Culture Warrior’s Code

Why liberals should pay attention to Bill O’Reilly.

By Jesse Singal, University of Michigan

Bill O’Reilly is the King of the Pundits; he enjoys better ratings than his contemporaries and has a great deal of cachet among many Americans. And liberals would be well-advised to start reading and watching him as soon as possible—there’s no way to understand the current political culture without first understanding the man Stephen Colbert dubbed “Papa Bear.” Reading O’Reilly’s new book, Culture Warrior, is a good place to start.

According to O’Reilly, O’Reilly is nonpartisan. He’s not engaging in the culture war for ideological reasons, at least not in terms of the usual, conservative-vs.-liberal divide. Liberalism, he repeats early and often, is not what he’s seeking to dismantle; his real beef is with the “secular-progressive,” or S-P, movement. And who are S-Ps? Early on, he explains the terms of the battle: “On the one side of the battlefield are the armies of the traditionalists like me, people who believe the United States was well founded and has done enormous good for the world. On the other side are the committed forces of the secular-progressive movement that want to change America dramatically: mold it in the image of Western Europe.” There you have it—S-Ps want to bring Brussels to Baltimore.

O’Reilly defines the S-P movement so vaguely and inconsistently—and caricatures it so hilariously (he is convinced that there’s a secret plot afoot to cap personal wealth at $15 million)—that things very quickly become ill-defined, sloppy, and somewhat incoherent. He spends pages droning on about different celebrities and news personalities, labeling some as S-Ps and others as “enablers.” It all has the feel of a middle school cheerleader circulating a list of who is not cool enough to hang out with her. And O’Reilly does a terrible job of hiding the fact that it’s liberalism, after all, that bothers him: he helpfully informs us that Katie Couric’s “sympathies lie on the left,” (44) and that “[f]or years, NBC News stopped just short of declaring itself a fellow traveler of the left.” (45) Things get really transparent when he discusses Bill Moyers: “Talk about confirmed liberals—this guy is the poster boy for the secular-progressive movement in the media.” (51) Bill, if being an S-P is different from being a liberal, which is Moyers?

It’s easy to criticize O’Reilly on the small-bore stuff—yes, he makes things up; yes, he’s a bully; and yes, he says some galling things. If you doubt any of this, the folks at Media Matters—“loathsome” S-P hacks, according to O’Reilly—have assembled a helpful dossier. But what matters more is the larger movement O’Reilly represents—one that has in recent years been nurtured by the dominant position that radio and TV punditry have enjoyed, and which has done tremendous damage to the tone of America’s political discourse.

O’Reilly is a standard bearer of the “secret liberal cabal” school of thought. Its adherents view liberalism not as a competing ideology to conservatism, but as a darker, more secretive and underhanded movement. O’Reilly’s conception of liberalism has two fundamental tenets: The liberal movement in the U.S., unlike its conservative counterpart, is controlled by furtive radicals; and liberals, unlike conservatives, will resort to non-electoral tactics to spread their views (the courts, Hollywood, etc.).

Listen to Hannity, Coulter, or Limbaugh—they all follow this same schema. O’Reilly has simply developed ways to be more tactful in his rhetoric, than, say, Michael “liberalism is a mental disorder” Savage. Nothing’s ever about partisanship in “The No Spin Zone”—no, Bill could never have that. He’s above it. He’s about tradition, family, and values—the fact that his opinions on these matters can 95 percent of the time be most accurately described as “conservative” is merely a coincidence.

The “secret liberal cabal” meme has spread like wildfire and is responsible for a huge amount of misunderstanding about the goals and intentions of liberal and progressive political movements. Millions of Americans, spurred into an echo-chamber frenzy by talk radio and “Fox News,” have adopted O’Reilly’s view of liberalism.

It’s a hugely convenient one for Republicans. After all, if liberals will resort to anything to promote their agenda, then it doesn’t matter who’s in power—liberals are always the biggest threat, and Hollywood’s denizens always a more dire foe than anyone in D.C. And if American liberals are controlled by radicals, most substantive policy discussions are moot: regardless of how poor a job the GOP does of ruling, the alternative will always be worse—it will always be the work of radicals rather than commonsense Americans.

This explains how members of the GOP, including President Bush and Karl Rove, can repeatedly parrot the idiotic line that, if liberals had their way, they would simply wait for the next terrorist attack, rather than take pro-active measures like invading Middle Eastern countries at random;many Americans genuinely believe that, at its core, the left represents genuine anti-Americanism. It also explains the bizarre conservative fixation with people like Barbra Streisand and Michael Moore—people who are powerful cultural figures, but completely ineffectual when it comes to actual influence on U.S. policy.

With the “secret liberal cabal” view in place, liberals and progressives have already lost half the battle. So, unfortunately, one of the best ways to understand the recent political failures of American liberalism is to read Culture Warrior and watch “The O’Reilly Factor.” Those who disagree with O’Reilly need to do more than ceaselessly point out his mendacity: They must understand how rhetoric like O’Reilly’s fits into the larger narratives and archetypes that shape right-wing populist political identities. Until the proud S-P’s do that, they cannot permanently reverse the backwards course O’Reilly and his minions have set us on.

 
Jesse Singal is an editorial intern at The Washington Monthly.

Related Stories

• Gender-Neutral Housing Comes to Princeton
• Campaign Communications Director, Repower America
• Toke Up Marijuana Laws
• Send a Health Care E-Card
• The Battle for Pittsburgh