Killing Patton (O'Reilly)

Killng Patton:  The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, 2014
Henry Holt & Co.
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805096682


Summary
Readers around the world have thrilled to Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and Killing Jesus—riveting works of nonfiction that journey into the heart of the most famous murders in history. Now from Bill O’Reilly, anchor of The O’Reilly Factor, comes the most epic book of all in this multimillion-selling series: Killing Patton.

General George S. Patton, Jr. died under mysterious circumstances in the months following the end of World War II. For almost seventy years, there has been suspicion that his death was not an accident—and may very well have been an act of assassination. Killing Patton takes readers inside the final year of the war and recounts the events surrounding Patton’s tragic demise, naming names of the many powerful individuals who wanted him silenced. (From the publisher.)

Author Bios
Bill O'Reily
• Birth—September 10, 1949
• Raised—Levittown (Long Island), New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Marist College; M.A., Boston University;
   M.A., Harvard University
• Awards—2 Emmy  Awards (Investigative Journalism); National
   Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Governors' Award
• Currently—lives in Manhasset, New York


William James, Jr. is an American television host, author, syndicated columnist and political commentator. He is the host of the political commentary program The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, which is the most watched cable news television program on American television. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he worked as a news reporter for various local television stations in the United States and eventually for CBS News and ABC News. From 1989 to 1995, he was anchor of the entertainment news program Inside Edition.

O'Reilly is widely considered a conservative commentator though some of his positions diverge from conservative orthodoxy. He is a registered "Independent" (See: Political views of Bill O'Reilly) and characterizes himself as a "traditionalist." He is the author of ten books, and hosted The Radio Factor until early 2009.

Early life and education
O'Reilly was born in New York City to parents William James, Sr., (deceased) and Winifred Angela Drake O'Reilly from Brooklyn and Teaneck, New Jersey, respectively. His ancestors on his father's side lived in County Cavan, Ireland, since the early eighteenth century, and those on his mother's side were from Northern Ireland. The O'Reilly family lived in a small apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey, when their son was born.  In 1951 his family moved to Levittown, on Long Island. O'Reilly has a sister, Janet.

He attended St. Brigid parochial school in Westbury, and Chaminade High School, a private Catholic boys high school in Mineola. Bill O'Reilly played Little League baseball and was the goalie on the Chaminade varsity hockey team. During his high school years, O'Reilly met future pop-singer icon Billy Joel, whom O'Reilly described as a "hoodlum." O'Reilly recollected in an interview with Michael Kay on the YES Network show CenterStage that Joel...

was in the Hicksville section—the same age as me—and he was a hood. He used to slick it [his hair] back like this. And we knew him, because his guys would smoke and this and that, and we were more jocks.

After graduating from high school in 1967, O'Reilly attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, his father's choice. While at Marist, O'Reilly played punter in the National Club Football Association and was also a writer for the school's newspaper, The Circle. He played semi-professional baseball during this time as a pitcher for the New York Monarchs. An honors student, he majored in history and spent his junior year of college abroad, attending Queen Mary College at the University of London. Hey received his bachelor of arts degree in history in 1971.

After graduating from Marist College at age 21, O'Reilly moved to Miami, Florida, where he taught English and history at Monsignor Pace High School from 1970 to 1972. He returned to school in 1973 and earned a Master's of Arts degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University. While attending BU, he was a reporter and columnist for various local newspapers and alternative news weeklies, including The Boston Phoenix, and did an internship in the newsroom of WBZ-TV. During his time at BU, O'Reilly also was a classmate of future radio talk show host Howard Stern, whom O'Reilly noticed because Stern was the only student on campus taller than he was. In 1995, having already established himself as a national media personality, O'Reilly was accepted to Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government; he received a Master's Degree in public administration in 1996. At Harvard, he was a student of Marvin Kalb.

Broadcasting career
O'Reilly's early television news career included reporting and anchoring positions at WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he also reported the weather. At WFAA-TV in Dallas, O'Reilly was awarded the Dallas Press Club Award for excellence in investigative reporting. He then moved to KMGH-TV in Denver, where he won a local Emmy Award for his coverage of a skyjacking. O'Reilly also worked for KATU in Portland, Oregon, WFSB in Hartford, Connecticut, and WNEV-TV (now WHDH-TV) in Boston.

In 1980 O'Reilly anchored the local news-feature program 7:30 Magazine at WCBS-TV in New York. Soon after, as a WCBS News anchor and correspondent, he won his second local Emmy, for an investigation of corrupt city marshals. In 1982 he was promoted to the network as a CBS News correspondent and covered the wars in El Salvador and the Falkland Islands from his base in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He later left CBS over a dispute concerning the uncredited use in a report by Bob Schieffer of riot footage shot by O'Reilly's crew in Buenos Aires during the Falklands conflict.

