In Foul and Unbalanced Brian Morton takes on Bill O’Reilly, Fox News [sic] pundit.

Fox News Channel pundit Bill O’Reilly, unlike King, has become legendary not for the awards he has received, but for an award he hasn’t. O’Reilly is now notorious for publicly bragging about a journalism prize he never won on a program that aired after he left. What’s worse, now he’s on a rampage to either insist that he never made the original claim–but it’s a bitch when transcripts are all over the Internet–or to admit the truth while modestly correcting what he says was an error. Except there was no error–O’Reilly made a blanket claim that his show, Inside Edition, won the prestigious George Foster Peabody award for broadcast journalism, even though that claim was a flat-out lie. Inside Edition did win a George Polk award–but not until a year after O’Reilly left his spot as host of the show.

I really don’t understand the appeal this guy holds for people — he’s a mean, biased, creepy, nasty liar who is all flash and no content. What does he add to public debate that people like? I don’t get it.