Column:
O'Reilly more real than reality TV
Looking for reality? Change the channel.
Published Feb. 9, 2009
Generally speaking, we like to express our opinions rather than our philosophies. We expect other people to do the same, whether those people are our friends or our favorite TV personalities.
But when people outwardly try to be real on TV, they generally fail, but people who aren't concerned with that ultimately end up displaying their actual personalities more prominently. In this way, someone such as FOX News host Bill O'Reilly is far more "real" than most reality TV stars, which explains why his show will outlive every single reality show on TV right now.
When we talk about politics, we're almost always talking about ourselves. Most intelligent people understand there are valid reasons to hold a wide range of views. The vast majority of people have sane beliefs, even though they might not coincide with our own. But most of the time when I hear people casually talking politics, it's usually with a tone of irate incredulity toward other people's views.
But when we say, for instance, "Can you believe the Republicans? They don't want to pass Obama's stimulus package just because it's going to people and not corporations," we're not really indicting anyone else for their views. We're basically saying "I personally disagree with what these other people think."
This is exactly what MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, O'Reilly and even the women of ABC's "The View" make a living doing. We're much more fascinated by personalities and opinions than logic and philosophy. It doesn't matter whether you agree with pundits or not. No matter what your political views, punditry fulfills the same basic function as fiction. We're interested in the characters and finding out who they are and then watching them act according to our expectations. I could give a shit what O'Reilly thinks, but I watch him for the same reason conservatives watch "The Colbert Report" host Stephen Colbert. Even though he mocks their views, he's entertaining.
FOX News host Sean Hannity recently introduced a feature called the Hate Hannity Hotline, during which he plays outrageous, raged-filled phone calls from viewers who hate him. The fact that he has a solid base of people who hate him yet consistently watch his show means he's doing his job really well. People don't have to love a pundit. They just have to be entertained.
This is why I've never understood reality TV. When you're watching pundits or talk show hosts, you're just watching someone doing their job. Whether you like O'Reilly or not, you know every night he goes out there and says what he believes and conveys his heartfelt convictions. Reality TV stars are generally acting the way they think they act, rather than the way they really are. Nothing is harder than consciously trying to be yourself for an audience. A reality TV star's job is to live his or her life, which is basically impossible in front of a camera. But O'Reilly's job is to give people his take on the news. His job is to inform, educate and express his thoughts, which is exactly why he's far more real than anyone who is consciously trying to be real.
The moment pundits and talk show hosts stop being real is the moment we put them all together in some wacky reality show about pundits living together under one roof. So while both pundits and reality TV stars both exist to feed our desire to get to know interesting "real world" personalities, reality stars try to explicitly fulfill this desire and instead show us what people think people are like, and pundits show us exactly what people are like.