Who's Looking Out for You?

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: To all the moral relativists and left of center critics out there, this book seems to be the holy water that makes you hiss and burn. Mr. O'Reilly outdoes himself because he suggests Americans play by ethical standards of "right and wrong" as opposed to "if it feels good, then do it." I can relate to Bill's upbringing because my father was a police officer for 30 years. He taught me the distinct difference between right and wrong, and how to decipher the differences. Many American parents today are lazy, foolish, and have little to no concern about the importance of morals with their children. Many simply place them in front of the daycare center (and eventually the tv), and expect the child to come out alright in the end. In reality, kids needs rules such as: No swearing, no cigarettes, no drugs, no alcohol, and certainly no talking back in a disrespectful manner. If parents would learn how to raise children, then our society would be a better place. Oh, and to the myrmidons of the left, Bill is going to be your worst nightmare for a long time because he expects the individual to take accountability for his/her actions rather than blame society or others for problems. Stop comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Hitler called for the systematic genocide of those who disagree with him. O'Reilly asks that people act responsibly, do the right thing, and learn the true definition of words such as "honor, discipline, and self-respect." He upsets you because he is right about how Americans SHOULD lead their lives. He says the words, "Moral Responsibility," and you shriek like a frightened child. Shame on you!

Rating:
Summary: It's really BLAH!
Review: Look, I'm a Bill O'Reilly fan, of sorts, and I generally agree with what he has to say. The man, however, does not write in a very engaging manner. I think it basically because he one of those guys who just likes to talk and (this book being another example) takes thousands of rather simplistic words to express a valid idea that is probably best expressed in a short essay format. His books are so blah that I'm beginning to think that he is just another guy trying to capitalize on his celebrity status while trying to take my money to make himself richer. Maybe then Bill O'Reilly really is not looking out for me! Many of Bill O'Reilly's rehashed ideas are good, but they typically are not thoroughly original, and they certainly are not well presented in his books. He's much more engaging as a TV show host. Get the book from your library if you feel compelled to read it. Don't spend any money on it.

Rating:
Summary: I only gave it one star because their is no option for zero
Review: If you completely ignore the fact that Bill O'Reilly is an enormous hypocritical jackass, you may like this book. But you would also have to ignore the fact that the book itself is boring, preachy, poorly written, self-promoting, and just plain bad.

I do believe that this is the book O'Reilly plugged on his show as a perfect gift for Valentines day. If you plan in giving this book as a Valentines day gift, I recommend cutting out the center of all the pages and stuffing it with money. That way you won't get dumped/divorced.



Rating:
Summary: New years-like resolutions on what to avoid to live better
Review: Do you get angst just thinking abut your upbringing? Do you get intoxicated regularly? Are any of your friends bad seeds? If you're a parent---do you think of yourself as your child's friend? If you can answer yes to such statements then this is a book for you. Who's looking out for you, thus, is not necessarily for everyone. It's thesis is basically that if you want to live in a nanny state & be coddled, then move to Europe. But, if you live in the USA & like the idea of doing so, then don't expect for many others to be looking out for you. The justice system---O'Reilly states---won't be looking out for you. Neither will lawyers in the USA; nor the Catholic Church; nor the likes of Jesse Jackson types---who only look out for themselves; nor the media; nor schools. Who SHOULD be looking out for you include your parents, as well as--hopefully---some close friends. And as a parent, one should be a Parent, NOT a friend to one's child, because a child has nobody to look after him/her except a parent---and it's not possible to accomplish both in Mr. O'Reilly's opinion. In short, this is a book about disapline: that one must proactively seek one's own motivation; that one ought to seek knowledge/read/and engage one's mind; that one ought to respect one's body (ie., to exercise, control one's weight & forgo smoking); that one ought not to associate with destructive people; that one ought provide a safe & secure refuge for one's children at home (with no abuse, drunkeness, foul language, etc.). If you have children or are contemplating such, Mr. O'Reilly sternly advises that you take the responsibility involved therein extremely seriously---and that you ought be successfully looking out for yourself first before taking this step. His book is a primer on individual self-responsibilty; common sensical at its heart, but also food for thought & worth 6 hours of your time if you are open to---and think you could benefit from---at least a dash of self-improvement. If so, do get the (unabridged) audio version instead, read by Mr. O'Reilly himself; as his words of advice are more pertinent in his own voice. Cheers!

