Violence, Veils and Bloodlines: Reporting from War Zones Book

I knew Marvin Kitman had written an "unauthorized" biography of Bill O'Reilly a couple of years ago entitled "The Man Who Would Not Shut Up," and I honestly never really viewed it as a serious or worthwhile read. But after reading the one or two sane reviews on Amazon.com, I decided to give it a try. I was not only surprised, I was for the most part pleasantly surprised.

I think it was initially the book title that probably caused me to give the book a pass. But after seeing the tremendous amount of time and research Kitman put into this book, which included almost thirty interviews with O'Reilly himself, I was ready to give it a serious look. Kitman beautifully lays out the book in five very informative and chronological parts. He spends more than half of the book (Part I) taking a detailed look at O'Reilly's pre-The Factor life. He appropriately titles this section "The Making of an O'Reilly." If you have already read O'Reilly's latest biography, "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity," a lot of the information in Kitman's book is familiar ground, yet is presented from a different and a very interesting point of view. In this part, Kitman mostly just lays out the biographical facts, while inserting only a limited amount of opinions, observations and analysis from the biographer.

Kitman makes no attempt to hide the fact that his is a liberal and has little in common with Bill O'Reilly. But I believe most readers will at least be satisfied that he certainly did his homework in compiling the research and interviews for this book. Kitman spent five years of researching background material, conducting interviews and locating classic black and white pictures and legal documents in preparation for writing this book!

The book is filled with revealing quotes from O'Reilly himself (Of course), and a virtual "who's-who" of O'Reilly's childhood friends, teachers, schoolmates, coworkers, employees, bosses, rivals, friends and foes alike. Kitman really went all out with interviewing those in O'Reilly's past. This is what I found to be the strongest and most impressive aspect of the book.

Though Kitman admits most of those in broadcast news write O'Reilly off as little more than a demented, obnoxious, insufferable loudmouth (and Kitman admittedly agrees with them), but during the writing of this book he also admits that there is much more to O'Reilly than meets the eye; a much deeper person and journalist than the blustery and physically imposing man (6'4", 200+ pounds) he first encountered. This book is no simple caricature of Bill O'Reilly, but an intimate and sometimes moving look at the man and what really matters to him. He follows O'Reilly through his rough years at home, in school, his experiences as a high school teacher in Florida, and as a nonconformist in the world of written journalism and broadcast news.

In Part II, Kitman covers O'Reilly's rise to the position of senior anchor and "boss" of The O'Reilly Factor on the FOX News Channel. Most people in broadcast news try to simply pigeonhole O'Reilly as just another rigid conservative and not worth listening to. But Kitman believes journalism needs more unconventional, independent freethinkers like O'Reilly; trained journalists, reporting the news others won't touch and providing balanced analysis, coupled with their own viewpoint in addressing as many of the public's tough questions as possible.

I enjoyed getting to know more about O'Reilly's family, sister, wife, and two children, something O'Reilly has stayed far away from talking about. I least enjoyed the latter chapters of the book (especially Part III) where Kitman seems to lose focus as a biographer and begins to join the other "anti-Spinheads" by launching his own personal insults at O'Reilly. I felt this departure from standard biographical form detracted from an otherwise excellent book.

By the time you near the end of this book, you will probably realize that Kitman genuinely likes O'Reilly. Not his arrogant persona, mind you. He really likes O'Reilly, the journalist. Note the following quotes:

** "Every night he brings passion to the tube....Those are the things that won me over. I liked O'Reilly's anger. He goes after the dragon, what Fred Friendly, Ed Murrow's producer at CBS News used to say was the true function of news. O'Reilly has the fire of a reformer, a man who got angry at social injustice, as he saw it. He wasn't afraid to get involved."

** "I think it's probably a better world having people like him (O'Reilly) on the TV news.

** "O'Reilly is a serious journalist who doesn't play by the rules of objectivity. He is not alone in considering news and analysis valid journalism. Actually, he is a throwback to the way it was in the old days when CBS News was the paragon, the model for all TV news."

I believe the quotes above speak for themselves.

I do have one minor administrative note for your reading entertainment. This is the second book I have read this year where the writer, or maybe the publisher, chose to use, in my opinion, a near useless format for their End Notes. There are no notations in the text to even indicate there are any End Notes. Then, when you find there are pages and more pages of notes (22 pages in this book!), the only indicator what each note is referencing to is a page number. No indication on what line or what specific information on the page the note is referencing to. This was very aggravating for me since I see real value in footnoting. I realize the traditional form of Footnotes or End Notes (The kind most of us learned in high school and college) take more time and effort, but in this book anyway, the author would have garnered the undying gratitude of readers like me if the traditional method was used. Enough grumbling about that. The book also contains and excellent Bibliography and an Index.

In closing, whether you are a "Spinhead", an "Anti-Spinhead" or just too busy watching reruns of American Idol to care either way, there is something for every reader to either really love and/or really despise in The Man Who Would Not Shut Up (The Rise of Bill O'Reilly). Go ahead and take a chance; You simply can't go wrong here.