Ever since I had some very expensive dental work done back in the early ’90s, I have flossed my teeth every day with an almost religious devotion. I usually do this around 8 p.m., after the dishes are put away and I’m ready to wind down.

It takes me about a half hour and two hands to do a really thorough flossing job so, to keep my mind occupied while leaving my hands free for sawing and scraping, I plop myself down in front of the TV and switch on the O’Reilly Factor. I watch O’Reilly because I don’t want to start a movie I’ll probably never finish, and because all the other offerings in the eight o’clock time slot are so dreadful.

One thing I don’t watch Bill O’Reilly for is Bill O’Reilly. I like his regular contributors — Bernard Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Laura Ingraham, Megyn Kelly, John Stossel, etc. — but O’Reilly himself comes across as a boorish know-it-all. He is supposed to be a conservative, but he is neither a libertarian nor a Constitutionalist. His “conservatism” is like that of the lout at the corner bar who spends the evening annoying bar patrons who are trying to watch the hockey game that’s playing on the big screen TV, ranting about a government that has no business telling him what to do, and then winding up his tirade with the proclamation, “There ought to be a law!”. Read more »