On Tuesday, New York’s Daily News carried the headline “Bill O’Reilly admits he ‘may be an idiot’ for wrongly predicting Supreme Court’s health care decision.” Meena Hart Duerson began with snark: “Bill O'Reilly and his critics may finally have something to agree on: the talk show host admitted Monday he ‘may be an idiot’ for wrongly predicting the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare.”
But O’Reilly’s guess on March 26 – 5 to 4 to overturn – was exactly where many pundits would have placed their bets. Has the Daily News ever noticed CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin predicting it might have gone eight to one in Obama’s favor on The Situation Room March 23, with even Scalia and Alito joining with Kennedy and Roberts in siding with Obama? No.
The Daily News gossips have over the last few years hotly chronicled Toobin’s “baby mama drama” with reporter Jeff Greenfield’s daughter Casey, including the allegation that Toobin offered to pay for an abortion. But the paper skipped the CNN analyst’s SCOTUS prediction fiasco. Only Fox has “idiots,” apparently. The “C” in “CNN” must stand for “Cogent” at 4 New York Plaza. (Or when considering Toobin, the C-word is "concupiscence.")
O’Reilly said on Monday night, “I'm not really sorry, but I am a man of my word, so I apologize for not factoring in the John Roberts situation. Truthfully, I never, in a million years, thought the chief justice would go beyond the scope of the commerce clause debate and into taxation. I may be an idiot for not considering that.”
Duerson’s piece snarked about the “not really sorry,” but left out everything after “situation,” since the constitutional substance must have been too boring for a tabloid.
