Get the Fuck Out of Here With Your Stale-Ass Bullshit, Martin Bashir

In my 2013 book You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me I write extensively about interviews Insane Clown Posse did with Bill O’Reilly and The O’Reilly Factor and Martin Bashir and Nightline at the height of their notoriety.

The interviews posited O’Reilly and Bashir as responsible grown-ups righteously confronting a very real threat to our children in the form of clown-based hip hop duos and Insane Clown Posse as sinister Pied Pipers leading young people astray with their wicked devil music and sinister stage shows.

We were supposed to be grateful that these muckraking veterans journalists were confronting the great cultural evil of Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J’s Shaggy 2 Dope’s silly lyrics, that they had the bravery to look Violent J in the eyes and say, on behalf of society and all decent people, “Aren’t your songs dumb?” 

That’s not how it played out, of course. Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J came off as affable and self-deprecating as they ably defended their small business and life’s work while O’Reilly and Bashir could not have come off worse. 

When Bashir and O’Reilly sat down with Insane Clown Posse it instantly became apparent who the real clowns were, and it certainly was not the men in face-paint. 

O’Reilly isn’t confronting anybody on television these days since a flurry of sexual harassment cases cost him tens of millions of dollars and ended his career as one of the biggest names in television news. 

The man casting Old Testament judgment on a pair of high school dropouts who just want to entertain people and make them briefly forget the inexorable horror of everyday life was ultimately deemed way too sleazy, toxic and sexist even for Fox News. 

Bashir similarly won’t be using his power and position to interrogate people like Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J on humanity’s behalf because he has followed in O’Reilly’s footsteps and resigned in disgrace. 

The loathsome lout claims that he’s stepping down for health reasons but he’s really doing so because a BBC international investigation has revealed that he used staggeringly unethical tactics to score his career-making interview with Princess Diana. 

Bashir lied to Princess Diana. He manipulated her. He played to her insecurities and paranoia involving the royal family and her place in it. He was sociopathic in his pursuit of fame, money and success and now he is finally paying a long overdue price for his amoral ambition. 

Men who once cast accusing fingers at Insane Clown Posse from a place of deeply unearned moral superiority have been exposed as liars, bullies, con men and sex criminals while Insane Clown Posse are more respected with each passing year.

So I speak for all of Juggalo nation when I say of Bashir as well as O’Reilly, good bye and good riddance with your stale-ass bullshit. As the clowns like to say at the end of shows, Juggalos will never die whereas O’Reilly and Bashir’s television careers are dead, thankfully.  

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