The latest evidence that Bill O'Reilly remains a pathological obsession on the left comes from a cover story in the current issue of New York magazine about "the loud, cartoonish blood sport" between Fox News and MSNBC with CNN's ratings suffering collateral damage.
The story, featured prominently in Huffington Post's politics media section today and trumpeted as a "must read," includes this description of a discussion between Maddow and her staff after O'Reilly called her a "loon" back in August during the Shirley Sherrod/Andrew Breitbart imbroglio --
Maddow thinks she's settled on the appropriate comeback. "I want to wear a loon suit," she says, flashing a rafffish grin. She turns to her staff and pretends to address O'Reilly as a duck. "Sorry, you really hurt my feelings, I am a loon. I'm on the Canadian dollar bill. It's awful" -- she pauses -- but you, however, are also a race-baiting f**k."
The room explodes in laughter. Maddow's executive producer, Bill Wolff, has doubts about the bit and pushes Maddow to take on (Marco) Rubio (who was running a campaign ad that mocked Maddow), not Fox. "My feeling is, Rubio is news. Rubio is trying to be the senator from Florida. O'Reilly is a media schmuck."
.... while Maddow is clearly intent on proving O'Reilly right, as in "I am a loon." More from the New York mag piece --
"But it's the Sherrod story," Maddow counters. "I have leveled a serious charge about what's happening with making white people afraid of black people as a political tactic by political activists, by people who want to harm the administration, and by Fox News as a political organization."
On cable, schoolyard rules rule. "You should always get the last word," Maddow reminds her team. "Right now, we don't have the last word. Right now, the last word is loon."
Not to worry, Ms. Maddow. Your ideological cohorts at New York magazine, Huffington Post and elsewhere in the leeward media will ensure you'll get that badly-needed last word.
The New York piece also includes the revelation that CNN tried to hire MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to shore up its plunging ratings, "down 40 percent since 2009."
