I spent the hours before the Super Bowl stuffing wings in my mouth as fast as I could, so I missed this Fox News interview with Barack Obama conducted by Bill O’Reilly. That’s probably just as well, since the sight of me sputtering wing bits onto the screen was best left for, um, the first interception.* A lot of people are afraid to interrupt the President of the United States so they
can finish his sentence, but O’Reilly is not a lot of people. He is one irritatingly smug person, who responds to an invitation to the White House by saying “I don’t want to ruin the party for you guys” and routinely follows the President’s opinion by offering his own. After Obama finishes explaining his position on the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in a representative Egyptian government, O’Reilly adds, “Those are some bad boys. I wouldn’t want those guys anywhere near the government.” Somehow, the President manages not to say, “Maybe that’s why no one ever elected you to do anything, you jackanapes.” The whole interview is a study in restraint, except for one moment near the end. After he has been accused of socialism—after he has been told that his close friends think his personality has changed and asked if it bothers him that people hate him—the President loses his composure when O’Reilly suggests that he doesn’t understand football.