dagblog - Comments for "Dagbooks: Blowing Smoke – Chapter One - How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas"

Great.

jaffa — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:33:31 +0000

In reply to I feel like I have an unfair

Great.

I would like to show my

emma nelson — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 05:47:07 +0000

In reply to Ramona, I think the beauty of

I would like to show my appreciation of your writing skill and ability to make audience, read the whole thing to the end. natural mole removal

Downloaded the book this

Emersonian — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:45:56 +0000

In reply to Dagbooks: Blowing Smoke – Chapter One - How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas

Downloaded the book this weekend (yes I paid for it) and couldn't put it down, therefore got very little done this weekend (damn Genghis!). Very good read. I enjoyed it although my head feels funny from all the crazy quotes I had to endure to get to the solution. I feel saturated with crazy at this point so I won't write much but I wanted to share my thoughts on the book.

First, as one who lives in a heavily conservative / talk radio / tea party area I think you are spot on. The bully/victim role that the right has managed to develop to an art is very effective and quite difficult to counter. Primarily because you are on the losing end regardless of what you say. They may bully you for differing views and call you naive and tell you that they know the right way to go on, well, everything; but the second you try to explain that there could be a better way you have become an ivory-tower, elitist, hollywood brainwashed marxist who is trying to destroy their way of life with your secularist evil ways. (I get a lot of the secularist derogatory name calling down here. Many people use that as the catch all word for evil nonconservative.) Also, it is seemingly impossible to convince someone that they are in fact not being persecuted and that all the people they lump together as engaging in some conspiracy are in all likelihood not talking to one another, not colluding with one another and in fact may disagree with one another on many points. The narrative is too enticing as you (and Freud) explain very succinctly in your book.

I also completely agree with the analysis on why liberal talk radio would not work. The people I know who listed to tr have such a similar take on all subjects and they usually revolve around the idea that liberals are evil spawns of satan. Liberals on the other hand...well, all you have to do it spend about 15 minutes on this site to see that there are many, many, many disagreements. I have always said, stick a million conservatives in a room and bring up a topic and you will get 1 point of view. Put 10 liberals in a room and bring up a topic and you will get 15 POV. Leave them alone and come back in 3 weeks and the liberals will still be arguing the nuances of the argument. I sometimes come here and wonder what the hell people are arguing about.

Anyway, more later, perhaps, when I have cleared my head; but just wanted to say good job. I applaud anyone for the perseverance and discipline needed to write a book and - my god man, the research you had to do to get the information for this book, you must be crazy!

Well I'm a week late but I

LisB — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 01:15:47 +0000

In reply to Dagbooks: Blowing Smoke – Chapter One - How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas

Well I'm a week late but I just got the book (thanks, Donal!) and will join in at next week's discussion (which, I think will be this week).

One thing I'll just add before I start reading it, is that I had a recollection of a moment from my past when I read your words:

In Wolraich’s eyes, O’Reilly is a storyteller at heart. The tales he weaves, with traditional hero and villain archetypes and plenty of conflict, keep people on the edge of their couches.

I couldn't help but remember the book-signing I went to with my sister out on Long Island back in 2001 or so. O'Reilly was the featured author and he got up at a podium and a large crowd (including my sister and I) sat and listened to him before he started signing books. At that point in time I still considered myself a conservative Republican and I had seen him on Fox News almost every night, so I was a little awed back then. He told us of his days growing up on Long Island and he wove many of his stories into his discussion of his book, and I thought at the time he seemed so "real". So approachable.

He is good at drawing people in by seeming humble like that. Only after going through my total swing to the left did I start to notice how he uses that gift for the wrong reasons. So, long story short, this is going to be a very interesting read.

I feel like I have an unfair

stillidealistic — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:43:00 +0000

In reply to Dagbooks: Blowing Smoke – Chapter One - How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas

I feel like I have an unfair advantage in understanding Michael's thought process, since I'm reading an autographed copy...Ha!

Not exactly related to

CaliforniaPaige — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 23:19:09 +0000

In reply to Dagbooks: Blowing Smoke – Chapter One - How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas

Not exactly related to chapter one, but yesterday I happened across the following article on a train in Germany: Letzte Bastion der Gottesfürchtigen (The Last Bastion of the God-Fearing)

I'm not sure how badly Google translate is likely to destroy it, but it addresses some of the same points Wolraich explores in depth. One point brought up by this author is that the modern religious and cultural persecution fears reach back to the founding of the country with the Puritans, who held strictly to their own ideas and suspected anything outside their relatively strange belief structure of conspiring against them.

I'm too sleepy to answer the other questions. Maybe next time....

Michael Wolraich: I'd answer this one, but all I can think of are compliments. And nobody wants to read those!

Somewhere around 2007, Bill

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:03:26 +0000

In reply to Hi seashell, good to see you

Somewhere around 2007, Bill O'Reilly declared that he'd won the war on Christmas, and we haven't heard much about it since. Go Bill.

Hi seashell, good to see you

Ramona — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:48:31 +0000

In reply to 2nd favorite funny - Orlando

Hi seashell, good to see you here. Hadn't thought about Amazon reviews, but when I finish the book I'll go over and do it. Thanks.

Has anyone heard rumblings about the War on Christmas 2010? Isn't it about time they got that started? It's always a high point of the holiday season for me.

2nd favorite funny - Orlando

seashell — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 01:53:37 +0000

In reply to Dagbooks: Blowing Smoke – Chapter One - How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas

2nd favorite funny - Orlando nabbed my first:

† The correlation between golf and moral decay suggests a link between the whacking of small white balls and the war on Christmas.

3rd favorite funny:

* "Boston Tea Party". The gatherings sometimes resemble tours of the Liberty Bell and Constitutional Hall except that the Ben Franklin imitator carries a sign that says "NO Pubic Option [sic]."

1. Wolraich postulates that the narrators of teh crazy fall back on one or more of the three tatics. Personally, I think he makes the case that all three in one fantasy is best for fuelling paranoid hysteria amongst the eager believers. However, stay tuned for nuances in later chapters.

2. Agree on both the imagination and the ratings. But as Wolraich goes on to say, the war on Xmas (if I may abbreviate) was not the first or last instance of paranoid insanity from the wingers. The roots go back to the 1970s, long before Fox News first offered fact free opinion disguised as something like news. Looking at the focus group results that are referred to under the Don't Tread on Me heading, I now realize that there has been a vast disconnect between red and blue Americans for quite some time that goes way beyond the big gov't versus small gov't type of discourse. When I talk about social justice, level playing fields and health care for all, apparently a goodly portion of the population hears money for welfare queens, reverse racism and death panels for granny. And according to my read of the election results, as well as the crazy signs that sprout up at the Tea Parties, it's death panels for granny in a landslide win over health care for all.

3. Pure genius.

Why are we calling Genghis-Mike, Wolraich?

Has anyone written a review for Amazon.com lately? My last one was in Nov. 2009 and it popped right up on the screen. Now they are claiming 24-48 hours for moderation to go through?

So good to see everyone!

Found this in Wikipedia:

Ramona — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 01:47:56 +0000

In reply to It was Pat Buchanan,

Found this in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

Guess it doesn't matter where it came from, but somehow it means a lot to me that it didn't originate with O'Reilly.