Approval Junkie

by Faith Salie

  I ended with, “So, frankly, Tina, I’m angry.”

  That was the last time I saw a therapist. I’d like to think I made Tina proud.

  I had a thing with Bill O’Reilly once. It was years ago now, but how can I forget a connection with a six-foot-four-inch powerful man whose forehead made mine look dainty? We only saw each other twice, but I really thought we had something.

  Bill and I met the usual way, as these things go in the slick, sexy, insatiable world of cable news: I caught his eye (my agent told his producers about me), and he wanted to meet me (his producers booked me on the show).

  I was standing at the American Airlines gate at LAX waiting to board my flight back to New York when Adam called.

  “Hi!” I’m always happy to hear from my agent.

  “So…how would you like to go on Bill O’Reilly?” he inquired.

  “You mean the show, not the man, right?”

  “Yes,” Adam said, rolling his eyes with his voice. “The show. The Factor.”

  “Oh my God. When?”

  “Soon.”

  I started laughing. This was a really big deal—I’d be talking to a famous host with huge ratings—and I was immediately thrilled. And nervous.

  “Oh my God. Yes, okay, yes. Oh my God. Okay. Thank you!”

  I hung up and only had to walk twenty steps to a bookstore to find O’Reilly’s A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, which had been on the bestseller list for almost a year. I needed to prepare. This is what I do when I get nervous. I study. Before I date a man, I google him till I erode my manicure. Before I go on the number one cable news show, I scrutinize the host’s memoir. It felt funny to sit on the plane, cracking open a book I’d never considered reading, much less purchasing. (I kept the receipt for a tax deduction.) I didn’t want to be seen holding Bold Fresh, as it was popularly called—like a Factor fan shibboleth. I didn’t want to be taken for an O’Reilly devotee, which was entirely unfair of me, because I didn’t watch his show, and the only things I knew about him were:

  • He is conservative

  • He is bloviating

  • He mixes up the words falafel and loofah when it comes to which one he’d like to apply genitally to a young woman

  His book confirmed him to be a conservative bloviator, but one with a sense of humor, even about himself. There was something lovable in his self-aware swagger. I thought I could play with him on air. I marked up Bold Fresh with notes. That way, when we became the Benedick and Beatrice of Fox News, I’d be ready with references to his childhood that I could drop as bons mots to delight and flatter him: “So you’re calling me ‘Salie’ now, O’Reilly? What am I—a running back for your Marist College football team?! What would Sister Mary Lurana think of that?!!” And we’d laugh and laugh.

  I started watching Fox News in earnest, not just to catch Shepard Smith being campy. And I actually found O’Reilly to be the fairest of the 2009 Great American troika of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity. Which is like saying Randy Jones was the straightest Village Person. Beck and Hannity are one tricorn hat away from a 5150 hold, but O’Reilly said abortion wasn’t a black-and-white issue. He didn’t seem to hate Obama categorically. He even dared to offer, “I don’t believe the republic will collapse if Larry marries Brendan.” I ignored the fact that he liked to call Larry and Brendan “homosexuals” and thought gay marriage would lead to the legalization of polygamy. Basically, I invested way too soon. This was not unlike my behavior in high school, when I’d hear that some guy liked me. Someone who’d never crossed my mind. But now that he thought I was cute, I might find something in him to admire, like the way he drove a stick shift.

  I boned up on The No Spin Zone. I identified O’Reilly’s lovable quirks: he delivers his opinion in the third person—like “ ‘Talking Points’ believes that the president is overreaching…” Sigh. That Bill is supersmart: by presenting his segments this way, they have a “this just in” feel, as if he’s a neutral reporter of information. He reports; I decided to swoon.

  I eagerly studied the way he interacted with “Kelly” (the beautiful and blond Megyn Kelly) and “Hoover” (President Hoover’s great-granddaughter, Margaret. Who is pretty and blond). The flirtatious rapport those women achieved with him became my goal. But it would be much more of an achievement for me, because I was from the other side of the political tracks. For a public radio girl, he was a bad boy. He was a challenge. I didn’t want to tame him, just surprise him. Papa Bear probably didn’t think he could love a girl like me, but I was going to prove him wrong in front of a bunch of white people who like guns.

