By Adrian
It’s not surprising that Bill O’Reilly took Scott McClellan to task last night on "The O’Reilly Factor." I couldn’t find a transcript, but at one point Bill O said something to the effect of “Scott, don’t you feel used? I mean, all the Bush haters are using your book to attack the president. All these people at NBC and CNN are just so happy that you wrote your book!” McClellan, to his credit, stayed on message and even managed to yell louder than Bill O whenever Bill tried to stop McClellan from answering a question by berating his half-uttered answer.
I wish McClellan would have said, “Look, Bill, I know this is your show and you act like an egomaniac, but if you don’t let me complete my sentences I’m going to have to leave. I wrote this book as a first-person expose. I am a witness to history and I have to be honest about what I saw and how I perceived it. My duty is not to you, to the president, to the Republican party or anyone else. My sole duty is to the truth. If you can’t handle that, then maybe you are in the wrong profession.
"What you are doing right here, right now, is exactly what’s leading the country down the wrong path and is the reason I had to write this book. You are attacking the messenger, not the message; you are trying to make me look foolish instead of debating the ideas in my book; you are putting the president on an untouchable pedestal.
"There are those in the media that probably do 'hate Bush.' But for you to accuse whole news organization of using me to promote hate instead of to point out the character flaws that lead the president to make bad decisions is intellectually dishonest and exactly why we are in the mess we are in today.”