Hooboy.  Somebody must have taken away Bill O'Reilly's dildo.  He seems a little edgy lately.  (The doctor says cocaine makes him nervous.  Maybe he should switch to Sanka.)  Remember last week when he cut the microphone of a 29-year veteran of the armed services because she was refusing to lie and provide him with political cover?  Well, today's burst of insanity makes that shit look like a game of spin-the-bottle.  I tip my hat to Oliver Willis for calling my attention to this grand mal freakout from a discussion between Pox News's Assistant Principal O'Reilly and that paragon of journalistic integrity, Geraldo Rivera.

Let me see if I can set this up for you, although, really, nothing can prepare you for the sight of O'Reilly losing his shit this completely, shouting, and going red in the face.  This is the most freakishly overwrought and hysterical I've ever seen him get on the air.  My guess is that we'll be seeing a lot of this sort of thing as the veil between Righty pundits and the truth gets thinner and more tattered and they have to pump the pedals ever harder to keep their audiences from noticing The Man Behind the Curtain.

It seems that in Virginia Beach, a white family's daughter was killed when a drunk illegal immigrant crashed into her car, killing her and a passenger.  O'Reilly seems to believe that the man's illegal status is to blame rather than his drunkenness.  Geraldo is trying to talk some sense into Billy-O, but, shrewdly sensing that his political point will be forfeit if he concedes that it very well could have been a white fundamentalist preacher on meth (or a thirty-something George W. Bush) who crashed into and killed those precious, perfect, blameless lily-white teens, O'Reilly opts instead to crank his faux-outrage to eleven and give us all a glimpse of the real frothing, screeching maniac that lives just below the surface of every Right Winger's paper-thin veneer of respectability.

Geraldo: My nightmare is my daughters having anything to do with a person driving drunk.  It could be a Jewish drunk.  It could be a Polish drunk.  It could be an Irish drunk.  It could be an Italian drunk.  What the hell kind of difference does it-

O'Reilly: (interrupting) It makes PLENTY of difference!! 

Geraldo: It does not, it-

O'Reilly: (shouting) HE DOESN'T HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HERE!!  (bangs table with fist)  HE DOESN'T HAVE A RIGHT TO BE IN THIS COUNTRY!!

Oooh, someone's going all Althouse, er, I mean, bughouse, isn't he? 

Well, you know what they say to lawyers.  If the facts are on your side, bang on the facts.  If the law is on your side, bang on the law.  And if you've got nothing on your side, just bang on the table.

Geraldo: But that has nothing to do with the fact that he was drunk, it-

O'Reilly: (screaming now) YES IT DOES!!  HE SHOULDA BEEN DEPORTED!!

Funny.  O'Reilly.  That's an Irish name.  Do you suppose we'd be putting up with his bullshit now if his ancestors had been deported for being alcoholic immigrants?  Whew, yeah.  Good thing Irish people are never drunks, isn't it?

Geraldo: Don't exploit a tragedy to score a cheap political point! 

We'll have to cut Geraldo some slack there.  The heat of the moment must have caused him to forget that he's a guest on Teh Cheap Political Point Show with Big Daddy Bill. 

It's shortly after this that Bill resorts to his most time-honored tactic, the Double Bill, which requires that when losing an argument, you reduce your opponent's position to its most ludicrous extreme, tormenting the point until it no longer bears even a passing resemblance to the other person's position.  There, got it?  Now, shout it at the top of your lungs into your opponent's face, hoping that the sheer level of noise will stun them into submission.

O'Reilly: (still screaming) YOU WANT ANARCHY!!

O'Really?  Never in all his years of public life have I ever heard Geraldo Rivera advocate smashing the state, overthrowing the government, and living in lawless savagery.  I mean, maybe he and Bill have had some kind of off-camera conversations about this stuff over bong-hits or something...

Geraldo: Dude, *cough!*, do you ever think about how cool it would be if, like, there weren't any laws, man? *cough!* 

Somehow, though, I don't think that's the case.  I think Bill is getting called out by a more seasoned journalist and finding out he doesn't have a leg to stand on in this argument.  I'm surprised, frankly, that he didn't go all Hannity and just start bellowing over and over, "YOU DON'T SUPPORT THE TROOPS!  SAY IT, BITCH!  YOU DON'T SUPPORT AMERICA'S TROOPS!!"

Instead, when Rivera says, "I just want fairness, here.", Billy-O maturely retorts, "FAIRNESS, BULL!" 

Then when Geraldo starts to actually talk some sense about immigration policy, O'Reilly swiftly tries to change the subject, all but implying that Rivera is a child predator who relishes the suffering of American families.  

O'Reilly: I want the law enforced...AND YOU DON'T!! 

And nyah, nyah, nyah, you're a big poopyhead, Geraldo, and your mother's a whore!

You gotta love O'Reilly.  He really, honestly appears to consider himself to be some kind of serious, hard-driving journalist, when in fact, he probably hasn't done any on-the-ground, shoe-leather reporting in the last twenty years and hasn't told the truth since god knows when. 

But like I said, we'll be seeing more of this.  As their world shrinks and all their views are exposed as jingoism, knee-jerk propagandizing, and toadying to the most amoral (yet strangely inept) bunch of war criminals in human history, they're going to get louder and madder and madder and louder until their influence shrinks to invisibility or they run out of talking points, whichever comes first.

I'm just looking forward to when he actually beats a guest and goes to jail for assault.  Now THAT will be must-see TV.  In the meantime, he's just going to squeal and beat on his high-chair with increasing vehemence; more of the same from King Baby, another GOP toddler in a tie.  No wonder he and Preznint Pissypants get along so well.  They're both mentally about three and a half and it's way past their nap-time.  Way, way past.  They need to be soundly spanked and sent to the Hague without any dinner.  Good riddance.

Maybe then we could get some freaking peace and quiet around here.