In his new book Pinheads and Patriots, Bill O'Reilly inserts a comment into the lengthy, book-concluding transcript of his 2008 interview of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to order to take a stab at explaining why Obama's alleged relationships with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers are such a big deal. O'Reilly does this by using an analogy. The analogy he chooses to use is ... dealing drugs:

At the risk of being redundant, let me give this “associations” deal another shot. If you are a dope dealer who sells heroin and cocaine, you are an evil person. You are hurting people, and you know what you peddle can lead to addiction and even death. But you don't care.

On the other hand, if you sell marijuana, you might see yourself as benign, as someone just providing a service, a harmless enjoyment to those who seek it. But the truth is, if you are in the drug world, selling hard or soft drugs, you will be exposed to many bad things. There is no avoiding the pernicious associations that permeate that culture.

There is an analogy here. Barack Obama's entire career has been nurtured by liberal people. Some of them are mainstream, just folks who believe that government has a moral duty to help the downtrodden by creating mandates that require a huge government apparatus and trillions of taxpayer dollars.

But some of the people with whom Mr. Obama has associated in the past are far more than left-wing ideologues. They are extremists. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers are crazy guys, people consumed with hatred toward their own country.

Barack Obama should have avoided these men, but he did not. To him, they were part of the Chicago liberal culture that was supporting his rise to power. The question is: How much sympathy does the President have toward the extremist point of view?

The record shows that he has appointed some hard-core radical people like Van Jones to government offices. So I think it's safe to say that radical Left beliefs do not offend the President. The Daily Kos is fine with him. George Soros has visited him in the White House on many occasions.

Those facts indicate that the President of the United States has no problems with radical Left thinkers and believers. The evidence shows that he listens to what they have to say. Whether or not he buys into the Soros view of the world is a matter of conjecture. I don't think old Georgie would be dropping drone missiles on al-Qaeda terrorists, so that's something.

[...]

So let's cut through all the fog and clearly state the issue to be sure no one missed it the first time: President Obama is the most liberal chief executive ever to serve in the Oval Office.

Sorry, Jimmy Carter. [pp. 230-232]

Yes, O'Reilly did just liken liberalism to dealing drugs. We suspect he's never analogized conservatism that way.

In that same section, O'Reilly goes on to write:

There's an old saying that applies here, however: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's Jeremiah Wright at the pulpit. Again, Mr. Obama claims that he just never knew how hateful Wright really is.

Yeah, and I'm Whoopi Goldberg. [p. 232]

This contradicts an earlier section of his book, in which O'Reilly forwards an explanation for the relationship between Obama and Wright. After noting Obama's allegedly “detached” public persona, he writes:

My analysis explains why the President could be great friends with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the America-hater. Obama's interaction with Wright was all about Obama. Period. Not about the country. The thinking, hypothetically, goes like this: So what if Wright spouted anti-American stuff? Who really cares? He offered spiritual guidance, and the President honored that with a form of friendship. What Wright did or said apart from Obama did not seem to matter to the politician. [p. 47]

After plausibly arguing that Obama got only spiritual aid, not political ideas, from Wright, O'Reilly flip-flops within the space of a couple hundred pages in order to hang the “hateful” Wright around Obama's neck.

So not only is O'Reilly engaging in ridiculous analogies, he's willing to throw his own analysis under the bus to make a political attack. That's especially surprising since O'Reilly endeavors elsewhere in his book to deviate from the Fox News party line and point out things like the fact that Obama is not a Marxist.

But reasonable analysis doesn't sell books -- red meat does. It seems O'Reilly is a little too willing to overrule the former to serve up the latter.