There is a futility of responding to Bill O’Reilly or the type he represents. If you ever had to deal with someone who is irrational but convinced he or she is right, you know what I mean. This type includes the convinced economic conservative, the anti-Semite, the rugged individualist who needs no government to help him out and the just plain person who hates others who are not like him and who are unequal to him.

I caught a bit of his persona on the TV yesterday when he did not listen to an opponent who was not as articulate as I would wish.  Bill O’Reilly has a simple approach.  He does not listen and deal honestly with an opposing proposition.  He just ignores what is said and repeats one of his formulaic responses which label him as a monomaniac about his positions.  His positions are unassailable because he has honed them down into simple statements with which a great many people could agree.

He is a demagogue and a spokesman for others, unfortunately one half of articulate America, who have bought into the plan for changing America into the queerly articulated pieces that Mr. Bush and Co. have begun to impose on all the rest of us. This half of America parrots Mr. O’Reilly.

Freedom of speech is sacred but too many are not used to speech.  They are like Mr. Spongebob Squarepants who is a frantic little creation who absorbs all the punishment the world has to give and cannot stop the evil doers from reappearing in the next episode. He is a feckless golem of free speech. We allow these things to be produced and shape the minds of children and the adults who have to explain them. The scary things they see are the imagination of entrepreneurs who just want to make lots of money without a scintilla of worthiness in the content they produce.

It has occurred to me that the Google thing - with compiling the greatest library in the world (make that in the Ethernet) - is free speech.  It would be a good thing, however, if we could have an X section where obscene things like Mr. Squarepants and Mr. O’Reilly could reside out of sight and hearing except for study by scholars and researchers.