A Bit of Levity re: O'Reilly's "Killing Lincoln"

[Dave Taylor]

Though I meant to watch it, I completely forgot about the supposed Lincoln edition of the O'Reilly Factor that aired right before "Killing Lincoln" last night. From what I can gather from the O'Reilly website, however, I didn't really miss anything new other than an interview with the co-author Martin Dugard. That interview has not been put online yet. The rest of the show appears to have comprised of various interviews O'Reilly did when he was hawking the book. If you click here (http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=v...D=3832#2), you can see one he did with radio personality Don Imus. He equates Swanson's best selling book, Manhunt, as having been written in a traditional "history way", which it absolutely is not. O'Reilly goes on to say that he wrote his own book for "high school dropouts", which doesn't surprise me.

My favorite part, however, is when O'Reilly shows his true lack of knowledge on the subject of Lincoln's assassination aside from a few non-descript stories. At one point, Imus asks for reassurance that Lincoln was killed on the 14th of April. This, of course, is incorrect as Lincoln was shot on the 14th but did not die until the 15th. So Imus asks O'Reilly, "Lincoln was killed on the 14th right?". O'Reilly answers, "Yeah" and gets a strange look on his face which Imus responds to with, "You don't know do you?". O'Reilly, straining now, looks up to the heavens as if he is trying to recall a very elusive piece of trivia and says, "I'm pulling it out of my hat but I think you're correct." Well, that was enough for me. If you don't even know the date of Lincoln's death, stop hawking your book and go back to spouting your diatribe to the "high school dropouts" that watch your show.

I apologize that my political leanings soaked into that a bit, but I don't care for Mr. O'Reilly's manner of news reporting.

I also found it funny in the video Gene linked to that it seems very obvious that the host guy does not know that Lincoln was from Kentucky originally.