[rrpjr]

The fight was in fact about something important. O'Reilly's anger was to the point and, I think, genuine. He began civilly. The shouting started when Rivera filibustered, refused to allow O'Reilly to respond, then made a series of lazy, kneejerk slanders. To equate an insistence on strict justice when an immigrant is involved with bigotry is, well, lazy and in bad faith. This is always the first refuge of sloppy thinking ideologues like Rivera. I was entirely sympathetic to O'Reilly's anger. O'Reilly is a showman and an egomaniac but the fact is his opening essays are sensible, sharply written and a public service. (His Boston Latin and Harvard education is good at least for this.) He's also the only person -- at least in a mainstream position -- pointing out the raging bias that is destroying public trust in media. I can see why the Left hates him. Who else talks about the poisonous spread of agenda journalism? Tim Russert? It's a bit of a joke, I guess (and maybe a sad statement of our time), but also true, that Bill O'Reilly has become something of a tribune of inconvenient truths.