Pinheads and Patriots Read online

  Pinheads and Patriots

  Where You Stand in the Age of Obama

  Bill O’Reilly

  This book is dedicated to Madeline and Spencer.

  Kids do not come any better.

  Contents

  Introduction This One’s for You!

  Chapter 1 Essential Examples of a Pinhead and a Patriot

  Courage in the Face of Adversity

  The Cowardly Lion

  Chapter 2 Barack Hussein Obama—Who Exactly Is This Guy?

  Borderline Pinheads

  When Everything Started to Tank

  The Peace Surprize

  The Great Ratings War

  Major Gaffe

  Trial and Error

  Fire and Ice

  A Warmer Climate

  Merry Christmas, Mr. President

  Fourth-Quarter Grades

  Chapter 3 To Your Health

  Clean Bill of Health?

  Deal or No Deal

  Rushing to Conclusions

  Chapter 4 Your Place in a Changing America

  Rich Man, Poor Man

  To Hell in a Handbasket?

  The Man in the Middle

  Some Honey with That Tea?

  The Tech Offensive

  The Way We Were

  Forty Years and Twenty-Eight Days Later

  Age-Old Wisdom

  Jelly Beans, Peanuts, and Humble Pie

  Chapter 5 The Boston Massacre

  Medic Alert

  A Safe Assumption

  What’s Mine Is Yours

  Chapter 6 The Audacity of Dopes: Colossal Pinheads in Our Midst

  Newsworthy CEOs?

  Epidemic Nonsense

  Legally Blind

  Hume-and-Kindness Haters

  Chapter 7 It’s All About Me

  The Confidence Factor

  Taking the Patriot Challenge

  The Power of Blunt Commentary

  Chapter 8 Loathing Obama

  Below-Average Marx on the Socialism Test

  Chapter 9 All-Time Favorite P&Ps

  Chapter 10 The Last Word

  Senator Obama’s September 2008 Interview on The O’Reilly Factor Complete, Unabridged, and Annotated Transcript

  Afterthoughts It’s All About You

  Searchable Terms

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Bill O’Reilly

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  This One’s for You

  HEY, YOU! YOU, THE AMERICAN! You who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This book is about you. No spin.

  In this age of Obama, all that you take for granted is changing, yet many Americans have no clue. So I’ve decided to fix that. After reading the following pages, you will know precisely what’s going on in the United States. Then you can plan exactly how to deal with the massive shift in the way our country is being run. Trust me, you need to know what is really happening so that you can make effective decisions for yourself.

  These changes are not all bad, but they’re not all good, either. Many will hurt you and your family. Most media people and politicians won’t tell you that because they don’t care about you. But I do.

  Why? It’s very simple: you guys have made me rich and famous. I worked hard to position myself to succeed, but you made it happen. Without you watching me on TV and reading my books, I would be just another energetic bloviator—perhaps teaching school in Miami or reporting the news in Dallas. I appreciate the fact that millions of you have contributed to my success, so now it’s payback time: I will vividly chronicle the changes occurring in an America that your great-grandparents would never recognize today, because knowing the facts is how you can preserve the things you love about this country most—the things they loved, too.

  As you must know by now, it has been a great adventure for me to write five consecutive bestselling nonfiction books over the years, and again, I’m grateful that you were there right along with me on those adventures.

  My previous book, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, was considered my most personal to date. It is about how my life overlapped with your life and how my upbringing and experiences brought me to a place where I can speak to millions of folks every day. We had a lot of fun in Bold and we’ll have some laughs in P & P, too, but this effort is completely different. Again, this book is about your life in America. And there is no more important time to talk about you than right now.

  As you may know, each episode of my TV program, The O’Reilly Factor, ends with a segment called “Pinheads and Patriots,” in which I call out both people who are doing good things (Patriots), and those who are doing awful, dumb, or evil things (Pinheads). Although the expositions range from the banal (dealing with Snoop Dogg) to the deadly serious (addressing the actions of world leaders), they are always about influencers—individuals whose actions, good or bad, affect you. Research shows that this segment has become a hit with the Factor audience for this very reason.

  To break it down so that even Nancy Pelosi can understand it, there are basically two kinds of people in the world: those whose thoughts and actions say “me first,” and those whose primary goal is to look out for others the same way they would look out for themselves (a Judeo-Christian philosophy). Generally speaking, the Patriots come from the second category.

  Sure, it’s true that most of us are self-centered, at least some of the time. But how we deal with that reality defines whether we are a Pinhead or a Patriot. As always, free will prevails.

