Genius Envy: Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller “Barely Qualify as Men” | NewsReal Blog

Genius Envy: Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller “Barely Qualify as Men” | NewsReal Blog

I have long held MSNBC host Ed Schultz’s erratic behavior stems from his political and professional status: he envies those whose careers surpass his. As David Swindle noted in the roll-out of this series, “Ben’s posts on Schultz are collected and all future articles will be collected here under the series name ‘Genius Envy,’ a play on a well-known Freudian term.” I came up with the name “Genius Envy” to highlight the way much of Ed’s incendiary rhetoric seems to be rooted in his offended masculinity. I was gratified to see my thesis was proven correct in less than a week. Last Thursday Schultz, the poor mind’s Rush Limbaugh, wanted to compare his manhood with Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller.

He began this segment of The Ed Show by ripping “[f]ailed comedian and sportscaster Dennis Miller” over a joke he made at the WWE Slammy Awards, then criticized Bill O’Reilly’s reaction to the skit on The O’Reilly Factor. Ed crowed, “O’Reilly condone[d] that despicable display of unapologetic sexism,” and criticized Bill for donating $25,000 to Miller’s favorite charity at Christmastime (!).

When he rolled the footage of O’Reilly calling Miller “a good man,” Ed launched into his manhood measurement moment:

Well, actually neither one of them are good men. As a matter of fact, you barely qualify as men. Real men argue the issues. They don’t engage in this kind of low-rent, sexist psycho talk!