  By the time I flung myself into Bill O’Reilly’s TV arms, I should have known better: just months before, I’d spent a whole hour sitting on a stool next to Oprah, trying to woo her with my wit, wisdom, and shoes. I mean, y’all, these shoes—they are five-inch floral platforms. That description sounds hideous unless you’re RuPaul’s stylist, but trust me, they were Oprah-worthy. Astonishingly, she didn’t comment on my shoes, but I can tell you this: Oprah shuffles onto her set in sweet flats (think Tory Burch) and announces to her colorfully dressed, giddy audience, “These are my walkin’ shoes.” At which point someone whose job it is to deliver her a pair of Louboutins appears, and she announces, “These are my sittin’ shoes,” and everyone giggles and cheers Oprah for sittin’ in thousand-dollar shoes. I now see my mistake was that I wore my sittin’ shoes for walkin’, and once I sat, I had no more shoes for puttin’ on.

  Still, I made her laugh, encouraged her to tell a story about herself that made her tear up, and together we ganged up like girlfriends against the other guest on the show—who was a man-guest so, please, he totally didn’t get where O and I were coming from. As we were walkin’ out of the studio, my new friend Oprah calmly concluded: “That was good. That was fun,” and four accompanying producers simultaneously sighed and smiled. Then the guards gave me back a Ziploc bag containing the two weapons they’d confiscated from me—a BlackBerry and a potentially deadly comb—and I slid into the stretch limo that was waiting, and what I knew for sure was that I’d get a second girl-date. I haven’t seen O since. I didn’t think I’d become her Gayle King, but I hoped I might emerge as one of her Favorite Things. Wouldn’t you? Being a celebrity friend must make you feel special, because you have to figure lots of people want to be besties with a star, but the star plucked you from her orbit. It’s like when you get the first class upgrade. You’re suddenly a class apart from the hoi polloi in the economy line where you stood five seconds ago. And you’ve got hot nuts in your hand.

  Which brings me to Bill O’Reilly. He wasn’t going to notice my shoes. I was going for straight-up Irish Catholic–bred hetero chemistry. Even after the Oprah one-off—especially after the Oprah one-off—I wanted Bill to love me. This was a geographically desirable relationship. Fox News was just down the street, and, knowing full well his love of segments teeming with wordplay—like Dennis Miller’s “Miller Time”—I imagined a recurring bit called “Gotta Have Faith.” But most of all, this would be a career breakthrough. Being liked by the host of the number one show on FNC would demonstrate that I was intellectually nimble. That I wasn’t a knee-jerk northeastern elitist lib; I was, deep down, a southern girl from public school who could play in a big philosophical sandbox.

  Bill and I, we wouldn’t sit it out. We’d dance.

  —

  At 10 a.m. on the morning of my taping, I received an e-mail from a producer named Ann telling me my topics (Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson’s memorial service) and this:

  We are taping the show at 3 pm ET today and your hit time will be approx. 3:25 pm.

  I had a “hit time.” It sounded so breathless, so military. I furiously wrote jokes and e-mailed only the gist to the producers, hoping that Bill wouldn’t read it ahead of time. Producers of news shows often want you to send them exactly what you’re going to say so that your exchange has all the spontaneity of a scheduled C-section. This is particularly challenging
if you’re like me, and you know that you’ve been set up on a televised date as someone who is expected to deliver smart and funny. Funny often—at best, really—is unscripted. But when you’ve taken what little time you’ve been given to craft a joke, it can be challenging to deliver it when the person on whose show you’re appearing happens to be famous for interrupting his guests. When you’re interrupted midjoke, you end up not only sounding not-funny but not-smart as well, because you never even got to make a point or a joke. I prayed Bill would let me finish my sentences the way he let Dennis Miller finish his fresh material about Barney Frank’s gayness.

  Bill sent a car for me. I mean, Ann handled the details, but the fact that it was a gigantic black SUV made me think that Bill had something to do with it.

