I like chatter in the background so I often have talk radio on at work and sometimes at home, and since talk radio means rightwing radio (My local station has a liberal morning program followed by 13 straight hours of rightwing --local, Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage and then 7 hours of supernatural/conspiracy theory/pseudoscience) I'm pretty well versed first hand.
O'Reilly was smart enough to not hang his hat on one political party so didn't have to do credibility straining cartwheels or make absolutely absurd statements which would lose your possibly rightleaning but not quite true believer audience. He was smart enough not to focus on the conservative vs. liberal philosophy. Instead he couched it in traditional vs. secular progressive, gut issues. (He's puts himself on the side of the traditionalists--no surprise there.) Rush and Hannity's fortunes lie with the Republicans' performance (or perceived performance) and their shows border on almost pure propaganda. O'Reilly has left himself escape hatches. If the Republicans up and start murdering children, Rush and Hannity will have to scramble to convince their audience that murdering children has some kind of moral superiority. O'Reilly's not in danger of that.
(I don't have access to much leftwing talk radio, but suspect if I did, I would feel much the same way about it that I do about
most rightwing radio--preaching to the choir, demonizing or ridiculing the opposition, part of some wise club that they flatter their audience as being part of.)
I find O'Reilly tolerable. He gives a fairly pragmatic image. He comes across as intelligent, moderate, hardnosed, less of a pure ideologue. He also comes across as condescending ("looking out for the folks") paranoid with a persecution complex--I can't tell you how many segments of his program he has dedicated to vilifying somebody who criticized him or didn't give him the proper deference he thought he was due. With a colossal ego and a stance that only he will tell you the whole truth. According to him, he wins every argument (And the occasional kneejerk, stupid idea of readying his audience to boycott Canada if he deems it necessary--he likes to ready his audience to do his bidding, lol)
I've read a couple of his books (not the fiction ones
) and found them readable and lightweight. I didn't hear anything different from his radio program and would suspect that would be the case with "Culture Warrior". (My father has the book. I can't say I won't read it if I need a light read) On the surface, he makes an OK case. You can get warm and fuzzy and nostalgic and weepy about the traditional and can get outraged about judges who hand out light sentences to child molesters or fearful about some agenda he thinks the secular progressives are promoting. But he presents it as an either/or choice. Not being an either/or person, I'm not particularly swayed. Like anyone presenting a case, we're not getting the whole truth. Maybe it is the truth as he perceives it (or not). Whatever. It sells.
Maybe you can use it as a discussion point, but it's not the end of the discussion. I don't totally discount him, like I do Rush or Hannity, but I don't buy the whole package either.
Like Irvine pointed out, he's got a successful brand and everything is orchestrated to keep that brand successful. There is spin in that no spin zone. You'd be foolish to think there isn't.