Rating:
Summary: Bill is!
Review: Mr. O'Reilly is not always right-no one is-but there is a void in the media that I am happy to see him fill. This book further points out some of the inequities in the American political and social landscape. Even though some of the material in this book feels recycled, his admirers and critics alike should find it enlightening, informative, and controversial...just like any good book. James Green, author of "If There's One Thing I've Learned."

Rating:
Summary: Who's NOT Looking Out For You? Demoncrats And Liberal Media!
Review:
The masses of intimidated, frightened prostitutes of Demoncrat's fanatical left-wing offshoot who gratingly keep forging their reviews are vomit-inducing, nauseous Bin Laden-loyalists, whose derisions at O'Reilly as a "Republican mouthpiece" are so infernally retarded, they backfire. It's aggravating to witness denigrated, undereducated Nazis wear out O'Reilly-branding mantras, when, to any anti-religious liberal who doesn't want to be scandalized as a uselessly imperceptive Neanderthal, O'Reilly's views are centrist, unshakably founded within rationale. It's observable why the liberal-stoners are loathsomely ostracizing humiliatingly clear-cut issues into partisan-lines; socialists are insanely slighted when O'Reilly communicates bluntly straightforward directness-disowning PC sensitivity-because socialists are inefficiently discursive, evasive enfeeblers. This soullessness is what makes them menacingly effective terrorist-enablers. These ravaging, agitated, race-dividing liberals are totally mischievous delinquents, proven by their irrationally automated seizures of falsifying reviews to bestially scathe public figures their diabolical minds can't accept, this misconduct happening broadly under conservative book reviews.

Only reason Demoncrats suffer from incrementing inferiority complexes is because O'Reilly condemns the blame on majorities of Demoncratic-incited initiatives. Abrasively, many of America's ordeals of the past years are DIRECTLY TRACEABLE to their evildoings!!!! O'Reilly's praiseworthy for recapitulating that 9/11's death toll belongs to CLINTON ADMIN. misbehavior, the primary one being the "Torricelli Principle"-killing America's establishment to gather intelligence on terrorism, as found in a House Intelligence Committee report-the second trespass being the animosity-incurring maltreatment of Reno towards Freeh's FBI's request to appoint independent counsels to investigate unkosher Clinton-Gore finance misdemeanors. Resulting was the most frailly impeded WH-FBI relationship in history, which birthed America's worst body-count ever!!!!

Another exemplar of O'Reilly's centricity is well-intentioned focus on sweepingly mattering issues, indifferent to party partiality. O'Reilly, social-consciously, retraces INS' willful slipping in apprehending sniper Malvo, which may've staved-off D.C. area attacks. The culprit's INS head Ziglar, whose subordinate, Seattle's Blake Brown, encroachingly overruled Border Patrol's verdict to deport Malvo and his mother, incurred even more terribly by the spiteful fact the order was rejected because of insufficiency in INS funding. As evidenced herein, O'Reilly ISN'T wrathfully segregative like alarming liberal propaganda-mongers (Ivins, Corn), instead allowing reason to dictate his viewpoints!!!! O'Reilly even scolds Bush for not tightening borders up despite the 10 million illegals roaming around undocumented. Truly, with such bipartisanship, the viciously undereducated, Demoncratic-sensationalism apostles counterfeiting their reviews mountingly fit the frenetic radicalism Demoncrats are often demeaned with.

Improprieties during Clinton's Admin. are highlighted, namely the scandal that Clinton was just consequently authorized while everything American was succeeding: the economy and airs of "peace". Clinton did Diddlysquat to broker this. For oppressively irrational liberals, Clinton didn't create jobs. They were the side-effect of late-90s lustfulness for speculative tech stocks which "created" jobs in savagely perilous tech "start-ups". If you don't succumb to this, Demoncratic demagogues have brainwashed you irretrievably!!!! That's why most of so-called "2 million" jobs lost "under Bush's Admin." were unsubstantial, inherently. Clinton's incriminated for being the most cunningly chicaning president, fabricating minority empathy, yet under whose tenure Black children kept underperforming in public schools. Clinton anarchically let CEOs pillage companies, disguising the resentfulness of CEOs' salaries crushing average workers' by 100 times through a BUBBLE economy. Clinton soullessly backslid as North Korea contravened nuclear treaty, speculatively contributing to North Korea's present-day extortions. Unless you're a barbarically hostile apologist, you'd surrender that Clinton absconded calamitous disasters on Bush!!!!

