CRAZY LIKE A FOX NEWS GUY

by Steve Young

Here's today's Talking Point: Last week a column I had written for the Albion Monitor about the Walter Reed scandal was reprinted in the Philadelphia Inquirer op/ed pages. In it I pointed out that, among others, Bill O'Reilly had not held the Republican congress accountable for Veteran Administration cutbacks over the past six years.

In deftly critiquing what I had written, Bill told his radio audience that I was "a crazy guy."

I had worked for years trying to keep that quiet so to say I was traumatized... well, you know how crazy people can get. Then Bill said that "everyone says (I'm) crazy." To find out that not only was my secret out but that now EVERYONE knows it made me all the more...crazy. I don't think I know more than 10 percent of everyone, yet learning that everyone knows me shows just how good my public relations guy is. I would have hoped that they would know me more for my TV writing, than just being crazy. But then Bill told his audience that I wasn't a TV writer. Well, thank you very much, Bill. Now I'm guessing the Robert Wood Foundation will want back the Prism Award they gave me for the prime time television show I thought I wrote about alcoholism in kids. Or the Humanitas Award Committee surely would repeal my nomination for writing a TV show that "affirms the human person, probes the meaning of life, and enlightens the use of human freedom." Worse...the Writers Guild will probably stop sending those residual checks that some other Steve Young should be getting. I do wonder though why Bill's cracked research team didn't check IMDB.com.

Perhaps Bill dealt the "everyone says I'm crazy" card as hyperbole, kind of like when I wrote about Bill's penchant to blame everything on "...The Washington Post, The New York Times, the ACLU and Frank Rich" and that they would "feel the wrath of an outraged O'Reilly for some incoherent connection to the scandal." That was when Bill's Fox sideick said the "entire article was crazy." That one really hurt because it's not like his sidekicks agree with almost everything he says.

But Bill then hit his audience with the biggie. Not only was I not a television writer. I was just..."a blogger." I don't want to cast any more aspersions on the blogger profession. God knows aspersions are about the only compensation most bloggers receive. But "just a blogger?" Although I have more agents than anyone else in the unemployment line, I am as much "just a blogger, as Bill is. In fact, if we were honest -- and since we are both in the media how can either Bill or I be otherwise -- we are spectacularly alike.

We both are published authors of kids and adult books. My book, "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" became required reading in the Literature of Success porgram at the Wharton School of Business. Bill's book became required reading the Heritage Foundation (Okay, the Heritage comment is hyperbole, but just in case one of the folks is reading...).

We both have had radio shows. One of them was honest and full of good stuff. The other is still on the air.

We both have harassed younger women with sexually explicit phone calls. Bill settled out of court. My wife didn't sue me.

I won on the Gong Show. Bill created his own.

I write a ridiculous column that appears every Sunday on the Los Angeles Daily News oped page. So does Bill.

Fact is, I've written for TV. Bill's writes facts for his TV show. Not every fact, mind you. But, then again, I haven't written every TV show.

And the similarity which will pain Bill no end to read, we have both appeared on The Factor...more than once

Crazy guy? Takes one to know one.

And that's a memo.

The Democratic Party is using Fox President Roger Ailes' joke at the Radio Television News Directors Association and Foundation dinner as a rationale to slowly cancel its participation in the Fox sponsored presidential debate. They say that Ailes "joke" was meant to demean Barack Obama. That Obama and bin Laden are both terrorists.

It recalls John Kerry's clumsy joke just prior to last November's election. Radio talk show hosts, followed by every politician on the right, were fast to jump on Kerry for ridiculing our troops' lack of intelligence. But we in the "joke" biz understood that Kerry's poorly structured crack was meant clearly to mock President Bush; that he got us stuck in Iraq because he is an unthinking simpleton. So stupid that he couldn't tell the difference between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Ailes' joke is receiving some of the same media criticism that hit Kerry. But Ailes was not putting down Obama. Reading the context of the joke, it is obvious that Ailes was only pointing out just how unbelievably dumb this president is; that he can't even tell the difference between Obama and bin Laden.

It took guts on the part of Ailes to smear President Bush so emphatically. If the head of Fox has the gonads to say that President Bush is a blithering idiot who has caused thousands to needlessly die, I would hope that it would put to rest the myth that the network is a right wing mouthpiece.

I assure you that this week Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the Fox boys will be pointing out that if Kerry was mocking President Bush's gross incompetence, then they must credit Ailes for doing the same.

Ironical, ain't it?