On the way home from Stoneline last night I heard Bill O'Reilly on Fresh Air. Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about Bill O'Reilly. I've never watched or heard one of his shows. I know that he's a controversial figure, and I know he has a reputation for yelling at people on his shows, but that's about it.

Well after hearing him harangue Terry Gross for the better part of an hour, now I have an idea of why he's so controversial. It was really astonishing. O'Reilly talked to Terry Gross like she was stupid for most of the interview, then at the end -- when she tried to read a paragraph from a negative book review -- he went ballistic, yelled at her and walked off abruptly. I guess she should have been expecting some kind of antics, but she sounded taken aback by it.

He talked a lot during the interview about how his own show is all about "truth," how his job is to reveal the truth. All I can say is, anyone who says things like "if you read my book, then you have to agree with me, and if you don't agree with me then you can't read," is not dealing in fact. Facts stand on their own merit; they don't need to be propped up with bullying or insults.

(That is not a word-for-word quote in the paragraph above because I'm too lazy, busy, and actually don't care enough to listen to the interview again and transcribe one. It's pretty close, he definitely said about anyone who doesn't agree with him "then you can't read.")

Then again, he didn't say his purpose is to reveal facts; he said it was to reveal the truth. I guess he meant The Truth, a moral imperative not necessarily connected with facts, which in the messy real world are often open to multiple interpretations by reasonable people.

Later on it was Angel night. Lisa couldn't make it because she's getting ready for a big car show, but Shayne still kindly hosted. Well after griping last week about how there's nothing to distinguish Spike from Angel, I have to concede that they've made him a lot different from Angel. The whole ghost thing, of course, but also he's not so mopey as he was on the last season of Buffy (thank god).

After the show Dave came down and asked what it was about. (And probably regretted it immediately, but was nice enough not to show it.) When he learned Spike was a ghost, he immediately asked "Can he walk on the floor?" Which started a whole discussion of why ghosts can float through walls and furniture, but not through the floor. Dave was trying to construct a theory of ectoplasm being repelled by floors, so people who have ghosts in their lives should build their whole houses and furnishings out of flooring material. I countered with the rather more prosaic theory that it's just a convention of TV that ghosts can walk on floors, because it would be too expensive to produce the effect of floating around all the time.

Then we remembered that besides walking on floors, Spike could also sit in chairs. I wondered if it was a matter of intent -- does the ghost want to lean against the wall, or pass through it -- which idea was roundly condemned. And rightly so, now that I think about it. Because there's a scene in the show where Spike tries to hit a demon and his fist goes through it. So clearly it has nothing to do with intent.

Anyway, I think the real point of this discussion is that we are all thinking way too much about these things. Dave also asked, is Spike a human ghost or a vampire ghost? Can he make the vamp face while he's a ghost? If he gets a corporeal form, will it be human or vampire? Which is a good question and I hope they address it on the show.