The liberal media's exposed as an exorbitantly predominant nuisance, misleader in information dissemination. One simply has to look at the spitefully PREJUDICIAL, ANTI-WAR mentality most networks abuse in "chronicling" post-war Iraq's reconstruction. For anyone (excluding liberals), it was loathsomely blatant most networks misreported Iraq's combat-phase, soliciting their bosses' plot for scornful "internationalism" subserving UN "authority". Besides broader cross-section of networks mistreating broadcasts on anti-war psychos and inadmissible "world-opinion", some renegade papers-LAT, NYT-abysmally forged the Coalition was being wasted!!!! O'Reilly observantly postulates the accursed liberal media's baneful to Americans' interests because, at war's onset, Gallup polls were intimidating an overwhelming 76% approval of war while the media perpetrated dissipated malcontent. Still now-a year later-approval of war is well at 60%, from Newsweek to CNN. America's media disease isn't solely contaminating networks; even PBS experiences liberal infestation!!!! Bill Moyers illy misallocates money to his punk-son John, Thomas Paine operator-dangerous liberal propagandist-as president at Schumann foundation.

The ACLU's seditious tactics of combatively suing and terrorizing everyone seeking to practice religion publicly are essayed. AGAIN OBDURATE liberals, O'Reilly doesn't careen to pushing his agenda of marginalizing the ACLU based on his Catholicism, but non-partisanly displays the facts after examination. The results happen to unmask irreligious wrath from the ACLU, which just happens to dirty liberals also, because of their sacrilegiousness. Dissatisfied liberals abjectly confuse this strict fact as "proof" of O'Reilly's conservatism!!!! ACLU animosities have trespassed onto worse than separating state and religion. O'Reilly lucidly distinguishes how the ACLU's hounded even people exercising their private rights to professing religion in public, not just their bar to solely chase violations of Church and State separation.

O'Reilly's a well-read, literate analyst of politics/news. Displeasingly insensate liberals/socialists WILL do well to estrange themselves from ungoverned psychopaths like Ivins, Moore, Corn. Only O'Reilly DOESN'T takeover arguments to fabricate prejudices succumbing to his views, UNLIKE the aforementioned liberal arch-fiends. When O'Reilly censures traitorous celebrities on decaying already harrowing principles that children in today's parentally backslid, information-age corruptibility have-like Whitney "JUNKHEAD" Houston; Jennifer Lopez, preys on men selfishly; George Clooney, terrifyingly lies to magazines after omitting 9/11 victims' collection from funds-O'Reilly DOESN'T maltreat that to declare all celebrities sinful.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, not inspiring either
Review: Bill O'Reilly

Who's Looking Out for You?

This book is Bill O'Reilly's self help guide for American citizens. Its not particularly insightful, but it is interesting. If you like his show it will give you some good biographical information and some insights into who he is and why. His main argument on the need to be cautious before crediting someone with looking out for you is well written and quite persuasive. People in power are not looking out for you; they are looking out for themselves, their image, their wallet, their friends and then maybe you (in descending order).

The book does have its moments. O'Reilly uses a great quote to open his assault on the decadence of government from Scottish historian Alexander Tyler: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy." (p. 68)

Obviously, democracy can not survive a massive redistribution of wealth. Essentially, most in government (particularly liberals O'Reilly mentions) are not looking out for you! That being said individuals need to take personal responsibility for all of their actions and live their life accordingly. They need to look out for themselves! In this regard the book fulfills its main objective: it is truly fools gold to think that anyone (especially the government) but good friends and family will ever look out for you.


Rating:
Summary: Let the truth be known
Review: OReilly confronts issues that many in the elite media won't simply because "they've always done it their way, and Americans don't know the difference, so why change now?" Well if you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always gotten. Enter OReilly and "Who's Looking out for you." The main reason I think many people don't like him is because he's a threat to the idealogy and visions of utopia within leftist America, and the image they are trying to force us to adhere to. I try to imagine a country where the mention of God is forbidden and teaching creationism is wrong, that everything we do must be devoid of our creator every step of the way in order to be "accepted" in our society, and it doesn't look like a very good place. If you don't accept the liberal way then you're "nuts" or "fanatical" and "thinking critically" means thinking liberal. I'm glad OReilly takes his stand on these serious issues.

