Dan Frisa
Wednesday, March 21, 2001

First came a mainstream media boycott of booking O'Reilly himself as a guest on numerous popular network television shows that feature authors as regular fare.

(Only recently did the "David Letterman Show" have O'Reilly as a guest, and it was a solid performance.)

This, as his book was on its way up the New York Times bestseller list, including a long run at No. 1, ultimately selling more than a million copies.

O'Reilly "outed" this curious treatment several times on his prime-time show and dared to question why the producers of shows such as "Charlie Rose" on PBS and a spate of morning chat fests refused to have him as a guest, and only afterward did a few relent.

Then this past February, Newsweek featured a subtle hatchet job by Evan Thomas, after bumping O'Reilly from the cover.

Most recently was a column two weeks ago by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post basically calling O'Reilly a liar for "faking it" with regard to his description of his working-class background and upbringing.

And the left-wing editor of online magazine Slate.com chastised O'Reilly's disdain for coffee at Starbuck's in favor of a local coffee shop. (For what it's worth, Starbuck's regular coffee is not only overpriced, it also tastes like mud, though it seems Starbuck's fans seem to go for the fancy mochaccino-type, $5-a-cup offerings. Yuk!)

Last night, Kinsley appeared as a guest on "The Factor" and was at a loss to justify his claims in what O'Reilly himself referred to as a "hit piece" by the former "Crossfire" co-host.

Kinsley claimed that O'Reilly was not working-class, but was actually rather comfortable economically and was purposefully downplaying his roots to create a more populist persona.

That is just not the case. Michael Kinsley is a liar, plain and simple.

I can personally attest that O'Reilly did in fact present an accurate picture of his economic circumstances while growing up, because I grew up around the corner from him.

Now, Bill O'Reilly is somewhat older than I, so we weren't friends and I can honestly say I barely even knew him, although I did deliver the Daily News to his home for several years.

To describe his circumstances as "working class" is an exact description and one that was true of all of us in that Levittown development we lived in on Long Island.

In fact, his mom and my parents still live in the very homes we were raised in. This neighborhood was one among several mass-produced by innovative builder Bill Levitt in the late 1940s and early 1950s to satisfy the post-war housing boom.

Some 17,000 of these affordable homes were built assembly-line style, which dramatically lowered costs to about $6,000 or so. All were alike on the outside and everyone knew the layout of each because they were identical on the inside. They had no basements and were originally built with a carport, not a garage.

Those of us who lived there did so because that is all our parents could afford; we all were working-class families.

Mind you, this wasn't a terrible place to be raised – not by a long shot. It was a good, clean neighborhood where kids played ball in the street after school and dads cut the lawn on weekends. Families had one car and moms would drive dads to the train station so they could commute to New York City for work.

This was a true working-class neighborhood, just as O'Reilly accurately described. None of us had much money; our parents were working hard to build a life.

Kinsley doesn't have a clue, and he demonstrated that on "The Factor" last night. What he couldn't explain was why he set his sights on O'Reilly and why he lied in his attempt to bash and belittle him.

Perhaps the media elite detests populist figures who stand up for the average American; those of us long overlooked by ivory-tower snobs who are fearful of empowering regular people.

But nothing can explain away the methods by which they conduct their character assassinations. Lies and innuendo are too often the dirty tools of the so-called journalism we see increasingly employed by the left.

Now it's hard to pigeon-hole O'Reilly politically, as evidenced by the often diametrically opposed viewer mail read during the last segment on "The Factor" each night.

But it is interesting that O'Reilly's self-proclaimed "no-spin zone" is unsettling to both the media and political establishments alike.

And that, in itself, is a good thing.

E-mail Dan: danfrisa@newsmax.com.

Read Dan's previous column: Taxes, Taxes Everywhere; Time to Cut the Rates!

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Dan Frisa represented New York in the United States Congress and served four terms in the New York State Assembly.

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