Bill-O and Pinheads

I rarely watch Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News Channel. Not necessarily because I always disagree with the guy; he makes some good points a lot of the time. No, I don't watch it because I am thoroughly repulsed by O'Reilly's bullying, overbearing personality. He has even boasted of being a bully in his youth, and with no remorse at having made life so unnecessarily miserable for others. I used to be able to partially get around my overwhelming aversion to his presence by listening to his radio show when I was at work (this kept me from actually having to look at him). But alas, his show wasn't caustic and hateful enough, and the station's producers decided to put a wingnut hatemonger extremist on in his place to suit the "choir" that this station wanted to preach its right-wing ideology to. Now you may ask, why not just listen to O'Reilly's TV show without actually looking at the jerk? Well, as long as I actually have access to television, there are many, many other channels that I would prefer to watch. So sorry, Bill-O, the only time I hear nowadays about what you're saying is when Keith Olbermann on MSNBC is ridiculing you!

Why even bring up Bill O'Reilly anyway? Because there is one recurring theme of his that resonates with me, which is his notion of another type of more subtle, insidious bully: the "pinhead". To O'Reilly, a pinhead is anyone who has characterized themselves as belonging to the social class of the intelligentsia and by so doing feels qualified to taut their views as if they had some kind of special aura of absolute truth to them. And if you disagree with them, then you are subject to being judged as stupid, ignorant, misled, bigoted, and/or biased. Much of the time, O'Reilly vents his wrath against those he labels as pinheads in the academic, judicial, and journalistic communities. And I tend to agree with him, with one significant modification.

Bill O'Reilly never calls a conservative a pinhead. I look at the US Supreme Court and see four glaring right-wing pinheads (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito) who have decided to deliberately ignore precedent and drastically rewrite law to fit their political agendas. Alito's negative reaction during Obama's criticism of a recent radical and highly controversial Court decision during his State of the Union address is pure, condescending pinhead behavior. Fox is loaded with other examples, but Bill-O will never bite the hands that feed him (Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch) by calling THEM out. So my view of a pinhead is bit broader than his.

My disparagement of pinheads is strongest when I explore the blogosphere. I have encountered blog after blog where the authors go to enormous lengths to emphasize their high-and-mighty academic credentials, usually in some highly specialized, arcane field. And then go on to act as if this qualifies them to go off on any rant they want about any topic, as if their opinion matters more just because they may have a trail of letters following their names. I guess this may be a revelation of sorts: to me, the term "pinhead" is roughly equivalent to the term "academic snob". Not that having academic credentials makes one a pinhead. I also know several people whose grace and maturity regarding their accomplishments and intellect would put me to shame.

There was an elderly gentlemen who was a regular many years ago at one of my local doughnut shops. Almost every time he came in, he would talk incessantly, constantly peppering his monologue with the claim that he had earned "59 degrees". No one that I know of around there ever challenged the poor old fool; they all liked him and tactfully overlooked his vanity and insecurity. He obviously felt as if his words needed the backup of his "academic qualifications" in order for others to respect them. This guy was an extreme example of what I find myself doing a lot: finding people's "vanity point" and "overlooking" it in the interests of good will and getting along. The way I see it, if others want to make fools of themselves, then who am I to stand in the way? And so I tend to let the pinheads in my life continue to delude themselves with their own fantasies of self-importance and superiority.