  Ann, who was as cute as a southern button, escorted me to hair and makeup, and, within minutes, I looked like a Real Housewife. My hair went wide and my face went tan. My lips were shiny porn-star pink. I sat in the makeup chair, staring at my notes, trying to calm my nerves by memorizing jokes like a script. On most first dates, I rely on wine to help. But the Fox green room did not offer wine. What was offered, however, was Geraldo Rivera. He looked very dapper in a blazer with jeans—kind of like a Fox News sartorial mullet: business on top, party down below. He decided to give me advice.

  GERALDO: Are you a comedian?

  ME: Um, I guess that’s one of the things I’ve been called. I try to be funny…but I also try to say things.

  GERALDO: Comedians should never try to say things.

  And with those parting words, they whizzed me to the studio. The first thing that hits you when you enter a television studio is the cold. It’s always freezing, because the temperature is regulated for a hot-headed male in a suit, not a woman tottering in, wearing a tiny TV dress. I saw Bill from behind as he sat looking at his own notes. His head was huge. Then I saw him from the front as I carefully wiggled my bottom into a stool across a small table from him. He was formidable. He had the same makeup insta-tan I did. I could see lines on his face I’d never noticed on my DVR. He had pretty eyes. I had to break the ice.

  “Hi, Bill, I’m Faith.”

  “Hi,” he said, pleasantly enough, looking up from his notes.

  He returned to his pages. He was all business; his mind was on the flow of the show.

  “They’ve explained that we’re gonna run a package of comedians talking about Palin, right? And then I’ll introduce you?”

  “Yes,” was all I could muster, since I was shivering and someone was running a mic cord underneath my bra and raping my earhole with an earpiece.

  “HI FAITH, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” boomed a producer, suddenly in my ear.

  “Yep!” I said. I sounded fun, game, ready to go! My adrenaline was racing. I stopped shivering as the producers counted down for Bill to introduce “our” segment.

  “It’s ‘Say-lee?’ ” Bill asked, almost conspiratorially, over the countdown.

  “Exactly,” I whispered. I was so touched that he’d check on how to pronounce my last name.

  And we were off.

  The segment was about six minutes. He interrupted me a ton and steamrolled over most of my beloved punch lines—although he did allow me to accuse Palin of delivering a speech that was like an Escher painting, which was a bad move on both our parts, since prime-time cable is probably not the place to drop your hilarious mathematical art jokes. But in short, we were magic. His badgering forced me to improvise. He got to do his thing, and I got to do my favorite thing: I made Bill O’Reilly laugh.

  “Good,” he said when the cameras were off.

  “Thanks, Bill, I had fun,” I said as someone unraped my ear and led me out of the studio.

  I’d just speed dated in front of millions of people. I was so high from my first date that I forgot a few of them were sure to hate me.

  The next morning I awoke to an in-box stuffed with venom. Such as the e-mail from the gentleman who told me that he couldn’t believe the troops were fighting for people like me and that I should be sent to the Middle East and stoned and the one from the Christian lady who promised to pray that evil would befall me. There was the one about me being “a kunt on O’Riely.” The worst, however, was the one that said, “YOUR A FAT ASS.” The cameras had shot me from the bust up; but, still, that one sent me reeling for the remote so that I could watch myself in slow motion to decide whether the camera had added ten ass pounds.

  Now the stakes were higher than ever. I wanted Bill to ask me for a second date not just to prove to myself that he saw something in me, but to prove it to the likes of them—people who write that kind of [sic] hate mail.

  Then Ann popped up in my in-box:

  You were great! There will definitely be a next time–bill said he’d like to have you on again soon during our after-the-show meeting!! Yay! :)

  And a few days later, a producer named Ron e-mailed:

  I wanted to talk to you about an opportunity to do something this week—to try out a format that Bill is thinking of making permanent starting in September. Let me know when there is a good time to talk.

