Bill O'Reilly Does Standup

Normally Bill O’Reilly plays the straight man when he brings in his sidekick Dennis Miller for their fascist, mean spirited funny-ha-ha skits.

But last night O’Reilly gave a try at going solo in his defense and advocacy for torture. First he minimalizes the extent of torture that went on by stating that only three people were tortured… er, waterboarded. He colored that they were the most dangerous of the dangerous captured terrorists but didn’t color how many times they were tortured… er, waterboarded. This was not that funny and clearly just common mainstream media material. But that was just a lead in to one of his jokes.

He went on to assert that torture… er, waterboarding works. He stole this one directly from the dungeon master, Dick, himself. OK, it wasn’t that funny. And it was merely repeating an outright lie from the dungeon master as if it were a matter-of-fact truth.

Funny-man, father-Christmas, torture-enthusiast O’Reilly saved his best joke for last. It was good. I couldn’t control reactionary laughter when I heard it. Did you hear it? If you haven’t, here it goes: he said, get this, that if torture, er, waterboarding were against the law, if Bush and Cheney had broken any laws, they would have been arrested and sent to jail.

I still can’t help but laugh on that one. You have to admit, you either have to laugh or cry with that one.

But wait a minute. I wonder if father Christmas meant that as a joke… or whether he actually believed it.