O’Reillylanche

In the blogosphere, an “Instalanche” is considered a good thing: it’s when Instapundit links to you in a post of his. Because Instapundit gets so many hits, an Instalanche means that your hit counter will go up dramatically. And, well, other people reading what you write is what it’s all about here.

On last night’s O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly had on the fellow who started a website titled, Boycott CBS. The website is a reaction to CBS’s upcoming “bio”pic/smear of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, due to be broadcast in mid-November. The purpose is to boycott CBS and any advertisers that place commercials during it to show Les Moonves that it’s wrong to smear one of the greatest presidents in American history. I’d written about the Reagan movie here, here, and here. During the segment and immediately after, I noticed that this website’s hit counter went way up, and comments were streaming in by the dozen.

R. Correll says, “If CBS aires this film about President Reagan, we sill boycott all sponsors of CBS and tell all our friends to do so. Also, tell the sponsors we are doing this.”

David Kinzie’s reaction was a little more moderate: “If they knock Ronald Reagan in anyway, I will definitely boycott CBS for a long time. I am sick of the way these liberals are acting, and I am, or was a Democrat.” Mr. Kinzie at least admits that there’s a time limit on his boycott.

Contrast this with Curtis D. Judah, who says, “If this or any other movie, play or any person portrays the Reagan presidency as anything other than the Nations “best” and most moral we’ve ever had I and my family will boycott any and all sponsers of this movie now and for evermore.” For Mr. Judah’s sake, I hope that they don’t air one of those commercials touting the virtues of plastic. It’s a pretty hard substance to avoid in modern society.

Some people were more eloquent, like Frank DeBenedictis: “I can understand the outrage of the persons protesting the Reagan mini-series. It doesn’t sound like an accurate depiction of the ex-president. But I don’t agree that he deserves total credit for ending the Cold War. If I were to build a Cold War memorial, I wouldn’t just build a statue to Ronald Reagan. The earliest Cold Warriors deserve credit. John Kennedy deserves credit especially in his strong stand during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And don’t forget the GIs who served for the duration of this conflict in Korea, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Germany and Japan. Also thank the covert operators and Italian Americans who kept Communism from taking hold in Italy in the 1948 elections. The American GI in the Cold War period was NOT Gomer Pyle. Honor him, as you expect people to honor Ronald Reagan.”

Others were a bit shorter and to the point, like Bob Kreider: “CBS is truly the Communist Broadcasting System”

We got one dissenting opinion, this from Joe Jones (likely a pseudonym): “REAGAN WAS ONE OF THE BIGGEST PILES OF CRAP THAT EVER SERVED AS PRESIDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES. I PRAY THAT HE LIVE IN THAT SHELL OF HIS FOR A HUNDRED YEARS.”

And, interestingly, a Navy man weighs in on my comment that, “If it’s a hatchet job, we’ll see through it and it’ll only reinforce what we already know: the liberal media from CNN to Hollywood to NPR would loathe and contemn any Republican president (or any conservative in public office) no matter what he did. If President Bush right now created world peace, gave free health care to everyone, fed every hungry kid from Biafra to San Jose, and promised a hot dog and a hummer to every American who wanted one, it wouldn’t matter. It would still be about Halliburton contracts, a stolen election, and Chimpy’s oooooiiiilll,” by saying, “I will not wax eloquent. In 26 years of service in the US Navy, Reagan’s boys provided the top quality tools and parts needed to keep our aging tin cans and bird farms steaming. Reagan was the man, best president ever. Dubya is ok too, he has cojones. David said it right, a hot dog and a hummer. Nothing like getting your brightwork polished while downing a tasty tube steak.” Thanks for those words, Van.

Where did they all come from? Did the Boycott CBS guy link to this site? It turns out that if you do a Google search on “boycottcbs,” The Waterglass comes up as number two. Same as on an AOL search.

Huh. It’s both exciting and a little scary to see your hits go up so dramatically; reminds me a bit of Mickey Mouse and the water buckets in Fantasia. And all because the Boycott CBS guy put a comment in my first Reagan post that listed his website name.

The upside is, yes, we got a lot of hits. The downside is that they’re not “visits.” Very few stuck around long enough to look at the other things we’ve posted. But that’s to be expected; after all, the Reagan movie is more a hot-button issue than, say, Rerun’s untimely demise or kids getting hacked up by machetes in French train stations.

So saying, I appreciate the input from all, even Mr. Jones. Me, I still don’t plan to watch the movie, as I’ll be nursing a really bad split end back to health.