***** ...Some of you probably caught me on Bill O'Reilly's show, The O'Reilly Factor, on Fox News last week. I was on his show to promote my new book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, and O'Reilly began our segment by barking at me about owing royalties to Robert Bork, the conservative author and social critic who wrote Slouching Towards Gomorrah. (Of course, if I owe Bork, then Bork owes Joan Didion, author of Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and all three of us owe the estate of W.B. Yeats, the poet who got this "[blanking] towards [someplace]" business rolling.)
Anyway, I was having a nice enough chat with the combative Mr. O'Reilly, doing my damnedest to defend pot smokers and sex educators and other sinners. And then -- O'Reilly asked me what I thought about gay bathhouses. I made the mistake of telling the truth: I hate gay bathhouses and I think they should be closed. This is not a new position. I've been an on-the-record gay bathhouse basher for 10 years. (Are gay bathhouses even necessary these days? Web sites like Gay.com have basically turned every gay man's apartment into a potential gay bathhouse, so do we really need to go to the real thing anymore? Why eat out when you can order in?)
O'Reilly pounced: "I want to go to a gay bathhouse!" he barked. "I want to go to a gay bathhouse!" I was stunned. There I was sitting across the table from the darling of the American right, and he was shouting at me about wanting to go to a gay bathhouse. "If I want to pursue happiness in a gay bathhouse, Mr. Savage, and go to the bathhouse, OK, you can't stop me, according to your philosophy." I didn't know what to say. If Bill O'Reilly wanted to go to a gay bathhouse, who was I to tell him he shouldn't? "I want to go to a gay bathhouse! I want to go to a gay bathhouse!" I told O'Reilly that he was right, that my urge to close gay bathhouses was inconsistent with my do-whatever-feels-good positions on drugs and other sexual acts. "You win," I said, but really I was thinking, "Get me the hell away from this guy before he shouts 'I want to go to a gay bathhouse!' again!" Picturing real gay men in a gay bathhouse is revolting enough, but Bill O'Reilly in a gay bathhouse? That could put a gay guy off gay sex for the rest of his unnatural life.
But it occurred to me as I was leaving Fox News that there has to be a talented DJ out there who can't stand O'Reilly. So, Mr. DJ, why not sample him barking, "I want to go to a gay bathhouse," put a catchy beat under it, and release it as an underground dance single? An ambitious DJ might make a video to go along with the single -- a video that showed Bill O'Reilly barking, "I want to go to a gay bathhouse!" over and over again. If someone pulls together "I Want to Go to a Gay Bathhouse!", I'm positive it will be the surprise dance hit this winter in Ibiza. And wouldn't that be lovely?...
<http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0243/savage.php> *****
***** _After some searching, I found the O'Reilly Factor archive link to your interview, and THE SECOND HALF OF THE INTERVIEW IS ERASED! Right after the drug debate ends, the clip changes to three minutes of test pattern! It's like the Nixon Watergate tapes! It seems that Mr. O'Reilly is more than a little worried about turning on his radio to hear "Bill O'Reilly Wants to Go to a Gay Bathhouse (Neptunes Remix)." The gauntlet has been thrown down, Mr. Savage. It is your DUTY to find those missing three minutes, and release them surreptitiously onto the Internet for all to see. I beg of you, as a dedicated reader, find that tape! -- Dan Fan in the Heartland_
Hm . . . I got several letters claiming that O'Reilly's bathhouse comments were deleted on the Web version, but . . . they're back up now. Once again, I would like to encourage DJs all over the world to sample O'Reilly saying, "I want to go to a gay bathhouse!," lay a beat under it, and make it the dance sensation of this winter in Ibiza.
<http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0245/savage.php> *****
Cf. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,65870,00.html> -- Yoshie
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