Rating:
Summary: Who's Cashing In on You?
Review: I have to admit that I haven't read this whole book. Having worked in publishing for a number of years, I've certainly read a number of books all the way through, but this one ... sigh.

I should also admit that I was first informed of Mr. O'Reilly's existence by Al Franken's book, Lies, which I read from cover to cover with interest. So perhaps I am not a totally unbiased reader. But I was curious what a book from a famously fiery (also famous for declaring himself an independent voice) commentator might be like.

What I find is a pretty short piece of writing, artfully typeset to look more weighty, full of a lot of statements about public figures that, well, seem to me to be, well, "defamations of character." Something Mr. O'Reilly is famous for objecting to, at least when these statements are aimed at *him*. (And which, I think, also prove he knows the libel laws at least as well as Franken does...)

I really wish I were able to give a flavor of his style of argument, as, for instance, when he wants to tell us that Bill Moyers is not looking out for you (on p. 84). (I don't know, maybe conservatives really do hate Bill Moyers, but O'Reilly has a lot more work to do to convince *me* that Moyers doesn't belong on public TV and is just some hypocritical rich guy.) It's a sneering and insinuating bit of writing and, alas, will probably work on a lot of Factor viewers who just don't like public TV and hence have never seen or heard of Moyers.

He rails at the Catholic hierarchy and Hollywood stars and terrible abusers of children (grabbed from the wire service headlines I guess) for not looking out for you ... hmm, shooting fish in a barrel, really, isn't it? I'd like to see him really court controversy by accusing someone really startling of treacherous self-interest. But I guess Christopher Hitchens already got in there before him and savaged Mother Teresa's reputation. Sigh.

Oh well, my guess is his popularity will subside in another few years - what does he really have to offer the public except indignation at convenient targets? I'm sure all the folks he's bad-mouthed in this book and elsewhere will have a lot of fun watching his awful slide into obscurity.

P.S. Can you now get away with saying nasty things about politicians if you *don't* include references to back up your statements?? I hate to give Ann Coulter a higher grade for honest rhetoric than anyone, but holy cow. Well, at least his clear refusal to provide a source for anything he says allows me to class his work in the same category as Dave Barry, and other gleeful masters of the absurd.

Rating:
Summary: You are, Bill! You are!
Review: Bill O'Reilly is a warm and generous man. When he tires of praising himself, he is more than willing to step aside and let someone else do it for a while.

He wants to show you how to live the same way. In this unusual book, O'Reilly steps outside politics to alert you to how you're messing up your life by putting too much faith in public figures, media celebrities, religious leaders, even -- sometimes -- members of your own family. Get your life back on track by learning to recognize ... who's looking out for you!

The author treats his voyage into self-help counseling -- call him "Bill O'Prah" -- as a Big Idea, along the lines of his Factor Concept (it's not just a TV show ... it's a Concept!). But apart from the revelation that network news anchors don't really have my personal interests at heart, most of the counsel here is pretty unremarkable. In his summing-up chapter "Here's to You," Bill advises: Forgive yourself; Take care of your mind and body; Practice tolerance and independence. He encourages you to read books (especially, one presumes, his). One piece of advice I was hoping to see, but must have missed: Turn off the TV!

Instead, we not only get lots of stories about Bill himself, but also quotations from other people writing about Bill. To complete the circle, I listened to the audiobooks version of this title, and got to hear O'Reilly narrating other people's stories about what a good guy O'Reilly is! The lesson that comes through most clearly is the one I summarized in my first paragraph.

More seriously, there's one other piece of advice I hoped would have a prominent place here. But while O'Reilly made a brief feint in its direction in the final chapter, he never quite grappled with it. Nor, given his apparent self-obsession, should I have expected him to. Seems to me that if you want people to look out for you, be someone who looks out for others. Don't nurse your own sense of victimization and betrayal. Tone down the first-person pronoun and look around you. Call it the Golden Rule, good karma ... whatever works for you. The idea doesn't need 200 pages to explain, but it functions pretty well.

In short, put not your faith in princes, nor in stars of TV, radio, and publishing empires. O'Reilly's basic point is true enough. I just wish it wasn't as eye-opening as some people seem to have found it, nor clothed quite so heavily in the author's own smug sense of self-worth. After all, if you get tripped up by that great SAT word, hubris, you may find there's no one left to look out for you when you fall.