O'Reilly In Godwinland

Wonkette, watching the Factor so you don't have to, caught Big Bill in a real rhetorical stinker:

O'REILLY: But what the argument is is that nothing about intelligent design should be introduced. And I think that's fascism.

Through the magic of Nexis, she compiled a partial list of other things O'Reilly thinks are fascist:

• The tactics of the ACLU
• Not letting city halls have a nativity display
• Prohibiting schools from calling winter break "Christmas holidays"
• Laws that ban discrimination against people with piercings
• The Virginia Military Institute not allowing time for voluntary prayer
• A flat tax on the wealthy
• Really, the tactics of the ACLU
• The Justice Department not answering his questions
• Crowds who shout down Arnold Schwarznegger
• Seriously, the ACLU is bad
• Liberal 527 groups
• Exposing kids to racy images is "libertine fascism," and we're just going to let that lie.

What sets O'Reilly apart from your run-of-the-mill slanderers, what marks him out as unhinged, and what makes me love him so much---those are all the same thing, really---is that he doesn't feel the slightest shame or need to qualify himself when tossing around Godwin missiles. Unlike, e.g., Roger L. Simon, who only calls his opponents "objectively pro-fascist (as Orwell put it)" over and over and over and over.

And no, this isn't what I wanted to say about fascism.