who taught me how to play baseball and soccer. He coached almost every team I played on. Growing up, I would wake up every Sunday morning to donie day, the day when he would go out and buy donuts for the whole family before we woke up. When I was a teenager, he drove me to work every morning when I worked the breakfast shift at Burger King. When one of my cats died on my lap as we rushed it to the vet, my dad was the one who cried because I couldn’t. When I started looking for a new job recently, he took me out and bought me this suit.

These are the things I remember today about him. There are other good memories, but they follow the same theme.

But what could I say about him in an obituary? He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t famous. He never saved the world from anything.

He was just a man. Just a father. A brother. A son.

And by the way, Grammy, I spoke to my dad last night. Even though he’s gone now, he still wants to be in your will. And he wants more money than Uncle Brian.

Yes, my father was just a man. But he was a very good man. Loyal, caring, jovial. A good sense of humor, only partly marred by a tendency to tell corny or off-color jokes that you can’t tell in church.

I think these last few years he was happier than I had ever known him to be. In a way, that makes his passing easier for me. He had a great relationship with his children and his family. He had a woman in his life that made him very happy. He was seeing professional success. He had so many friends. He was enjoying life. He seemed hopeful whenever I talked to him.

And the night he died, he was probably at his very best.

It took him a little while to realize it fully, but after he had a heart attack 14 years ago, I think he knew that every day he had after that was a gift. I think he lived his life these last several years with that in mind.

And although his mark on this world might seem modest to some, I don’t think so.

The fact is, when all is said and done, my father will be remembered for what he left behind: All of us. Me, my sisters, his friends and family. All the people who are here today. It’s up to us to decide his legacy. Me and my sisters especially.

Losing him makes me want to be the best man that I can be. Because I know I made him proud in life. He always told me and everyone he knew. And I want to continue to make him proud. I’m not a very religious man, but I know he’ll be watching.

On Wednesday morning, some of us went to his apartment by the beach in Scituate to pack up some things. I dreaded going. I didn’t want to feel the presence of his death. But it felt good to go through his things. Some of what I found made me laugh. And some of what I found made me cry.

As I put one last box into the car and got ready to leave, I looked up at his apartment and saw a seagull sitting on the roof directly over it. It was staring at me.

It was standing right above the spot my dad would have been standing if he were waving goodbye through his sliding glass door.

As I looked at that seagull, I suddenly felt my father’s presence so very strongly. I don’t know if things work like this, but I thought my dad was seeing me through the eyes of that seagull.

Maybe he was watching. Maybe he saw me taking care of things, like he would if he were in my position. And maybe what he saw made him proud on last time.

Situation normal: Ignore real stories

Wearing five pounds of hairspray, Sean Hannity called the "Mainstream Media" (Freeper right wingnut speak for media that isn't 100 percent controlled by the Republican propaganda machine), out of touch.

For once, I agree with Hannity, which is rare. After all, we're talking about a guy who, if he was born 100 years ago, would have been part of Adolph Hitler's inner circle, along with Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.

While Hannity raised his eyebrows in disbelief, he harped about the White House press corps tizzy over Dick Cheney's hunting accident and the fact the Bush administration failed to report the incident to major media outlets.

In fact, the White House press corps spent nearly all of Monday's 41-minute briefing with Porky Pig, uh, Scott McLellan, complaining about the oversight. Many of the reporters clearly expressed their outrage while preening for the cameras. Fun stuff.

I agree with Hannity. Why spend so much time harping on the Cheney shooting. Sure it's a big story. But it's not an important story.

There were important questions to ask about Cheney. But they weren't about his inept hunting skills.

The hack press corps should have been asking about the letter from Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel investigating the Plame leak case. That letter indicates that Dick Cheney basically ordered his now-indicted chief of staff to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's identity to the press. And now that it's becoming quite clear that Plame was indeed a clandestine CIA operative, working against nuclear proliferation in Iran, a country which was and continues to be a greater threat to our security than Iraq ever was. (In my experience rawstory.com rarely gets a story wrong. And they often break stories like this about a day or two before they hit the major media.)

So, while the White House press corps whines and preens over the Cheney hunting incident and who knew what when about some crony Republican donor lawyer getting pepperred in the face with a whimpy 28-gauge shotgun, a real controversy was brewing about the Veep... that he had weakened national security, politicized a CIA asset, and put political payback ahead the country's efforts to defeat terrorism. If ever there were a time a vice president deserved impeachment, here it is. Too bad the Republican party puts partisanship before good government, justice and truth.

So Sean Hannity, I agree with for perhaps for the first time. However, it's too bad you ignored the Cheney leak story, too. But I guess you're not that kind of "journalist."

What would Ayn Rand say?

In 1957 Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged.

In the appendix, she wrote:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Atlas Shrugged is Rand's nightmare vision of the destruction of individualism, innovation, reason and moral purpose. This destruction comes about at the hands of liberal socialists who put entitlements, collectivism, and anti-intellectualism ahead of industriousness.

The producers, the men of industry who manage coal mines, run factories, invent technology are treated as slaves. Their work is expected to support the masses who are no longer competent or interested in doing real work.

