Something Smells About B.O.

Here's a question to consider:

How did he do it? How did [Bill] O'Reilly, an unemployed has-been only a decade ago, turn himself into a moneymaking empire, complete with a Web site offering "Spin Stops Here" doormats, beach towels, bumper stickers, license-plate frames and coffee mugs, and "The Rain Stops Here"” umbrellas for $37.50 --— not to mention the minor matter of a Fox News contract said to be in the neighborhood of $50 million?

-- From last Sunday's New York Times
Review of Books, from a review
of one book by B.O. and another about B.O.

Here's my favorite paragraph from the review, which could give some perspective about why he hates the media so much, and it's a little personal:

O'Reilly'’s greatest crisis, Kitman reports, came during the 1982 Falkland Islands War: he was supposed to appear on the CBS Evening News, which would be "“validation for his father that he was a network foreign correspondent, that a major corporation was wise enough to have faith in him."” Instead, the CBS star Bob Schieffer cut him out of the story. (In his 1998 suspense novel, "Those Who Trespass,"” O'Reilly concocted a character resembling Schieffer, who is brutally murdered.)

So, all this was in the back of my mind when I read about B.O.'s take on the kidnapped Midwest child who was taken from his family and held for more than 4 years. So enter Bill O'Reilly, who really knows nothing firsthand about the situation, other than secondary sources such as media reports and from what he's heard on TV or read in the newspaper, and gives us his self-assured take: That the kid is faking it, as Patty Hearst did, and was in the middle of virtually a four-year party of sorts. You can read a blogger's transcript of what he apparently said here.

Horrifying. (People have been trying to load the clip to YouTube, but without success.)

Shouldn't a conservative be cautious and prudent about judgments, especially as it relates to a four-year nightmare involving a child?

Tonight, on Countdown With Keith Olbermann, I wonder who the World's Worst Person will be?

And do you think any of this will come up
when Stephen Colbert and B.O. appear on
each other's shows on Thursday night?