“O’Reilly: Special Victims Unit”

In the latest edition of The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann writes about “Bill O’Reilly‘s baroque period.”

“O’Reilly has been playing O’Reilly so successfully for so long, and has developed such a substantial library of hooks, tics, and subplots, that he sometimes seems to be parodying himself, or parodying Colbert’s parody of him,” Lemann says.

I think this is the most revealing paragraph: “If what you know about The O’Reilly Factor comes mainly from its opponents on the left — from movies like Outfoxed and Web sites like Media Matters — and you watch it regularly for a while, you’’l be surprised by how little of the content these days is political. The O’Reilly Factor is, increasingly, not a conservative show but a cop show — O’Reilly: Special Victims Unit, perhaps — devoted particularly to sex offenders.” Here’s the full essay…