  Now, Ron. Now would be a good time to talk about doing something “permanent” with my new TV boyfriend. Ron explained to me that Bill wanted to start a new segment called “Dumbest Thing” in which I and another gal would bring to The Factor our nomination for the dumbest thing that happened that week. I said yes, I’d do it, albeit a little confused that Bill wanted to bring another woman into our relationship so soon. But I was willing to experiment with this format to keep our relationship fresh.

  I received the topics. I learned that Bill was going to call Obama the Dumbest Thing for using an eleven-year-old girl as “a plant” in his recent town hall audience. I e-mailed back my talking points. What I didn’t tell the producers, however, is that I’d spent part of the day on the phone with someone in the White House, confirming that the president had no prior knowledge of this girl or her question. I thought Bill would enjoy sparring with me when I surprised him with my research.

  The big black car fetched me, and the hair and makeup team turned me into a well-dressed blow-up doll. I greeted the crew in the studio. I lubricated my earhole. This was old hat. I settled in across from Bill who was demonstrating a cozy familiarity with Juliet. She was tall and naturally tan and husky voiced. This will shock you, but she was blond.

  The ménage commenced.

  I didn’t have much time to say anything now that she was dividing his attention; but I did ram in a decent, then-topical joke about vegan Heather Mills (formerly Lady Heather McCartney) needing more protein…and then waited patiently for my big reveal. At the end of the segment, when Bill proclaimed Obama as his Dumbest Thing, I ventured with a playful smile, “Bill. Obama is a great talker—he doesn’t need a kid as a crutch. I spoke to someone at the White House Press Office today who assured me that the president had no idea this girl was going to ask that question….”

  Suddenly the fast-paced segment was in slow motion. I was waiting for Bill to smile back. He didn’t. He squinted his eyes and, for a split second, I could swear I saw anger. Then he recovered, and, with a coolness, said, “And you believe that? No wonder your name is Faith.”

  He made my name sound like a dirty word.

  Juliet laughed. The crew laughed. Cut to commercial. Cut to the core.

  I overshot. You shouldn’t overshoot a Big Shot. He didn’t look up as I exited.

  I was the Dumbest Thing. I’d been eager to prove I was connected, a bona fide journalist. But O’Reilly had introduced me as “a social observer,” and I should have stuck to the script and made some jokes that would be aborted by interruptions.

  Although the producers had checked my availability for the next month, I never heard from them again. My agent called and was told they didn’t need me. I moved on that summer, little by little. I canceled my Factor season pass. I put Bold Fresh in the reading-recycling bin of my building. I stopped saving a certain Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress
for the next time Bill would see me.

  I meet famous people all the time because of what I do. And what I do most of the time is interview them. I’m not nervous, because I’m putting the spotlight on them. That dynamic finally suits me after years of trying to put it on myself, because I realize that I look my best in dim lighting. But being on Oprah’s show and then O’Reilly’s, I’d let some of the sangfroid I’d developed, the quiet confidence in my own voice, abandon me. I had a huge stage and a minimal amount of time to make an impact. I made the mistake of focusing on how much I wanted out of the experience instead of experiencing it.

  Bill O’Reilly is a smart man. In fact, he’s so smart that he’s smart enough not to mention hardly ever that he went to Harvard, which would obviously discredit him in the eyes of his viewers. Bill O’Reilly is so smart that he could see that we weren’t meant to be. He cut me loose before I got in too deep.

  I, on the other hand, did my please-love-me thing. But at some point we all must—in order to be happy—give up trying to get a Papa Bear hug from an audience who will never fall for us. Maybe it’s the in-laws or the head of HR at work, or maybe it’s a bunch of viewers who think there should be a draft for the war on the War on Christmas. Still, I’m not sorry I tried. I danced, goddammit, just like the Lee Ann Womack song wants us to.

  Even if dancing is pointless in the No Spin Zone.

  “Inevitable.”

  My best male girlfriend Manfred whispered that single word when he saw me emerge from a dressing room in the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue Bridal Salon. It was the first wedding dress I ever tried on in front of only one friend. All the hoopla around gown shopping only highlighted for me the absence of my mother. I wanted just Manfred with me, because he said things like, “Inevitable.”