I wish there was some novel and refined way of describing last night's vertigo-inducing interview session between Fox's pointy-headed shoutbot Bill O'Reilly and former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, other than to suggest you grab a ball-peen hammer and spend the next twenty minutes striking yourself in the forehead, over and over again. The truth is, only the news currency of McClellan's book made this trip to O'Reillyland in any way unique. Otherwise, it was the same sort of ritual we've come to expect from the Factor host: O'Reilly fuses his fury and frustration into an immovable rock of tautology, the poor guest splashes water over it, and its a race to decide what erodes faster, O'Reilly's dense rock or the viewer's cerebrum. The viewer usually loses, the end.
But, as far as highlights go, there were a few. In the first place, you knew that things were going to get off to a rocky start when O'Reilly revealed that, as a foundational support to his logic, nuclear weapons were NOT to be considered "weapons of mass destruction."
MCCLELLAN: Well, look at the nuclear intelligence. There wasn't as high a confidence with the nuclear intelligence.
O'REILLY: Stay with WMDs right now.
MCCLELLAN: That is WMD. That is WMD.
O'REILLY: OK, but that's what Powell...
MCCLELLAN: No, that is...
O'REILLY: That's not what Colin Powell presented. He presented...
MCCLELLAN: So does that constitute a grave and gathering danger to the United States? Do you think we were about to be attacked by Iraq?
O'REILLY: No, I don't. But I know that John Kerry, Al Gore...
MCCLELLAN: You're making a mistake.
And, indeed O'Reilly was, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. See, O'Reilly came to the table with what he thought was a convincing argument that the media could not be blamed for getting the Iraq War wrong.
O'REILLY: All right, now, if the director of the CIA believes it, British intelligence believes it, John Kerry believes it, Hillary Clinton believes it, and President Clinton believes it, if they all believed Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, sir, don't you have a nerve accusing me of not being vigilant enough? Who am I supposed to believe? I have got The New York Times, I got the president, I got the prime minister, I got the former president.
MCCLELLAN: Well, let's look at the record. I mean, you go back and look at the record. First of all, the intelligence was wrong. Now, they've looked at whether or not the intelligence analysts were pressured to change intelligence and found nothing there. But then there's the question of how the intelligence was used to make the case.
And my view is going back and looking at it, that it was packaged together in a way that made it sound more grave, more urgent, and more serious than it was. And I think if you go -- you add the nuclear threat and got the intelligence that was combined together, high -- or intelligence high confidence with intelligence. Wait, wait...
O'REILLY: But you're coming to this conclusion, all right, seven years after the fact. I mean, look, if the president, two presidents of the United States sitting, the former CIA guy who works with both presidents, Tony Blair, and The New York Times all tell me and you he got them. We can't say no, he doesn't.
And true, one cannot say "No! He doesn't!" if one is simply content to recite the stenography of others. But the role of a journalist is to verify facts, not recite suppositions. What O'Reilly defines as journalism makes no inclusion for vigilance. O'Reilly is simply subsitituting "eagerness" for "vigilance." We can see this at work when O'Reilly defends Karl Rove:
O'REILLY: What's your beef on Karl Rove and Plame, Valerie Plame? What's your beef about Rove specifically because he works for us?
MCCLELLAN: Well, I spoke with Rove about that very incident. And he told me unequivocally that he was not involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity.
O'REILLY: And that's what he told me.
MCCLELLAN: Right.
O'REILLY: So are you telling me he's a liar?
MCCLELLAN: Did he reveal Plame's identity to anyone? Yes, Matt Cooper. He revealed her identity...
O'REILLY: He said Cooper called him.
MCCLELLAN: No. Cooper said - Cooper wrote, he was the first one to tell me. That was the first time I learned that she worked at the CIA.
O'REILLY: You believe Cooper and you don't believe Rove, right?
MCCLELLAN: Rove told me, I asked Rove unequivocally were you involved in this in any way? He told me no. Now also...