O'Reilly delivered a eulogy for his friend Joe Spencer, an ABC News correspondent who died in a helicopter crash on January 22, 1986, en route to covering the Hormel meatpacker strike that day. ABC News president Roone Arledge, who attended Spencer's funeral, decided to hire O'Reilly after hearing his eulogy. At ABC, O'Reilly hosted daytime news briefs that previewed stories to be reported on the day's World News Tonight and worked as a general assignment reporter for ABC News programs, including Good Morning America, Nightline, and World News Tonight.

O'Reilly has stated that his interest and style in media came from several CBS and ABC personalities, including Mike Wallace, Howard Cosell, Dick Snyder and Peter Jennings.

Inside Edition
In 1989 O'Reilly joined the nationally syndicated Inside Edition, a tabloid/gossip television program in competition with A Current Affair. He became the program's anchor three weeks into its run, after the termination of original anchor David Frost. In addition to being one of the first American broadcasters to cover the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, O'Reilly also obtained the first exclusive interview with murderer Joel Steinberg and was the first television host from a national current affairs program on the scene of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

O'Reilly had expressed a desire to quit the show in July 1994, and in 1995 he enrolled at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he received a Master's Degree in public administration. His graduate thesis, which he researched in Singapore, was titled "Theory of Coerced Drug Rehabilitation." In his thesis, O'Reilly asserted that supervised mandatory drug rehabilitation would reduce crime, based on the rate of prison return for criminals in Alabama who enrolled in a such program.

The O'Reilly Factor
After Harvard, he was hired by Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of the then startup Fox News Channel, to anchor The O'Reilly Report in 1996. The show was renamed The O'Reilly Factor, after O'Reilly's friend and branding expert John Tantillo's remarks upon the "O'Reilly Factor" in any of the stories O'Reilly told. The program is routinely the highest-rated show of the three major U.S. 24-hour cable news television channels and began the trend toward more opinion-oriented prime-time cable news programming. The show is taped late in the afternoon at a studio in New York City and airs every weekday on the Fox News Channel at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time and is rebroadcast at 11:00 p.m.

O'Reilly's life and career have not been without controversy. Progressive media watchdog organizations such as Media Matters and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting have criticized O'Reilly's reporting on a variety of issues, accusing him of distorting facts and using misleading or erroneous statistics.

After the September 11 attacks, O'Reilly accused the United Way of America and American Red Cross of failing to deliver millions of dollars in donated money, raised by the organizations in the name of the disaster, to the families of those killed in the attacks. O'Reilly reported that the organizations misrepresented their intentions for the money being raised by not distributing all of the 9/11 relief fund to the victims. Actor George Clooney responded, accusing O'Reilly of misstating facts and harming the relief effort by inciting "panic" among potential donors.

Beginning in 2005, O'Reilly periodically denounced George Tiller, a Kansas-based physician who specialized in second- and third-trimester abortions, often referring to him as "Tiller the baby killer." Tiller was murdered on May 31, 2009, by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist, and critics such as Salon.com's Gabriel Winant have asserted that O'Reilly's anti-Tiller rhetoric helped to create an atmosphere of violence around the doctor. Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that O'Reilly "clearly went overboard in his condemnation and democratization of Tiller" but added that it was "irresponsible to link O'Reilly" to Tiller's murder. O'Reilly has responded to the criticism by saying "no backpedaling here...every single thing we said about Tiller was true."

In early 2007, researchers from the Indiana University School of Journalism published a report that analyzed O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" segment. Using analysis techniques developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the study concluded that O'Reilly used propaganda, frequently engaged in name calling, and consistently cast non-Americans as threats and never "in the role of victim or hero." O'Reilly responded, asserting that "the terms conservative, liberal, left, right, progressive, traditional and centrist were considered name-calling if they were associated with a problem or social ill." The study's authors claimed that those terms were only considered name-calling when linked to derogatory qualifiers. Fox News producer Ron Mitchell wrote an op-ed in which he accused the study's authors of seeking to manipulate their research to fit a predetermined outcome. Mitchell argued that by using tools developed for examining propaganda, the researchers presupposed that O'Reilly propagandized.

O'Reilly is the main inspiration for comedian Stephen Colbert's satirical character on the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, which features Colbert in a "full-dress parody" of The O'Reilly Factor. On the show, Colbert refers to O'Reilly as "Papa Bear." O'Reilly and Colbert exchanged appearances on each other's shows in January 2007.

Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, O'Reilly promised that "[i]f the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean [of weapons of mass destruction] ... I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." In another appearance on the same program on February 10, 2004, O'Reilly responded to repeated requests for him to honor his pledge: "My analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm not pleased about it at all." With regard to never again trusting the current U.S. government, he said, "I am much more skeptical of the Bush administration now than I was at that time."

On May 10, 2008, O'Reilly was presented with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Governors' Award at an Emmy awards show dinner.

Personal life
O'Reilly was married to Maureen E. McPhilmy, a public relations executive. They met in 1992, and their wedding took place in St. Brigid Parish of Westbury on November 2, 1996. They have a daughter, Madeline (born 1998), and a son, Spencer (born 2003).

