GAME4: Bill O'Reilly disses the iPod, declares "maroon" as favorite color (arstechnica.com)

- arstechnica.com -

O'Reilly Disses iPod Ever heard the Fresh Air show on NPR where Bill O'Reilly is all intelligent and thoughtful, even eloquent—really making headway against Terry Gross—and then he stomps out of the studio cursing? And everyone listening is left like a head with its chicken cut off blinking, wondering what the heck happened. Well, peeps, he's done it again. Here's Bill O'Reilly taking on the iPod:

I don't own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod... If this is your primary focus in life—the machines... it's going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America... did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? ...I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They're not playing the video games. They're killing real people over there.

Apparently, O'Reilly has never talked to a computer geek. Not the people who run his show. Not the people who run his web site, which reportedly features a nifty picture of—you guessed it—an iPod, next to the podcast version of his radio show. Not any of the 67,642,000 people who have bought iPods since inception. That would be something like 1 in 5 Americans (not that they were all sold here, etc). Surely some iPod owners must be fine, moral, upstanding, hard-working Republicans? Surely at least they own Apple stock! Talk about insulting your base.

Given O'Reilly's reputation as somewhat of a technophobe, his pinpointing the iPod as one of the causes of the fall of western civilization isn't all that surprising. Still, one wonders at his judgement. What does he expect people to do, carry harpsichords around on their backs for when they want a little muzak? Video games have long been a political whipping boy for encouraging violence and lassitude, but the iPod? What's next? The coffeemaker as a destroyer of family values? The hot water heater as homewrecker? C'mon, Bill! This is the 21st century, not the 19th.

What a paragon of intelligence and thoughtfulness!