In Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, Who’s Looking Out for You?, he launches a salvo at the Catholic League. “The anger I feel for the witch-hunters of America is off the charts,” he says on p. 184. This is followed by, “The Catholic League of America issued a press release after my criticism of the Pope, charging I ‘despised him.'”
A couple of small points. First of all, we are the Catholic League, not the Catholic League of America. William Donohue has previously charged that O’Reilly has shown contempt for the Pope—he never said O’Reilly despises the pope. What really matters, however, is O’Reilly’s failure to point out to the reader exactly what created the furor in the first place.
It was on March 13 that O’Reilly criticized the pope for allegedly not having “a position on Saddam [Hussein].” After commenting on the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime, O’Reilly said, “And then the pope sits in Rome and says, gee, this is terrible, but does not throw his moral authority behind removing this dictator.” This comment by O’Reilly was preceded a week earlier when he said, “I have never liked this pope. I have always felt he was an autocrat who had no vision about how people live in the real world.”
In his book, O’Reilly never lets the reader know that it was these words that led Donohue to charge him with having contempt for the pope. Instead, he simply says he was criticized by the Catholic League, and for this we are tagged as “witch-hunters.”
This is one guy who can dish it out but can’t take it. His unfair and imbalanced approach is one reason why a lot of his former fans no longer have any use for him.
