Bill O'Reilly Doesn't Think Americans 'Know' Obama

Bill O’Reilly attended last week’s White House Holiday Party with his 11-year old daughter, not because he’s “a big schmoozer,” but because he wanted to “see how things were going,” and talk to some people.
 
“Everybody is kinda nice,” he said. “Even Joy Behar forced me to take a picture with her in front of the ‘holiday’ tree.”
 
Probably not located underneath that tree were copies of O’Reilly’s New York Times Bestselling book Pinheads and Patriots, in which he takes what he calls “a fair look” at who President Obama is, what he believes, and what’s likely to happen during his presidency.
 
O’Reilly thinks that unlike his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton, Barack Obama remains relatively unknown to Americans. “Whatever breeze was blowing, Bill was going to go with it, because he was a standard politician,” O’Reilly said. Obama, by contrast, “has got more ideological fervor to him.”
 
That ideology can be seen, in the view of many, in Obama’s health care reform, which just barely passed through Congress earlier this year. Yesterday, the so-called “Obama-care” plan received a blow from a federal judge in Virginia, who declared it was unconstitutional for the bill to require Americans to purchase health insurance.
 
O’Reilly, for one, suspected this outcome more than a year ago. He said, “If the government can force you to buy health insurance, it can force you to buy M&Ms.” Ultimately, he believes the Supreme Court will also rule against the provision.
 
While in Washington, DC, O’Reilly visited the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he told the wounded veterans, “Even though the wars are pretty much out of the headlines now, we still understand.” He sees his role, and that of others in the media, as making sure people don’t forget about these heroes and their needs.
 
“Our country has a responsibility,” he said. “Not just the government, but the folks.”
 
A New York Jets fan, O’Reilly was “screaming in my living room” during his team’s loss on Sunday to the Miami Dolphins. He was less critical of coach Rex Ryan than Imus was, saying of his bombastic ways, “He’s just trying to get a swagger going. This is New York.”
 
Maybe Ryan should direct some of his tough talk to future House Speaker John Boehner, who cries at the drop of a hat. The whole thing makes O’Reilly uncomfortable, but Imus thinks he knows why it’s so difficult for Boehner, who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, to do events at schools, where all the little children are running around trying to live the American dream.
 
Said Imus, “I think it’s because they won’t let you smoke at schools anymore.”
 
-Julie Kanfer