To the Driveby Liberal Media™, it might just look like Keith Olbermann's beating the TV Factor ratings -- on his Bill's birthday yet -- is getting to the Nospinster....
Like a former leader of the pride, the beaten old lion is losing his power -- and his sexual appeal to the under-65 year old lionesses -- to a younger, more virile young leader. But that's not what is driving the Nospinster bat-crazy.
It's more. Big time more. Big time "Al Franken will be doing an 'I'm good enough' back-flip in the Minnesota senatorial campaign snow" more.
The buzz around the watering hole is that the Big Cat may be losing his radio gig and it's got to be driving him off the deep end.
It's always rather pathetic when the lion becomes the wildebeest and drinking from the dried up Kool Aid waterhole makes him even more vulnerable...and sad.
The air, thick with inside-the-loop chatter telling of the Bill O'Reilly's Radio Factor's possible demise, Bill's patience, what little he had to begin with, is wearing as thin as his mane.
No longer the hunter, he knows all too well the prey's sorry plight as Bill's dropped all pretense of fair and balanceness, going whole warthog against the Democrats and any other group or person who has any connection to the left: Mediamatters, Moveon, Dailykos, Tim Robbins, Rosie O'Donnell, New York Times, Frank Rich, George Soros, et al. Hysterical, one-note scapegoating, similar to some columnist(s) I know who seems to have a sick infatuation with reporting every single hypocritical misrepresentation delivered by Bill. Attractive guy, the writer, but still, a bit neurotic.
But now Bill's also going after his own Fox consultants who refuse to kowtow to the lead he's fed them. Bill's outrage has been so over the top, the altitude has caused a dearth of oxygen to the brain, his exasperation with the rapid plunge into humiliating radio failure affecting common decency and respect -- even for his paid-for Fox News friends.
On Thursday Bill had spent an hour on the radio railing against The New York Times for giving MoveOn.org a "hateful-smear site" discount because the Times and MoveOn are in bed with each other. This before he had the journalistic civility to first speak with the Times advertising department; a call that would have revealed that what MoveOn got, any right wing advocacy group would have gotten the same rate or better.
By TV Factor showtime, Bill had found out his reporting boner, yet still found it necessary to begin his open salvo making the same erroneous claim. Only after building a good lather did he bring up the actual Times advertising policy.
His attempt to slam the left nearly lay waste to Fox consultant Jane Hall (and reminded her that he could turn off her microphone as he had done once before when she got out of hand) who refused to buy into Bill's fiction, reminding him that the Times policy had nothing to do with ideology.
His outrage grew, shouting her down as Hall had one of those, "I don't get paid enough to get humiliated like this" looks. Lately, out-of-control has become O'Reilly status quo
No matter how you feel about him, rarely does Fox News mate Sean Hannity ever lose his cool. He's a professional. He pitches his game, but knows it's going to last at least nine innings. Bill, might look strong in the first inning or two, firing 100 mph over the backstop, but he's thrown his arm out before he's gotten through the batting order once.
Like Joseph McCarthy, Bob Grant and Wally George before him, Bill's divisive histrionics along with an aversion to fact-based truth will soon leave him a flamed-out asterisk on the ass of broadcast infamy.
Yet while the possibility of losing his radio spot seems to signal an accelerating slide into broadcast past, the old lion won't give up easy. He'll continue to swing wildly at imagined enemies of mankind and Christmas, but, if I might milk the proverbial, feline-istic metaphor, Bill's claws are now as dangerous as a recently-neutered pussycat waving its anesthetized claw. It's cute but it won't be drawing any blood.
Disclaimer: Steve Young is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (www.greatfailure.com)and his "All The News That's Fit To Spoof" appears in L.A. Daily News opeds every Sunday (www.dailynews.com/steveyoung), right next to Bill's...really