Well, grab me a loofah and toss me the phone! There is a certain irony in how Three Monkey Republicans – most noticeably those inhabiting supposedly conservative bastions such as Fox News, National Review and assorted cheerleader blogs – are reacting to accusations made recently against their Bill of preference. Whereas they could not get enough of All Monica, All The Time, (or, more recently, RatherGate), they appear to have rather less interest in Miss Andrea Mackris of Fox News and her lawsuit against The Freaky Factor, Bill O’Reilly.
And yet, self-destruction by sexual impropriety is hardly uncommon among those who place the pursuit of fame, money and political power ahead of principle. Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston are only three of many examples of men whose personal principles were as weak as their commitment to freedom and human liberty.
Those who hold to no principles with regard to their ideology seldom subscribe to any involving their personal behavior either. Show me a man who prefers to split the difference between right and wrong, and I’ll show you a man who won’t keep his pants zipped if given the opportunity.
Conservatives may remember this as the “character counts” argument made by many of the very individuals who have been so uncharacteristically silent after the Drudge Report posted one of its biggest headlines since the notorious one about a certain blue dress. Wherefore art thou now, Jonah Goldberg? It took two days before NRO’s Corner so much as emitted a peep about what is already a matter of public record!
Still, I find this silence understandable because I have experienced the pressure not to speak poorly of those who can make or break a right-wing pundit’s career. The reason that many conservative pundits are not leaping all over this is not because they don’t possess the facts – let’s face it, when does that stop anyone – but because they fear losing their precious air time should they fall afoul of the powers-that-be at Fox.
For example, I cannot overstate the fear and awe of the Third Triumverate – which is to say, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity – that pervades every conservative publishing house, because any one of these three men can make or break a book intended for a conservative audience. As I was told by one publisher: “You may not care about the consequences of taking on O’Reilly or Hannity, but we have to be careful.” This is not moral cowardice on the part of the publishers, it is simply the market reality with which they must deal. It is also why most conservative commentators are eventually forced to decide if certain individuals are to be considered off-limits or not.
Only the very few who either don’t give a damn about television and radio or are too obtuse to understand what’s going on are immune. That’s why the lionhearted conservative commentariat will be as reluctant to address the issues raised by Brave Sir Billy’s telephone talk as the stalwarts of the mainstream media were to discuss Dan Rather’s forgeries and Slick Willy’s perjury and peculiar ways with a cigar. They’ll do it, eventually, but only if it’s proved beyond any shadow of a doubt and continued silence is simply not an option.
Now, as then, it is impossible for anyone not directly involved to ascertain the truth of the matter. Bill O’Reilly may be entirely innocent, or he may be guilty of moral failures far greater than those alleged. Like Bill Clinton before him, Bill O’Reilly is aggressively asserting that he is being falsely accused. And like the former president, he is also failing to deny the very specific charges being made:
In a case like this, you have to fight, even at some risk. These people trying to extort this money from us will lob all kinds of charges, knowing that some in the press who don’t like me or Fox News will gleefully pick the stuff up … Obviously, I can’t get into specifics as the litigation is in motion, but I do respect my audience and feel you should know exactly what’s going on.
Unfortunately, it looks as if the conservative media is once again determined to imitate its great nemesis, the mainstream media. But the public abhors a vacuum and no one should know better than the commentators of the right that if they will not hold their own accountable for their failures, moral and intellectual, someone else will be happy to fill in the void.
