O'Reilly took the first hour of Michael Medved off the air where I live, and the comparison - though I'm not an O'Reilly hater - reflected very badly on Mr. O'Reilly. Medved is actually charismatic on the radio compared to O'Reilly's pedestrian, unformulated ranting (though I usually agree with him). He's actually unlistenable, and I immediately wanted Medved back upon first hearing the O'Reilly show.

Not that I listen to talk radio all the time...

I stopped watching O'Reilly when I realized that the entire show was just him explaining how he's morally and intellectually superior to the poor sap he's interviewing. I don't think his radio show was on the air in my area.

In O'Reilly's defense, some of his anti-internet rant was directed toward the exploitation of children but it went way overboard and into the realm of reactionary nonsense. If anything I would bet that the internet makes it *more* likely that the sickos will be exposed and caught. It's harder to "hide behind the technology" than a lot of people think.

This gaffe will hasten his fade (woe to the enemies of the blogosphere!), but O'Reilly's schtick got old a long time ago. Let's just hope we don't have to put up with him running for office a la Pat Buchannan.

The last time I accidentally tuned in to O'Reilly's radio show I was amazed at the amount of whining on O'Reilly's part.

The whole show was a big whine fest on how badly O'Reilly is treated by, well, I guess, everybody. Is he French? The EU seems to have the same fears of the Internet that Bill does.

Anyway, I immediately thought that Bill's show was really in trouble after hearing him crying and carrying on. Like a child throwing a fit, he is really upset his show is tanking.

Welcome back Stephen...look forward to reading more.

Lee in Colorado Springs

O'Reilly's problem for me is that I don't want to hear about the subjects he chooses. He's trying to be the right-wing's Oprah, soft culture stuff instead of hardball politics, but that's not what I want to hear. Perhaps the problem is that he treats the sociological problems as though he were talking about Hamas or Hillary. And the whole stop-those-people-from-smoking-that-stuff-because-I-say-so bit turns me off.

Well, Lileks and above commenters have stolen my thunder. But what gets me is all these journos refering to O'Reilly as "conservative" or "right wing" (you too Robert). O'Reilly too his credit, dismisses that description and rightly so. Unfortunately, he's low on originality and high on shallow, knee jerk "why aren't those idiot bureacrats doing more to do what I say" type of stuff. On economics in particular, he's a statist. Like pitchfork Pat, the guy is going down, he's past his peak, and I would hope conservatives would start disasociating from the guy before its too late. Next on the paranoid hit parade- Chris Matthews- less of an asshole but more of a bigot. Same with Novak.

O'Reilly is "conservative" in a sort of old-school middle-class authoritarian way. In terms of the conservative intellectual movement, or identifiable conservative politics, he doesn't resemble many of today's self-described conservatives at all.

He's pretty shallow and mostly self-absorbed it seems.

O'Reilly is a pathetic, emotional bully who equates decibels with righteousness. The silence generated by his long-overdue demise may even prompt some spoken reasonable debate over the serious financial and social issues we face.

Naaah.

O'Reilly is a populist, not a conservative. Nonetheless, he could still contribute to healthy debate if he would just let his guests talk a little, instead of basically shouting them down.

I tend to think his entire career is based on his pretty eyes. But you can't see those on the radio, can you?