The O'Reilly couple currently reside in suburban Manhasset, New York, with each of them living in a different house. They separated in April 2, 2010, and were divorced on September 1, 2011.

Books
• The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life (2000)
• The No Spin Zone (2001)
• Who's Looking Out For You? (2003)
• The O'Reilly Factor For Kids: A Survival Guide for America's Families (2004) with Charles Flowers
• Culture Warrior (2006)
• Kids Are Americans Too (2007)
• A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity: A Memoir (2008)
• Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama (2010)
• Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever (2011) with
   Martin Dugard
• Lincoln's Last Days: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever (2012) with
   Dwight Jon Zimmerman
• Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation (2013)
• Keep It Pithy: Useful Observations in a Tough World (2013)
• Killing Jesus: A History (2013) with Martin Dugard

(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/5/2013)

Book Reviews
 Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard have written a lively, provocative account of the death of General George S. Patton and the important events in the final year of the Allied victory in Europe, which Patton’s brilliant generalship of the American Third Army did so much to secure.... [The book is] rich in fascinating details, and riveting battle scenes. The authors have written vivid descriptions of a compelling cast of characters, major historical figures such as Eisenhower, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler, and others, as well as more obscure players in the great drama of the Second World War and the life and death of Patton
Senator John McCain


Careful shoe-leather detective work buttressed by research, access to decades-old correspondence and never-before publicized interrogations of sources from around the world have combined to give readers Killing Patton.... Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Dugard approach some of the most shocking conversations and revelations in a noninflammatory manner, as if simply dropped (a la “Oh, by the way”) into the midst of some routine report.... Killing Patton is rich in blow-by-blow accounts of some of the most significant battles of World War II, as well as of many off-battlefield lives of its primary movers whose personalities virtually come to life in this well-crafted narrative.
Wes Vernon - Washington Times


Patton [was] responsible for the so-called Displaced Persons camps in Bavaria and elsewhere. Many of these displaced persons were Holocaust survivors. Patton had contempt for them. He called them "animals" and, in letters to his wife and in diary entries, made his anti-Semitism as plain as could be. Here...is a sample diary entry: "Harrison and his ilk believe that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to Jews who are lower than animals." When asked on his show how he could have left out these passages, O’Reilly summoned his inner Joe McCarthy: "The far left is desperate, desperate to disparage Killing Patton because they despise General Patton and they despise me. It pains them to see the overwhelming success of the book."
Richard Cohen - Washington Post 

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

1. O'Reilly's subtitle to this book refers to Patton as "audacious." Talk about Patton, the kind of man he was and his style of leadership. What was he like? What other adjectives might be used to describe the man and the general?

2. What evidence does O'Reilly present that suggests Patton's death was more sinister than accidental? Is the evidence cited credible? Why, after all these years, does Reilly believe the controversy has never been brought out into the open and resolved?

3. Follow-up to Question 2: Who would have benefited most from Patton's death?

5. This book, as well as the other three in "The Killing" series (Jesus, Kennedy, Lincoln), use a popular, hyped-up narrative style, creating what some reviewers refer to as "you-are-there thrillers." O'Reilly says that he believes that "people who do not necessarily like history will enjoy" his books. And with regards to the titles, O'Reilly refers to himself as "a snappy guy." "I do things," he says," in a flamboyant way. I want to get your attention." Does the O'Reilly style add to, or detract from, the underlying history of this work. Does it engage people who otherwise would not read about Patton and World War II? Or does it's easy-going style leave out, or gloss over, more complex historical facts that may not be as interesting or easy to follw? What do you think?

6. Talk about the numerous world leaders and other less well-known characters, found in Killing Patton. Are there any you find particularly interesting...or admirable...or disagreeable? If so, in what way? Consider (among others) Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill, General Eisenhower, as well as lesser known individuals like PFC Robert Holmund or Horace Woodring, Patton's driver.

7. Talk about Patton's greatest military achievements, in particular his race to relieve the siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. What other military (or personal) accomplishments have led to his reputation as one of the great World War II heroes.

8. In your opinion, was Eisenhower wrong to have prevented Patton from reaching Berlin before the Soviet forces? Should Patton have been permitted to close the Falaise Gap in the Fall of 1944? Have you read other sources else on this controversial topic that might shed some light on the issue?

9. What new understanding have you gained—about World War II and General Patton—from reading this book? What did you find most surprising?...or most disturbing? 

10. O'Reilly has been accused of inaccuracies and of cherry picking his facts in Killing Patton. Do these charges have any basis in fact that you're aware of? Do the charges make any difference to your reading of this book...or affect its validity as a work of history?

11. Consider watching, as a group, clips from the 1970 film Patton with George C. Scott. Talk about how the movie's portrayal of Patton dovetails with, or diverges from, your understanding of O'Reilly's book. (If you have time, why not watch the entire film!)
 
12. Have you read the other three books in "The Killing" series? If so, how does this one compare? If you haven't read the others, does Killing Patton inspire you to do so?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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