Probably the one point of content I have about your observation is that the medium (TV) is what led to this “dust-up,” if you will.

O’Reilly knows he is dealing with roughly a 6-minute window. He knows he must not only keep the segment moving along if there is going to be any significant amount of discussion and information exchange.

He knows that points can get lost if they are not addressed at the moment they are first brought up and, thus, he often “interrupts” his guests to question (challenge?) an individual point. He also knows that guests may try to “overwhelm” him and viewers by “rattling off” a “laundry list” of bullet points with the idea of not being challenged about the specifics of individual points raised.

Compare this with Hugh Hewitt. I assume you are referring to Hewitt’s radio program. He would probably devote a minimum of a half hour and more likely a full hour of showtime to interviewing Frank. He would have the luxury of time, something that O’Reilly did not have.

Hewitt could replay the sound byte of Frank that O’Reilly led his segment off with so that he could demonstrate to Frank what O’Reilly could only shout back at the addled congressman.

That being said, I do agree with you on the prosecuting attorney analogy. The facts are available. We know the MSM won’t compile and present them to the public. Perhaps the political opponents of those running for office will use them against their opponents where applicable.

Frank always sounds like he is slobbering on someone’s yohoo!

PappaMac on October 3,

LOL I have to admit,, I have never heard someone talk like that before.

Yes, it was a cheap shot, but we’re talking about “Boy Brothel Barney”.

…I’m disappointed (but hardly surprised) that O’Reilly turned this into a shouting match. It might feel good to yell at Barney Frank — and it did, according to the crowd reaction — but that interview called for a prosecuting attorney, one prepared to dispassionately slice Frank to pieces with facts, quotes, and figures. A shouting match lets Frank off the hook…

…quite true, but Frank lives in his own coccoon, a congressional Neverneverland, in a condo down the hall from Peter Pan (don’t get me started), and even the most skillful prosecutor would have trouble getting anything out of him…it would be an endless circle of boilerplate legislative fantasy and word parsing….

His starting off the interview with a slap at O’Reilly (looking down, playing with his papers or himself), O’Reilly’s short fuse (he’d obviously intended for this to be an auto-da-fe of his accusing Frank for “the folks”) and their mutual dislike erupting into what could only be compared to a drag-queen slap fight was good current events theater…it’s harmless, ultimately, and probably the only consequence Frank will ever have to eat. Nobody’s gonna hold him responsible, or Dodd, either at the polls or at the bar. There might be some junior clerk get creamed, but there’ll be no Enron-esque rolling-of-the-tumbrels…Raines, Johnson, Dodd, Frank, Cox, nobody’s gonna go down…well, except Frank, of course…again, don’t get me started….

O’Reilly is a populist blowhard who thinks that he’s “looking out for the folks”, and Frank is an ideological blowhard holding white-knuckled onto the fringes of the Left because failing to do so would invalidate not only is “lifestyle choices” but his very existence…such as it is.

That said, O’Reilly has one thing over Frank…O’Reilly is self-sufficient. He can muddy up the issues, shout, posture and preen all he wants…the taxpayers aren’t footing the bill…so to speak….

Let’s get Hugh Hewitt to interview Frank, and see the difference.

I agree. Hugh is masterful. I became a fan when I heard him lead that idiot Joel Stein from the LAT down the garden path and over the cliff.

Stein was clueless and Hugh was triumphant.

Was listening to the House hearings theis morning and Barn kept yeilding two minutes to his buds who would then tell him what a great job he was doing. I think they call that foreplay.

O’Reilly dealt with Barney Frank in the only manner appropriate for such a pile af garbage.

I think Frank is a jerk, but I think he handled himself far better than O’Reilly did.

I would like to see FOX do a expose on the FM/FM issue and connect the dots. Maybe Brit Hume could host it. O’Rielly just makes me wanna hurl.

RobertInAustin on October 3, 2008 at 8:41 AM

I agree. Most of America still has no clue how we got to this point. The Democrats’ insistence on forcing “affirmative action” lending practices on banks, combined with their idiotic open borders policies, has brought our entire economy to the brink of disaster. We and our children and grandchildren will be paying for their stupid attempts to engineer “fairness” (i.e., every black and illegal alien hispanic is entitled to a mortgage, whether they can afford one or not) for many years.

Unfortunately, McCain and Palin are letting the election get away from them because they’re way too soft on the likes of Frank, Dodd, Pelosi, etc. IMO most Americans have no clue about who Frank is and what role he and his party played in America’s financial meltdown.