The most caustic exchange I ever had with O’Reilly occurred when he invited me to discuss an Op-Ed that I had written for the Times. In that piece, I lamented that Trayvon Martin had been murdered by George Zimmerman “in cold blood.” O’Reilly had been a vehement apologist for the youth’s killer. Our interview, ostensibly, was to center on Zimmerman’s trial, but O’Reilly’s hidden agenda was to shame me into taking my assertion back and to apologize to Zimmerman. I refused. I insisted that the black young man had in fact been murdered “in cold blood.” I reminded O’Reilly that Zimmerman was an unknown, suspicious-looking adult, and that Trayvon was just a teen-ager who deserved to be treated with dignity, especially as a minor. Outraged, Bill shouted, “I don’t care if he was four years old!” There I sat, feet from O’Reilly and his world view: everyone should have a gun to defend himself, and the right to use it, even if a four-year-old is involved; and a vigilante’s right to life supersedes that of an innocent black teen’s.
I could gauge the quality of my performance on “The O’Reilly Factor” by the response from viewers. When I received no response, I knew my efforts had fallen flat. In other instances, just minutes after wrapping up an appearance, my inbox would be flooded with choice feedback from his fans: “Commie,” “******,” “Buckwheat,” “faq.” These sorts of e-mails, combined with a series of hot, angry tweets, were an accurate measure of an effective appearance. In the thin-skinned ethos of O’Reilly’s right-wing universe, the more you battered its poster boy with dead-on punches, the more ferocious the vitriol directed at you.
