If there’s one thing I love more than anything else about Bill O’Reilly it’s his never ending supply of blue collar platitudes that “form” his world-view. You’d think that by now, someone who’s spent predominantly more of his life as a millionaire than a blue collar fella, he’d can it with the “tough guy” business.

In his article "Are teenagers really Americans?” starts off by commenting that he knows one of the great challenges in education is getting teenagers interested in their country. He knows this because he was once a high school teacher. For two years. 40 years ago. He doesn’t relate the length of his tenure as a teacher or how long ago it was presumably because it’s boring. But I think it speaks volumes as to why some old white guy insists that teenagers aren’t interested in their country and that only he has the answers. Teenagers according to Bill O’ Reilly “…are too busy keeping up wit the Kardashians to absorb John Adams.”

What’s exactly so wrong with that? The right-wing is always pooh-poohing young voters for making poor voting decisions. The decisions are poor because that don’t involve much support for right-wing agenda, and the republican party may as well be an old white man factory of utter uncool to young voters. So why now is it so important that teenagers learn how to be “real Americans”? Does “real American” mean that the voter is informed has their own opinions on the things they are about to vote on. More likely “real American” means conservative, all republican voting, and ill-informed.

Bill O’Reilly then takes it upon himself a new project: teaching a 13 year old girl how to care about being an American. I hope that this is some sort of satire, and not a real project. I think there’s Geneva Convention stipulations against this sort of thing. Also, he doesn’t appear to say whether or not this 13-year-old girl is relation or not. Did Bill O’Reilly kidnap a 13-year-old girl, take her to a sub-basement on his compound/lair, and attempt some odd psychological experimentation on how to care about being an American? Is the Department of Justice following up on this? Where’s the law enforcement community in all this or are they being complicit in a kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl?

His first lesson: Obey the rules. This is definitely a kidnapping scenario if he’s dealing in “lessons” and “rules”. The enforcement of such involves all doors being open, “unless there is a dressing situation”. So I guess bath time isn’t covered in that rules, sorry young lady. If Bill O’Reilly wishes to engage in conversation, you’re going to have to hide in the shower with the curtain drawn, or be in a constant state of “dressing situation”. Bill O’Reilly’s reasoning for the “open door” policy: “To discourage internet chicanery and encourage lively conversation”. Has Bill O’Reilly raised any children, in the last decade, or ever? There are computer programs that you can use to stop “internet chicanery”. And I think Bill O’Reilly is using chicanery wrong. How exactly is this 13-year-old girls clever manipulation of language. If he’s being literal, then he shouldn’t allow this 13-year-old girl on the internet at all! It’s chock full of chicanery, and not even to mention things like messenger services, or e-mail, or social networking sites. Also, the internet is full of informative information. Does reading Huffington Post count as chicanery, if the 13 year-old isn’t on BillOReilly.com? What if she doesn’t want to sign up for his e-mail list?

Lesson 2: Discuss Intelligent things - not just reality shows and music maniacs. First of, music maniacs? What is this, the town of Bomont? I can understand things like The Black Eyed Peas or LMFAO being considered “music maniacs” as I do believe they are terrorizing our young people with some sort of noise and light chicanery. And that by it’s very nature would frighten an old white man like Bill O’Reilly. But really, how far would a conversation involving “music maniacs” go between Bill O’Reilly and a 13-year-old girl?

13-year-old girl: Uhh, ummm so have you seen “Party Rock Anthem” By LMFAO
Bill O’Reilly: A what?
13-year-old: NO…it’s a group called LMFAO, they’re pretty cool.
Bill O’Reilly: A what? You know, when I was growing up in the tough streets of Levittown, we beat up LMFAO’s all the time. They were punks and burnouts…and they even asked me to join them, because I was so cool. But I didn’t because they were "hoodlums".
13-year-old: What’s that go to do with anything?
Scene

The greatest thing about lesson 2, aside from the “music maniacs” portion, is that in his scene the 13-year-old girl says “Nobody wants to talk about politics. That’s boring!” To which later in the scene he replies “I do just fine talking about them. Millions of people listen.” It’s phenomenally awesome to read that scene not even two weeks after he went on an entire bender about politics being boring. Is Bill O’Reilly having his Factor writing staff just write his editorials? I mean, it wouldn’t be the hardest thing to do. But to not even have the wherewithal to notice that he literally had a 13-year-old girl tantrum-read-column that said the exact same thing is delicious! I also love the classic Bill O’Reilly “how awesome am I? so awesome” of dropping his “millions of people listen” right in the middle of this column. He’s not done with that stuff either.

Suddenly, the lessons fall away and “rules” begin! This has to be a hostage situation, as this is a classic psychological turn. The ole’ switcheroo! Caring benevolent caretaker, suddenly becomes cruel dominator! Rule 3: Learn about your country’s past. Doesn’t it kind of seem odd that Bill O’Reilly would reach for this when so much about his politics and the very channel “millions of people listen” to him on a nightly basis are revisionist historians and sheer ignorance/fear based ideology? As a former teacher, wouldn’t Bill O’Reilly also remember just how poorly written and fallacious history books can be? Especially in America, where the “history” books we give our children should just be titles “White Guys: Yup, we sure did kick some ass! Oh and we wrote most of history because most brown people are liars. Volume One: How Hard Columbus Kicked Ass!”

The Bill O’Reilly fun zone doesn’t stop there. This 13-year-old girl has just been assigned to read over the summer Bill O’Reilly’s (with "historian" Martin Dugard as co-author) new book "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever”! Whoa! Even the education system is complicit in this hostage situation, having to assign something like that AND make the child buy the book (he actually has the temerity to say the book is $20). Surely this material is a bit over the head of a 13-year-old?

The disdain that Bill O’Reilly shows this 13-year-old girl, doesn’t just stop at his young hostage, it spills out onto all today’s young people. He calls them urchins that need to be forced or bribed to pay attention to “important things”. Sadly, I don’t think the 13-year-old girl really thought that paying $20 for “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever” was a bribe of any kind. And this idea that kids today just need book learning, is absurd. Bill O’Reilly says in his article that as a child you had to read to fight off boredom. Yet, he’s a part of such a monolithic entity that preys on peoples ignorance, and buoys itself on rhetoric and misinformation.

What exactly is so important about learning about the value your country? I thought the idea was to be a “real American”, not being informed about your country’s value? It seems rather vague right? At least he didn’t actually say “Hey, watch The O’Reilly Factor every night at 8pm EST on the Fox News Channel and be a “real American!”

Apparently Bill O’Reilly thinks the lessons and rule in his article are a successful way of educating America’s youth about the value of their country. He also tosses in that current right-wing gem of how this election is a battle for the souls of the next generations. It’s kind of sickening that the very thing Bill O’Reilly represents is the chief agent in darkening those souls, and poisoning generations further down the road as well. That he thinks his teaching plan would somehow be approved by Abe Lincoln would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. The right-wing is literally turning our history and politicians in to those whacky animatronic monstrosities that resides in museums and amusement parks. The bullet point list of achievements that white wash away the context and human nature that actually surrounded those men. While I can’t argue that they need to be eradicated from existence, as I do think they have some place in helping to inform children under the age of six, the idea that these caricatures are made mythological and important should be terrifying to those of us who do know our history.