  Sometimes, the evaluation of these people’s actions gets complicated. For example, President John F. Kennedy did some great things for poor Americans, and he also handled the Russian threat in Cuba with admirable courage. But JFK was also needlessly ruthless at times and used people in deceitful ways. So the President was both a Pinhead and a Patriot. As you can see, defining his short life in consistent terms is very difficult to do because he was capable of both extraordinary good and incredible callousness.

  Similarly, President George W. Bush is a challenge to define. He did a number of truly noble things, especially during his first term. His ferocity against murderous members of al-Qaeda likely saved thousands of American lives. His generosity in fighting disease in Africa also saved millions of lives, and that important humanitarian work continues to this day.

  Unfortunately, the Pinhead factor exists for him as well, because the Iraq War was not only poorly planned but most likely unnecessary. Also, Mr. Bush’s failure to aggressively oversee the economy led to rampant speculation and financial con games galore. The results were obviously catastrophic; the recession damaged the lives of countless people all over the world.

  But this book is not about past Presidents per se.

  In fact, much of it will be devoted to discussing the present occupant of the Oval Office. President Barack Obama is, perhaps, the most polarizing chief executive since Abraham Lincoln. Yes, opinions about Bill Clinton and Bush the Younger divided the country, but not in the way views about Mr. Obama have. Some Americans sincerely believe he is trying to change the fundamental core of the United States. You hear this critical refrain all the time: “When do I get my country back?”

  The Obama factor is, of course, fluid. It is being played out every day in thousands of ways. For this reason, it is imperative that you, the loyal American, continue to watch and understand its impact on your place in America. Thus, the subtitle of this book—Where You Stand in the Age of Obama—and my mandate to take a hard look at the President.

  On June 9, 2010, the world’s most influential newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, printed an op-ed piece by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the paper’s editorial board.

  The article, entitled “The Alien in the White House,” made a devastating case that Barack Obama has little in common with working, everyday Americans. Ms. Rabinowitz put forth the view that the President simply has no understanding of you and your life. As a result, his leadership is based on theory, not reality. She also asserted that Americans are beginning to notice the emotional distance between them and their leader.

  The op-ed was provocative and damaging to the President, especially in the midst of a brutal economy and the oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The polls show Mr. Obama losing the support of independent voters and even some liberal voters. Is the President detached from your reality? Is he a man who lives primarily within himself? We will try to answer those questions in the following pages.

  But this much can be said with absolute certainty about all national leaders: sometimes they are Pinheads and sometimes they are Patriots, as we cited with the examples of JFK and W. But when the stakes are as high as they are right now in America—with historical debt and a war against crazy Islamic jihadists, some of whom are seeking nuclear weapons—leadership becomes amazingly important. Let’s be blunt: a Pinhead making a national security mistake could very well get thousands of Americans killed. And a continuation of out-of-control spending could shatter the entire economy.

  Therefore, I have a responsibility to provide you, the reader, with an honest appraisal of your situation in this age of Obama. I can’t embrace ideology, myth, or propaganda. I’ve got to cut through the fog and define whether socialism, corruption, incompetence, and yes, even evil are in the air.

  So determining the roster of Pinheads and Patriots is a complicated business, as you can see, and I do not make these designations lightly. Nobod
y’s perfect, but, in most cases, a pattern of behavior does emerge. And we’ll be looking for the pattern together in this book. To get us started, I have two clear examples of how I determine P&P status: say hello to Congressman Barney Frank, and please consider the late Tony Snow.

  CHAPTER 1

  Essential Examples of a Pinhead and a Patriot

  LET’S BEGIN WITH THE DEFINITION of Pinhead as put forth in the book A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, compiled by Eric Partridge. “Pinhead—A simple fellow, a fool. So small a head can contain but few brains.”

  Then there’s the definition that Urban Dictionary drops on us: “One who lacks the intelligence of the ‘normal’ sector of the human population; [one who]cannot handle the most mundane tasks due to lack of common sense and intelligence.”

  And, finally, it may be worth noting that popular music spells the meaning out as D-U-M-B. Just listen to the lyrics of punk rocker Dee Dee Ramone’s popular song “Pinhead” to see what I mean.

  I’m also aware that there is a song called “Pinheads Are Everywhere” by Dan Hiatt and No Sisters, but since I already know that Pinheads are everywhere and I have written this book to prove it, I have not sought out that song.

  Obviously, my personal definition of a Pinhead is much broader than the slang term implies. Some very intelligent people can be Pinheads and often are. It applies to individual actions. As you will read, you can be a Pinhead one day and a Patriot the next. But Pinhead status is a slippery slope. Get in with the wrong crowd, get taken by your own success, or get some bad advice, and all of that can lead to residence in Pinheadville, a place you should avoid if you can.

  On the Patriot front the definition is a lot easier. I like this description of Patriotism by Adlai Stevenson, the liberal politician who ran for President twice against Dwight Eisenhower and got his butt kicked both times: “Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”

  Throughout my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to know many American Patriots. For our purposes here, let’s spotlight one you might well remember.

