Defame and fortune: Conservative FOX icon Bill O'Reilly is famously irascible -- a less-polite way of phrasing it is that he can dish it out but is notoriously poor at taking it. Thus, his walkout from an interview on NPR's Fresh Air came as no surprise to most: after insisting that everyone from Al Franken to People Magazine was engaged in "defamation" of his character (thus demonstrating a shaky understanding of the relevant law), arguing that the New York Times had a team of "character assassins" on his trail, and that he was the number-one target of disaffected liberals everywhere, O'Reilly snarled his disgust at interviewer Terry Gross and hung up the phone.

And he was right to do so.

At the beginning of the show, Gross placed the interview in context by mentioning her earlier discussion with O'Reilly's bete noir Franken. The contrast in tone between the two shows -- both available in audio form from the "Fresh Air" website -- was starkly evident from the first sentence; in her interview with Franken, Gross started by asking the satirist to read from the introduction to his new book and had him tell amusing anecdotes about O'Reilly and the FOX lawsuit, whereas she began her interview with O'Reilly by asking him, "As you probably know, Al Franken was on this show when his book came out -- are you sorry you sued him?"

The tone went downhill from there, with Gross continually hammering O'Reilly with quotes from Franken and book reviewers unfriendly to the FOX commentator's writings. O'Reilly, for his part, was characteristically snappish, accusing (in one instance) one book critic of ad hominem attacks, while reserving his right to use the term "pinhead" to describe the reviewer. Nonetheless, O'Reilly generally kept his cool until the very end, when the interview -- until then sailing on the fairly smooth seas of O'Reilly's college years (perhaps one of the few times when an interview about Vietnam-era America was comparatively calm) -- returned to the question of O'Reilly's relationship with his critics.

O'Reilly, in turn, (rather accurately) labeled the interview as "a hatchet job," and turned on Gross in an exchange that shows the worst of both participants:

O'Reilly: Did you do this to Al Franken? Did you? Did you challenge him on what he said?

Gross: We had a different interview.

O'Reilly: Yeah, a different interview. Okay? Fine. Fresh Air? Is this what Fresh Air is? I'll get a transcript of this interview, of the, uh, Al Franken interview. You want me to do that? Compare the two?

(Cross-talk)

Gross: You're, you're welcome to.

O'Reilly: And compare the two? All right, why don't you tell your listeners right now? Were you as tough on Al Franken as you are on me?

Gross: Uh, no.

O'Reilly: No.

Gross: I wasn't.

O'Reilly: You weren't. Okay. Why?

Gross: Well, Al Franken had written a book of political satire.

O'Reilly: Oh, he was satire now, was he? Calling people liars and distorting their faces on the book cover, that's satire now, is it? And my book, "Who's Looking Out For You," is designed to help people, to show them how, what they have to know to read people in this society in order to succeed. Yet you're easy on Franken but you challenge me. This is NPR. Okay, I think we all know what this is. I think we all know where you're going with this.

Gross: Well --

O'Reilly: Don't we?

Gross: Well, you can [inaudible] --

O'Reilly: [inaudible]

Gross: -- whatever you want to --

O'Reilly: I mean, I'm evaluating this interview very closely.

Gross: Obviously you are.

O'Reilly: Now we've spent, we've spent now, all right --

Gross: Uh-huh.

O'Reilly: Fifty minutes of me being, defending defamation against me in every possible way, while you gave Al Franken a complete pass on his defamatory book. And if you think that's fair, Terry, then you need to get another business. I'll tell you that right now. And I'll tell your listeners, if you have the courage to put this on the air. This is basically an unfair interview, designed to try and trap me into saying something that Harper's can use. And you know it! And you should be ashamed of yourself. And that is the end of this interview.

Gross: Oh, so you're not going to give me the chance to ask a follow-up question? You have to make a speech and have the last word? (Pause) You're gone. (Pause) Okay. I guess that's the answer to that question. (Laughs) He just walked out.

 
I'll just put that down as "no comment:" From today's White House press briefing:

Q: Why do you refuse to answer the question whether Karl Rove said that Joseph Wilson's wife was fair game?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we've been through this for now two days in a row.

Q: You didn't answer the question --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I did answer the question.

Q: But did he say it?

MR. McCLELLAN: I did answer the question.

Q: Did he say it?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I answered that question, and we've been through it for two days now. And so, it's been addressed.

Q: But what was the answer?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to go back through it again today, because we've been through it for the last couple of days. And I pointed out that there are some that are trying to politicize this investigation for partisan political gain, and that's unfortunate. There's an investigation going on and no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than this White House.

Q: But why don't you just say --

MR. McCLELLAN: So I've already addressed that issue.

Q: -- just say, I don't want to answer that.

MR. McCLELLAN: Anybody else?

 
Talking points: Collected from White House press conferences and Administration appearances in the Sunday morning rush, we present buzzwords for the as-yet-unnamed Plame affair:

Career Justice Department officials: Cover for the Ashcroft-recusal issue, as in "This is not a political issue because career Justice officials are undertaking the investigation." Pros: Makes an intra-Administration investigation of a political scandal sound nonpartisan. Cons: Underscores the fact that the Administration didn't clean its own stables. Hides: The fact that recusal is used specifically to protect Career Officials from the wrath of seventh floor appointees -- and so the term deftly ignores the question.

Intelligence leaks: What the Plame disclosure is one of, and what the Plame disclosure is always described as. ("Is the President concerned about the disclosure of a covert CIA operative's identity?" "The President is always concerned about intelligence leaks.") Pros: Diminishes the importance of l'Affaire Plame by linking it to Legislative-branch leaks from last year. Cons: Unconvincing, makes the President look impotent, won't help much if either the trail ends at Cheney's OEB office or if Rove is found to have capitalized on the leak, post-Novak. Hides: That this was a politically-motivated, egregious breach of sources-and-methods security focused on a single operative to strike at her husband.

Get to the bottom of the investigation: Get the investigation out of the way. Pros: Suggests that the White House is confident that the truth won't hurt them. Cons: Suggests that the White House is terrified the publicity will hurt them. Hides: That the Administration, and probably Bush, already knows who did it.

Focusing on the priorities of the American people: Used to explain why Bush didn't follow up on the leak in July, when the Novak column came out. Confined largely to press briefings. Pros: Not many. Cons: Sounds stilted, suggests that the Administration doesn't take intelligence leaks seriously, leaves the speaker open to a follow-up about why the American people poll so unhappy about Bush's handling of those priorities. Hides: That the Administration thought they could get out of the scandal by ignoring it.