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| All content taken from The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Each weeknight by 6 PM EST a preview of that evening's show will be posted and then updated with additional information the following weekday by noon EST.
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| Laura began Friday's program by questioning TMZ.com's Harvey Levin about Michael Jackson's sudden death at age 50. "We are told," Levin reported, "that Jackson got a shot of Demerol at around 11:30 in the morning, not long before he went into cardiac arrest. This all starts to add up - Jackson's father told us that he wanted to get Michael into rehab because he believed he had a morphine problem, and a lot of the family was upset that he was being over-prescribed. A pharmacy in Beverly Hills that was suing Michael for not paying a bill over a two year period that was more than $100,000." Levin added that Jackson had been exhibiting warning signs. "He was showing up to rehearsals very listless and lethargic, and there were a lot of people who felt he was having a problem." |
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| Some people close to Michael Jackson now say they were alarmed by his abuse of prescription drugs. Laura welcomed psychiatrist Keith Ablow, who was not surprised when he heard of Jackson's demise. "Who is at risk for opiate addiction?" Ablow asked. "It's people who are not at one with themselves. You can be a great entertainer and still not be in touch with your core self, and therefore be at terrible risk for anxiety and depression. Michael Jackson was not at home in his own skin, he was uncomfortable with his age or gender or possibly his sexual orientation." Laura complained that Jackson was enabled by "layers of people who were dependent on his making money, even though he was screaming for help." |
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| Jackson consistently denied and always resented the numerous accusations that he molested children. Laura asked investigative reporter Pat LaLama and psychiatrist Carole Lieberman about Jackson's bizarre personal life. "He was severely abused as a child," Lieberman asserted, "emotionally, physically, and perhaps even sexually. All of this abuse was causing him to not want to grow up, particularly regarding his sexuality. I filed a complaint with protective services to take his children away because I thought he was not a fit father." LaLama described Jackson as a terribly troubled man-child. "Here is a masterful musician and an amazing philanthropist, but underneath was a tragic, scarred figure from the time he was a child. I believe he hated who he saw in the mirror and plied himself with prescription drugs. He was a child in a man's body, and he was surrounded by leeches and hangers-on." |
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Before departing on Thursday, Bill recorded a Talking Points Memo about the media's handling of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinean lover. Some excerpts: "As soon as I heard the news, I knew some on the left would celebrate because the governor is a conservative Republican. Reveling in the pain of others is not limited to one ideology, but the far left has been especially vicious lately. Some liberal pundits could not wait to gleefully exploit the Sanford story, and shamefully the Washington Post led the way. Post columnist Eugene Robinson, one of the biggest haters in the country, actually said this: 'I'm grateful to the governor for doing this.' I could spend all night citing the nasty attacks by far left loons, but one particularly annoyed me. Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine, a liberal activist, called Governor Sanford a hypocrite who opposes 'privacy rights and marriage equality.' 'Privacy rights' is code for unrestricted abortion, so it's obvious what Ms. Pelosi is doing: If you support any protection for the unborn or traditional marriage, you had better be a saint or they're going to come after you. There are hateful ideologues on both sides, but the fanatical left in this country will do just about anything to advance their agenda."
Former Bush adviser Karl Rove elaborated on the media's double standard: "Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer was involved with a prostitute, and Democratic Congressman Barney Frank had a boyfriend who was running a male prostitution service out of Frank's apartment. Would that have made it proper to take those instances of personal behavior and then make broader statements about gay marriage or abortion policies? The media would not have accepted that, and yet they are clearly seizing on this episode to make a broader attack on people who believe in traditional marriage and the cause of life." Bill lambasted the columnists and pundits who are reveling in Governor Sanford's pain: "I see this as cruelty - the absolute joy at the destruction of this man and his family made me almost sick." |
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| Bill also spoke with Fox News media analyst Bernie Goldberg about the Sanford coverage. "Journalists handle sex scandals very differently," Goldberg said, "depending on whether the politician who got caught with his pants down is a Republican or a Democrat. When it's a Republican, it's never just the politician's problem; it's almost always the entire Republican Party's problem. Journalists love dirty laundry and they love going after conservatives. I used to be on the left, and over the years I saw them get meaner and more vicious." Goldberg also commented on New York Times editor Bill Keller's decision to suppress the news that one of his reporters had been kidnapped by the Taliban: "It's good to know the Times can keep a secret, because when the CIA went to Bill Keller and asked him not to publish the name of a CIA interrogator, the Times published his name on page one. And when top Bush officials asked Keller to not publish sensitive secrets about how this country is wiretapping terrorists, Keller published it. I'm glad they kept a secret to protect one of theirs, but how about keeping a few secrets to protect the rest of us?" |
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| Laura was joined by veteran entertainment reporter Jeanne Wolf, who compared the lives and deaths of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. "They were two of the most unique individuals who ever lived," Wolf opined. "Both had mesmerizing power over people, each in a different way, and when you are elevated to the level of royalty, you think you can live by different rules. I'll miss them both." Laura pointed to another tragic similarity between the two men: "Who were their real friends? Who was there to tell them they were heading down a bad path and it was time to get help? Nobody." |
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| Finally, Laura asked Fox News business ace Stuart Varney to perform an autopsy on Michael Jackson's messy financial situation. "He was done in by wild spending," Varney reported, "and by being on the losing end of big lawsuits and borrowing money. He started borrowing a lot of money in the early 1990's, just as his performing income went down. The loans got larger, and he ended up with about $500 million in debt. He was essentially insolvent." Varney gave Jackson's heirs and creditors a few reasons for optimism: "He still owned half interest in the Beatles catalogue, there are future music sales, and we are told there are unreleased tracks. There will be revenue coming in, but it will be shared among all these creditors." |
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