Scott McClellan's book hits next week, but it's already getting a huge PR push this week, thanks to its early circulation among media types. Oh, and the fact that he pulls a 180 and slams the Bush administration! (Except for that little, touching part where he says George Bush started crying when he fired him).
Naturally, everyone is looking to book McClellan. He's this week's big get! On the list of interview hopefuls? The big bad man, Bill O'Reilly, who was yammering on on his radio show about how Scott turned down his request to come on the show. Imagine!
"We had contacted McClellan very early on. I said, 'Hey Scott, come on the program, you know the Factor sells more books than any other show. Absolutely want to have you.' Then he said he was gonna come on and now he's not. That shows me he's a weasel. Then who does he sign up with? The crazy left. Now when you do that, and I'm saying to myself, 'I've got no axe to grind against Scott McClellan.' I mean I just want to ask him questions about his book. The same thing I do with Hillary Clinton. But now I see what the marketing strategy is: Go to the Bush-hater people and that's where we'll sell our books. To me, you've got to be a person who sees the world the way it is, and to me, I could be wrong, I can't read his mind, but it looks like a money play right down the line."
[The audio clip can be found here.]
Editorial Director
O'Reilly should talk to his own producer about what really happened before he sounds off on the air. I work for McClellan's publisher and saw first-hand what happened: We booked Scott's media on the highest-rated shows that called us first. Whatever Scott may have said to him in the past, show producers know that these gigs are booked through book publicists. But we did not get a call from O'Reilly. When we reached out to them, because Scott did very much want to appear on Fox's best-rated show, O'Reilly's producer would not agree to have Scott come on unless they could "go first." Since we already had long committed to other shows who demonstrated early interest, we could not just put O'Reilly at the front of the queue and renege on those existing commitments. Whereupon O'Reilly's producer declined to have him on at all. We are happy to sell books to anyone, and have booked many an author on O'Reilly; but we are not happy to acquiesce to the "me first or I don't play at all" tactics of show producers, nor do we like them then trying to pass off the absence of the guest as some kind of evil money-making ploy on our part and moral superiority on theirs. So it's not ok for a publishing house to try to make money, but ok for a television show to try to get ratings (which lead to advertisers which lead to money)?
Haha, busted.
To add to that, I have video of O'Reilly pandering to his audience to by No Spin Zone hats.
I watched all this fairly closely, and I saw in Scott something that looked as if he actually had something to say, and not just the propaganda he was being fed.
Something looked uneasy about him during the whole Plame affair and you can tell he was not quite so sure of his scripted response lines anymore. Which was probably why he is gone and the Bush administration has gone through 4 Press Secretaries.
And this current one had no clue what the Cuban Missile Crisis was when asked on NPR. What kind of idiot press credentials do you have to have to be the Press Secretary? Thats Rove strategy there, "lets just put a dumb blonde bimbo behind the mic, she will be clueless that she is even being fed propaganda and no idea that her job is to actively deceive the American people".
Bill O'Reilly needs therapy. The pettiest, most petulant, childlike "journalist" in the "news" media.
The dude looks absolutely silly when he starts pointing his finger and barking. What a dork.