THE PARANOID STYLE ON DISPLAY

(Hat-tip to the FOX NewsHounds)

Bill O'Reilly had Tammy Bruce (for some background, read here and here) on THE O'REILLY FACTOR¹ and had an exchange which perfectly fit Richard Hostadter's concept (see here and here) of the paranoid pseudo-conservative.

EXCERPTS:

O'REILLY: Continuing now with the Imus controversy, which has metastasized into a ideological witch-hunt by evil forces. Or am I overstating it?

O'REILLY: But I am seeing danger for this nation because of all of this dishonesty being fed out of this far left swamp into the mainstream media. Am I overstating it?

BRUCE: No, you're not. ...Now in this instance, in what you've just talked about with Mr. Delay, is what happened to you is what happened what I consider the test case, back six, seven years ago to Dr. Laura Schlesinger.

With a word that's plucked out of a sentence used in the attempt to destroy one person. That effort, Bill, was launched by about a half a dozen people only and facilitated through the Internet of well financed, small groups of people who have literally -- and they did then and they still do, have a list of individuals that that are to be targeted, because if they don't -- well, you're on it of course.

BRUCE: ... But the truth of the matter is I used, essentially, what is a conspiratorial network of people in the newspaper and television industry at the time that would move whatever it is that I wanted moved.

O'REILLY: You bet. And we have elements at NBC who do it every day. We have elements at Newsweek magazine who do it. And we're going to name one of those tomorrow.

O'REILLY: Right, right. And now you have Rosie O'Donnell, who is now doing this in the entertainment realm. They contact her. They feed her this crap. She spits it out in front of all the women who are watching her on ABC. And this is how it goes.

BRUCE: Well, you have multiple impressions using different media. You've got, of course, newspapers and people like Frank Rich. It's moved through the guarantors on camera like the Rosie O'Donnells.

So regular Americans hear it from so many different avenues they believe it's true.

O'REILLY: They believe it. Yes.

¹SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR 8:29 PM EST
April 16, 2007 Monday
TRANSCRIPT: 041603cb.256
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 1061 words
HEADLINE: Media Figures Under Attack by Special Interests
BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly, Tammy Bruce