Emily Wagner

Back in the day, about 5 years ago, I read a transcript from the O'Reilly Factor that was published in Harper's- he was interviewing a young man who was opposed to the US going into Afghanistan; his father had died in the World Trade Center. the man, Jeremy Glick maintained that his father was so against the idea of war and the president's administration, that if he had lived, he would have most certainly opposed US military action. O'reilly was having none of this, he maintained that because this man had lost a family member in the world trade center, he had an obligation to support the military action. Glick continued to disagree and gave clear and well articulated debate about his decision, O'Reilly became so enraged that he couldn't win this argument so he had Glick's mike cut so he couldn't debate anymore.

I shared the transcript with my best friend and we started to watch the show the same way one slows down to see a trainwreck, it was the most bizarre "news" television we had ever witnessed. The man, O'reilly, is horrible and unreasonable, we decided that we would map out his antics and develop a drinking game based on the show and his ridiculous outbursts- one shot for a generalized outburst relating to liberals, 2 shots for mention of the "folks at home", the bottle for kicking someone off the show- let me just say, you get wasted fast.

It is along these lines that I have developed a more serious game, besed on debate and current events. It would likely be done in flash since it can rather quickly to keep up with the events. It would feature an O'reilly like figure and a drop down menu of possible rebuttles on the debate topic, ranging from agreement, to angry outbursts and cogent arguments. You lose points for sinking to his level with outbursts and win if you get kicked off the show. The game is a serious one because it would require one be very current with the news and it would still be fun for us loser liberals.