All's fair in phone sex and war

Like any other cable news program, The O'Reilly Factor has a lot of air time to fill. Why else schedule a fair and balanced segment on due process at Gitmo when the host refuses to use the neutral "detainee" and will use only the word "jihadist" instead? Other than to fill up pauses between commercial breaks, why bother?

News Hounds offers a rollicking account of Bill O'Reilly meeting more than his match in someone who, like O'Reilly, doesn't abide by Oxford Union debate rules but, unlike O'Reilly, actually knows what she's talking about.

Liberal Lady Lawyer Runs Rings Around Bill O'Reilly on Subject of GITMO Detainees

For all his bluster and bravado. . .Bill O'Reilly was bested by his guest, law professor Rosa Brooks, a feisty, strong, knowledgeable human rights attorney who did a wonderful job of driving Bill crazy!

Brooks tweaked O'Reilly right at the start. Not a vicious ad hominem attack but a playful jab that put O'Reilly on notice and kick started the splotch-o-meter.

BROOKS: I'm disappointed with the L. A. Times, too, because I read their headline "Perhaps Bill O'Reilly Got It Wrong," and I thought, you know, perhaps the Pope is Catholic. Bill, you did get it wrong and you're wrong on three issues. You're wrong about why lawyers for Guantanamo detainees matter. You're wrong about why our image in the Muslim world matters. And you're also wrong about the press. You want me to go through them one by one?

As tactics go, this was a good one to use on O'Reilly: he was not amused. But even with his brain (and other gaping holes) filled with falafel, O'Reilly's not going to be put off his game that easily. He just switched to auto-pilot and relied on two of his favorite ploys: terminology control and gross exaggeration.

Thus, in a segment devoted to the Gitmo detainees, O'Reilly scrupulously avoided using the word. Only "jihadists" fill the cells at Gitmo and, as O'Reilly kept braying, that crazy bitch Brooks wants to give every single one of them a lawyer.

O'REILLY: Alright. So you want to assign a civilian American lawyer to each captured jihadist. That's what you want to do.

O'REILLY: Let me ask you a very - I'm a simple man. Would you give a lawyer to every captured jihadist? Yes or no?

O'REILLY (petulantly): So, in your - in Rosa Brooks' world every captured jihadist immediately gets a lawyer, immediately gets access to our courts ...

O'REILLY (ticked off): Well, you wouldn't answer the question! Four times. I asked you four times! Will you give jihadists a lawyer? Yes or no?!!

O'Reilly was caught unprepared (and got sulkily dismissive) when Brooks cited a DOD report estimating that, so far, 10% of the detainees at Guantanamo were released after wrongly being held for years. But never mind. At some point, O'Reilly just crowned himself the winner of that night's debate anyway.

O'REILLY: You just lost the argument.

And that's how you declare victory and fill the air time between commercial breaks on The O'Reilly Factor.
▼

For DOD and non-DOD definitions of detainee, click here.

For the Geneva Convention definition of enemy combatant, click here.

For definitions of offensive and defensive jihads, click here.

For "Bill O'Reilly: Murder by Number," a previous post on O'Reilly's terminology control tactics, click here.