monchieland: a reality-based community

For the past several days, TV talking heads have been pontificating about whether Cho Seung-Hui's murderous rampage could have been prevented. After all, the signs of mental illness were glaringly obvious, especially his stalking of women and his disturbingly violent writings for an English class.

But maybe the bloviators of cable "news" ought to cast a watchful eye on one of their own.

Just by coincidence, I was reading a section of David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine" concerning the disturbingly violent writings of notorious stalker Bill O'Reilly:

O'Reilly vented his frustrations with the TV industry in a little-noticed novel, Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television, about a network anchor who bears an uncanny likeness to the author. The O'Reilly character, "Shannon Michaels," becomes a serial killer, murdering other characters, such as the news director, based loosely on O'Really's real-life coworkers. The murderous rampages, described in grotesque detail, are referred to as "righteous slaughter."

One of the "victims" of O'Reilly's literary murder spree is a news executive at ABC who, he claims, "if she doesn't like you, she'll make stuff up."

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Of course O'LIElly wrote his novelistic manifesto before he became successful with the Fox "News" gig, so maybe he's happier and doesn't engage in violent, murderous fantasies anymore.

Wrong.

As Brock noted in "The Republican Noise Machine":

O'Reilly has spoken of "nailing," "slapping around," and "murdering" various guests and subjects of his ire. When Al Franken exposed O'Reilly as a serial and perhaps pathological liar in his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, O'Reilly said he wished he could have "put a bullet" into Franken's head.

So, to sum up:

Pathological lying. Check.

Stalking behavior. Check.

Violent, murderous fantasies. Check.

Sure sounds like mental illness to me.