  COURAGE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY

  My friend Tony Snow was the bravest man I ever met. When he died of cancer in July 2008, I was not surprised. I had watched him fight the insidious disease for years. He was my colleague at Fox News and later, of course, the chief spokesman for the Bush White House.

  As you may know, I called him “Snow,” and we energetically debated public policy on both radio and TV. Even though I was angrier about stuff than he was a lot of the time, our philosophies were similar, with the exception of party politics—he was a committed Republican; I am a registered Independent.

  Because we had good on-air chemistry, Westwood One signed Tony as my primary substitute for The Radio Factor. The guy was brilliant, honest, and really cared about the welfare of his country. Snow was a better man than I am. He was a guy to emulate.

  Born in Berea, Kentucky, on June 1, 1955, Tony Snow was raised in a working-class community in the Cincinnati area. After graduating from Davidson College and continuing his studies at the University of Chicago, Snow took a journalism job in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979 and worked his way up from there to national prominence.

  He did what I did. He started small and ultimately made it big.

  In April 2006 President Bush selected Tony Snow to replace Scott McClellan as the primary White House spokesperson. He was great at it—disarming the partisan Left press corps with quips and good-natured teasing. But all the while, Snow was fighting a disease that relentlessly attacked his colon.

  Before he took the political job, he ran it by me, weighing the pros and cons. I told him this: “Snow, you will have a window to the world that few other human beings ever have. You believe Bush is a force for good, and you can help him. So you have no choice—you have to take the job.”

  He did, of course. And truthfully, I could hear in his voice that he had made that decision even before we finished our conversation.

  But by the summer of 2007, I sensed Snow was having a tough time with the cancer treatments, and I feared he would not make it. He never said that, but I knew he felt his situation was precarious. Even then, his primary motivation was not for his own well-being. It was for that of others. He was concerned about his wife, Jill, and his three children. He wanted to protect their financial futures, so, knowing that the end was coming, Tony resigned from the White House in September 2007 and used his last days to make money in the private sector. Racing against time, he took as many paid speaking engagements as he could. I watched as he flew around the country, all the while suffering tremendous pain. It was heartbreaking, but Snow never once complained.

  When we spoke, I’d always begin with the question: “Snow, how you doing?”

  He always replied, “I’m doing great!” But he wasn’t.

  His funeral was held at Washington’s National Cathedral on Thursday, July 17, 2008. It was a beautiful day, and the Catholic ceremony was packed with many of the country’s most powerful people, including President and Mrs. Bush and Vice President and Mrs. Cheney. Tony’s family sat in the first pew in front of the altar. I was one row behind them on the right, flanked by a number of my Fox News colleagues.

  After receiving communion, I was able to squeeze Jill Snow’s hand. It was all I could do. Everything had been said in the days before Tony’s death. I saw the President, and he nodded at me. Again, what more could be said?

  Patriot and former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow waves good-bye as he departs the White House on his final day at the office.

  REUTERS

  Photographed by Ho New

  The Washington Post covered Tony Snow’s funeral with dignity. The New York Times ignored it. Just thought you’d like to know that. As the years go by, Tony Snow will be remembered by his friends as a great man and as a Patriot. There is no higher accolade on this planet. Tony was just fifty-three when he died.

  THE COWARDLY LION

  Now let’s head over to Pinheadville, a place where I assign folks if they do something extremely stupid, or wind up damaging other people by their actions. As we’ve discussed before, being a Pinhead does not have to be a lifelong designation. There is always the prospect of redemption for Pinheads if the dopey stuff stops. Sometimes someone can be both a Patriot and a Pinhead in a short period of time. But for our purposes here, it is important to define clearly what a Pinhead is. And for that we turn to the vivid example of my pal Congressman Barney Frank.

  After serving almost thirty years in the House of Representatives, Barney Frank has earned some Patriotic credentials, no doubt about it. The Massachusetts liberal is a force in Congress, and you have to give him credit for his public service. But after that, things get murky, and the dreaded Pinhead label comes into play.

  As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank had a front-row seat from which to watch the economy collapse. Even worse, Barney directly oversaw the two federal mortgage houses, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were so poorly run they made Somalia look like Switzerland.

  But if you ask Frank about any of this, as I did, you get outrageous spin and blatant denials of any fault. According to Barney, he was a victim of the economic chaos. None of it had anything to do with him. He’s quick to say that Bush did it or to offer some other lame defense.

  So let’s look at the record to see whether or not Frank falls into the Pinhead category.

  On July 14, 2008, less than two months before the American public became aware that the economy was headed south fast, Barney Frank said this on CNBC: