And you have a problem living in an abyss of soul-crushing sadness?

Tonight (well, it still basically counts as tonight, I guess), I watched Bill O'Reilly and Stephen Colbert's appearances on each other's shows (which were originally aired last night, but I didn't get the chance to watch them then). As I expected, they were somewhat subdued and awkward, but they had their moments. O'Reilly's appearance on the Report worked better for several reasons, but I think one was that, when O'Reilly was calling the shots, he did his typical tactic of never letting his guest complete a sentence. Obviously, this works even worse than usual when someone is trying to tell a joke, and Colbert would always go ahead and finish anyway (not that I blame him for that, mind you), which made the whole thing end up appearing somewhat messy. O'Reilly made one of his typical jabs about how the Comedy Central audience is made up of "stoned slackers," which, while obviously a comic exaggeration on Bill's part, ties in with how he's constantly trying to belittle his competition and opponents in the media by pointing out how their ratings aren't very good, or how only stupid people watch them. Isn't the logical conclusion of this that what's more popular is always more accurate and of higher quality? Still, despite my contempt for O'Reilly, I guess I should applaud him for even being willing to do the Colbert segments. Hey, Bill, how about appearing on Countdown next? :P

I also watched Good Night and Good Luck, which was a well-done film. I remember my dad (who has the odd habit of actually seeing movies while they're still in theaters) saying that he wished there had been some more on how McCarthy came to power, but I liked that it was narrow and focused in its scope. And since I still had O'Reilly in mind while watching it, I couldn't help but notice that the review of Murrow's show by Jack O'Brian sounded almost word-for-word like something Bill would say nowadays. I'm sure that including this review (I don't know whether it was an actual quote, but it probably was; the filmmakers definitely did their research) was supposed to resonate with similar comments made by today's media, although perhaps not O'Reilly in particular.

When searching for some more information on O'Brian (like, for instance, his first name, which I don't believe the movie ever mentioned), I came across this Sarah Vowell column that mentions the film. Also on that page is a clip of Ms. Vowell's appearance on The Daily Show, which I hadn't seen before.