by Greg Beato

Having passed up a chance to enlist as a war warrior during Vietnam -- he was busy attending college in London -- Bill O'Reilly has now drafted himself to serve as America's top "culture warrior." In his new book (and doormat) of the same name, the gray, paunchy millionaire presents himself as a kind of fearless cathode Rambo, boldly storming the killing fields of "Late Night With David Letterman" to protect us all from, as he puts it in Culture Warrior, "lax school discipline," "a touchy-feely vision of our society," and Nancy Pelosi.

"What I am about to say might sound delusional," the late-blooming mercenary allows on page 150 of his book, a disclaimer that only comes 150 pages too late, though it will come as no surprise to anyone who reads the back cover first, with its cool assessment from military analyst Liz Smith: "Gen. George S. Patton, complete with ivory-handled revolvers on his hips, couldn't exude more confidence, certainty, and know-how than Bill O'Reilly."

O'Reilly, of course, is well-known for his vivid fantasy life, and to kick off "Culture Warrior," he whips up a doozy. In 2020, he suggests, the country will be ruled by a president named Gloria Hernandez. Amongst her many accomplishments? An America where no one is denied "nutritious food on the table." An America where "poor Americans are provided with new homes virtually mortgage free" and "repressive laws against gay marriage" have been abolished. An America where individuals are no longer "persecuted for pursuing happiness in his or her own way in the privacy of his or her own home."

Welcome to Bill O'Reilly's nightmare!

To assemble the army he has tasked himself with vanquishing, General O'Reilly compiles a list of issues and values he doesn't like (taxing rich people, liberating Christ -- and Santa! -- from Christmas), identifies the culprits whom he believes champion these issues and values, and, finally, imagines that they're all secretly working together to coordinate their disparate agendas. Poof!, he has an enemy to battle, the "Secular-Progressives," or in that clever way he has of coining a memorable phrase, the "S-Ps."

"The armies of secularism are rising and the public is largely unaware of what is taking place," the General writes while gently stroking the ivory-handled revolvers on his hips, no doubt. According to the intelligence his field officers have gathered, the S-Ps' various batallions include the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Times, and the devious Georges (Lakoff, Soros, and Clooney). Their covert agenda? Radical wealth redistribution, early indoctrination of impressionable children, and a "touchy-feely vision" of society that emphasizes "individual self-expression." In other words, they're sort of like evangelical Christians, only gayer.

Like every other demagogue working the culture wars these days, O'Reilly adopts the strategy of simultaneously minimizing and maximizing his enemy. There's so few S-Ps that they have no business even presuming to participate in the decision-making processes that govern the nation, and yet, somehow, despite their near non-existence, they're also the greatest threat to the future of America. "The FBI came in and warned me and a few other people at Fox News that al Qaeda had us on a death list," the General told Barbara Walters recently, but incredibly, he still considers George Soros "public enemy number one." Bill Moyers, meanwhile, is a "bomb-thrower."

If a mild-mannered, 72-year-old who's played second fiddle to Big Bird for most of his career is the greatest threat to America, craven appeasers might rationalize, perhaps the Culture War should be downgraded to the Culture Kerfluffle. The General, however, is having none of it. "Many of my Irish ancestors were warriors," he explains, and now that it's his turn to defend America from vicious pixies like NPR's Terry Gross, he will not abandon his post.

To bolster the martial theme of "Culture Warrior," General O'Reilly occasionally refers to Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," but given the rhetorical contortions he engages in here, it appears he's been studying yoga too. For example, when he first introduces George Soros, the billionaire activist who funds liberal groups like Moveon.org and Media Matters, O'Reilly says "most Americans know little or nothing" about him, and that he "operate[s] pretty much under the radar." Later, when he wishes to distinguish Soros' actions from those of Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire activist who funds numerous conservative groups with the word "America" in their names, he writes that Scaife "prefers to operate privately" and concludes that "there is no public bomb-thrower in the conservative donor community like George Soros."

Why the General believes it is more virtuous to operate in a shadowy, clandestine way is something only he can decipher -- the point is that in the space of a dozen pages or so, Soros has somehow morphed from little-known figure operating under the radar to public bomb-thrower. Perhaps this is what O'Reilly means when he says his coverage is "balanced," but where is the fairness?

The battlefields of "Culture Warrior" are littered with the corpses of truth and context, but unless George Soros is paying you to count the dead, there's no real reason to do so: The General has shown little interest in modifying the rules of engagement he follows. Still, there is one additional casualty worth noting; it occurs when O'Reilly declares that "the far-left Internet smear merchants have solid access to the so-called elite media, something the far-right Internet bloggers will never have." No doubt this is news to Michelle Malkin and the communist collective that runs PowerLine -- or are these folks faking the solid access to the elite media that they seem to enjoy, along with the ample coverage they've gotten as well?

Is the General deliberately trying to frag the truth when he presents such "truths," or is he just that dumb? The Acknowledgements section of "Culture Warrior" provides a clue: "Since I am incapable of negotiating a computer, my wife, Maureen, routinely stops my bad language and presses the buttons that need to be pressed."

This is a a pretty scary revelation, of course -- it means that if the General ever gets divorced, his books will be even more poorly written and even more delicately researched. Nonetheless, it does substantiate his otherwise dubious claim to an Algeresque life-path. Until now, O'Reilly's posturing as a blue-collar everyman who survived the mean cul-de-sacs of suburban Long Island and had to make do with one modest family vacation per year has always been as credible as his new para-military guise, but you have to give credit where credit is due: If you can in fact make millions a year as a newsman in 2006 and not know how to use a computer, then, yes, you are indeed, as O'Reilly claims he is, the "poster boy for upward mobility."

Greg Beato (gbeato@soundbitten.com) writes for Reason, Las Vegas Weekly, and many other publications. He wrote last for Political Bite about the RNC's America Weakly.