As a result, all these producers rebel. They go into hiding somewhere in Colorado, if I remember correctly. Without these virtuous men with "moral purpose" society collapses into chaos. Only when the world falls apart can the men of industry return and save the day. Only then are the insipid leeches of society willing to bow their heads and say "Yes, we need you to show us the way. Please save us from ourselves."

What would Ayn Rand think of our great country today?

She saw virtue in the men of industry, the men of capital. From their ranks would come men of reason who would keep society on the right path, so long as they fought off the socialists, the liberal, etc.

Well those men have won. The party that serves industry and capital faithfully controls all branches of government. It controls the mainstream media, no matter how much Rupert Murdoch's media empire would say otherwise. It controls the military.

In Rand's view, all would be well.

But it isn't.

Where is the age of reason? Where are the men of science? Where is the productive achievement?

Our president fills his administration with political appointees who are obsessed with subjugating science to religion and corporate interests.

Our economy founders and the president tells us its flourishing. How can it be flourishing when wages are stagnant and our trade deficit and budget deficits are bigger than ever? When billions of our tax dollars go to a pointless war everyday.

How can this be an age of reason when the oil barons who serve as our president and vice president continue to dissemble about how the war is progressing? It's been almost 3 years since the "mission accomplished" banner flew over Bush's head on that aircraft carrier 40 miles off the coast of San Diego. How many more thousands of our troops will die before our Iraq adventure is over?

How can the men of industry fail us when they are most needed? When the levees broke, they stood by and did nothing.

In Rand's nightmare vision, it was the sniveling liberal socialists who stood and watched as factories stumbled and infrastructure crumbled.

But today we see the opposite has happened. It is the conservatives and capitalists who have abandoned reason. They refuse to accept global warming. The refuse to spend tax dollars rationally. They refuse to tell the truth. They let the country's icon companies such as GM and Ford crumble under the pressure of a flawed and bloated health care industry. They stand by and tell us the market will cure all.

It never has.

Rand's greatest failing is her blind believe that men of imagination, men of industry and men of capital are always men of virtue.

The most brilliant man can be consumed by greed, just as the most incompetent man can be act virtuously. It isn't talent that makes someone good and just. It is a sense of morality and a sense of restraint. We can't rely on the hope that all men in power will have these qualities. There must be checks and balances. We can't hand the keys to the car over to a Texas oilman with and MBA and say, "Well, you're rich and your daddy was a good man. I'm sure you'll do the right thing." We especially can't hand the keys to an oilman who ran every company he ever managed right into the ground.

Apple steps up

I hope this entry is the last I have to make about my iPod saga.

Late last week Apple emailed me. Finally, they had concluded their investigation of the theft of my iPod from some lowlife DHL peon. They said they were ordering me a new iPod and would ship it to me asap. Great!

So Tuesday rolls around and at 8:30 am my doorbell rings. Who could that be? It couldn't be DHL with my iPod. They don't make deliveries before 11pm.

It wasn't DHL. I walked down to the front door and found a FedEx guy standing there with a box that looked suspiciously like a shipment from Apple.

I said: "This must be my iPod!"

He said: "Yeah, you and a million other people are getting them."

So I ran upstairs. I thought about just leaving the box untouched until I got home from work that night. But I wanted to see if there was some sort of apology inside. There was, but not the type I was expecting.

I opened the box and found that they had given me an upgrade. Instead of a 40GB audio iPod with a black&white display, they had sent me a top-of-the-line 60GB video Ipod. It's fantastic. It almost washed away all of my frustration. My elation will probably last until it breaks. Let's face it, iPods are way too fragile for the price. Apple needs to stop pushing the envelope on flashy features and work on making a tough machine.

Taking the plunge

Today I quit the best job I ever had.

It didn't pay so well. The hours were terrible. It was a high stress position. But I loved it.

I've been writing for a daily newspaper for more than 3 1/2 years. It's the only job I've ever loved. That I've ever liked. I was a professional storyteller. Crime, politics, human misery and elation. The job was painful and joyful. I loved to write. I loved to tell stories.

But I'm getting older and it's time to think about the future. Newspapers are struggling to stay alive. My paper was laying off reporters, cutting back on the number of pages it prints, and contemplating boosting the newstand price. I've been looking for a new news job for awhile.

This week I got an offer from a start-up company that publishes web sites and magazines on business and technology. They were looking for a reporter, and I seemed to fit the bill for them.

I had some reservations about moving from newspapers to trade news publishing. The idealist in me still dreams of being in the White House press corps or the Capitol some day, exposing hypocrisy and championing sensible policies and bold leaders.

But when the tech publisher raised their offer and met my salary demands, what could I do? I felt I had an offer I couldn't refuse. I was terrified to quit my job and start writing about business. Would I care about it? Could I love it?

But as soon as I accepted their offer and wrote my letter of resignation (the first such letter I've ever written) a sense of relief washed over me. All the trepidation I had felt about making the change disappeared. I feel relieved now. I feel like my career is about to take a great leap forward.

I was afraid of change. But as soon as I agreed to make the change, the fear disappeared. I feel great... now if only those clowns at Apple would send me my goddamn iPod.