I feel moderately relieved that I wasn’t too bad on The O’Reilly Factor earlier today, and at the same time somewhat depressed that I didn’t really kick out the jams either. I did everything I was told to do — write down what I wanted to say, decide which points were best to emphasize, and concentrate on being clear and concise. But halfway through the interview the clarity I had in my head started to feel mushy and imprecise. I was half making sense and half saying to myself, “What’s happening? Why isn’t this working out better?”

The Fox News interview set, located in the basement of the Fox buildigon Armacost, about 20 minutes before air-time.

Either I’m not just cut out to be a talking guest-head or I need to do more of these to sharpen my routine or O’Reilly intimidated me or something. My main intention was to be clear and reasonable in presenting my opinion, which is that it’s absurd of the right-wing hammers to accuse me of being a supporter of hypothetical liberal blacklisting. I’m sick of talking and thinking about this deranged subject as it has no relation on any recognizable reality I’m familiar with.
Over half of the e-mails that came in were from enraged or illiterate right-wingers calling me a “whacko commie pig” and such. It’s probably best to just concentrate on the positive reactions and take heart that I probably picked up some new readers.
“I saw you on the O”Reilly factor a second ago and I have to say that I respect you for coming on the program and saying what you believe to Mr. O’Reilly,” wrote a guy named Steve Klinck. “I happen to be a conservative and disagree with your statements but, as Bill said, you”re a stand-up guy, and I respect you for that.”
“I just watched your conversation with BR on The O”Reilly Factor,” wrote Paul Lyle of Plainview, Texas, “and until that moment I’d never heard of you, but I want to say how delightful and gracious you were, very open and credible. You are a very prepossessing gentlemen. BR made nothing off your forthrighness about having some reservation about what you had written regarding Jon Voight. I thought that was high drama. Welcome to my world. I’ll be watching and reading you.”
“When I heard your quote I was angry at you,” wrote Jim Lewallen,” but you did a nice job with Bill. I am a conservative[but] you made sense. You have your opinions on the blog. No one has to read this and you weren’t encouraging Hollywood to blacklist conservatives. You said it best when you said basically I’m just a guy with an opinion. Interesting interview.”