O'REILLY: I asked him on this show last week.
MCCLELLAN: Here's a question...
O'REILLY: Wait, wait, wait.
MCCLELLAN: Yes, I read the transcript.
O'REILLY: I asked Rove, OK, I asked him did you tell anybody about Valerie Plame? The guy said no, I didn't. No.
MCCLELLAN: Her name. He said her name. It's a distinction without a difference, Bill. He revealed her identity. He talked to Novak and he talked to Cooper and revealed her identity.
O'REILLY: He denies it.
In other words, "Nuts to your 'evidence' and your 'first person account' from this 'Matthew Cooper' fellow - if that is his real name! And nuts to your having been, you know, a White House employee and contemporary of Rove's! HE CAME ON MY SHOW AND SAID NO. Case closed!"
If only two presidents, Tony Blair, George Tenet and the New York Times had convinced O'Reilly of the necessity of jumping off of the Brooklyn Bridge! Had that occurred, we would not have been subjected to O'Reilly central complaint: that McClellan should have thought before he handed the "Bush haters" some ammunition.
O'REILLY: All right. Let me sum this up by saying you put the worst possible spin on all of this.
MCCLELLAN: No, if I said it was sinister and that they intentionally did it. I did not say it was deliberate or conscience. I say that we got caught up in this campaign mentality and that's what caused us to overstate the case.
O'REILLY: Now you know that every Bush hater in the country is using you and your book to smash this administration. Now I want to talk to you about that when we come back. Every Bush hater, and you're playing right into their hands, is using this. Now, I can't...
MCCLELLAN: I'm speaking the truth from my perspective.
O'REILLY: No, you're...
MCCLELLAN: From my perspective, Bill.
O'REILLY: ...you're speaking an opinion.
MCCLELLAN: Right, from my perspective.
O'REILLY: An opinion from...
MCCLELLAN: From my perspective.
O'REILLY: No, no, it's not the truth. It's your opinion. And you're entitled to do that.
MCCLELLAN: Right.
O'REILLY: But it's your opinion. OK? You're spinning it negative. But the result of what you did is giving...
MCCLELLAN: I mean I disagree.
O'REILLY: ...all America haters and Bush haters, all the ammo they want.
MCCLELLAN: I think it will help change the way Washington works. And that's what this book is about more than anything else. That's why I wrote it.
This exchange speaks volumes about the pointlessness of attempting to negotiate with O'Reilly and the limitations of McClellan as a critic. Watching this, you practically scream at the screen, "Ye, Gods, man! Sack up! This is the live you have lived! You cannot allow O'Reilly to dismiss the facts of your own career as 'opinion!!'" But McClellan, way too timid, offers only a modicum of objection to O'Reilly's absurdity.
O'Reilly, true to his word, spent the next ten minutes complaining that McClellan's book committed the cardinal sin of verifying that Bush's harshest critics - including those who looked at what Bush, Blair, Tenet, and the New York Times were saying along the path to war and smelled a rat - were right all along. That led to this exchange from O'Reilly, that more or less fittingly sums the whole matter up:
O'REILLY: I really think you're naive. I think you got used here. I think the publisher used you. I believe you when you say they didn't rewrite it, but I think they wanted you to spin it different. I think that absolutely the Bush haters...
MCCLELLAN: Well, well, but here's the question. Did the White House - did the Bush White House go off course, badly off course? No one wanted to...
O'REILLY: I think they made mistakes.
MCCLELLAN: That's what you got to explore.
O'REILLY: There's -- fine. That's history.
MCCLELLAN: But look at how -- where he is today. How badly off course he went. You have to accept that first. I accept that.
O'REILLY: If you had done a mistake book and not a incompetence book, then it would have been two different things. But you did it as an incompetence book as here's a guy who's going to do it. And everybody else be damned. And that's not what happened.
Oh, so it's okay with O'Reilly to document a pattern of errors in a "mistake book" as long as you refrain from suggesting that a pattern of errors is evidence of "incompetence?"