Barrington swings back at O’Reilly

Great Barrington’s lights shine at dusk on December 26.
Will Whitehorn
Great Barrington’s lights shine at dusk on December 26.

By Will Whitehorn
Will@berkshirerecord.net
 
GREAT BARRINGTON —Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly, the charismatic but controversial host of “The O’Reilly Factor,” renewed his attack on Great Barrington as a front in the so-called “War on Christmas,” again ripping town officials for issuing a curfew for the town’s holiday lights to conserve energy in a nationally syndicated Dec. 22 newspaper column.
 
This followed a Dec. 18 telecast in which O’Reilly chastised the town’s Board of Selectmen for allegedly using global warming as a ruse to attack Christmas.
In the column, O’Reilly refers to town officials as “pinheads,” “dolts,” “numbskulls” and the “far-left loons” over whom “President Bush holds no sway.”

Fuel to the fire, to be sure, for those who slammed the Record’s Web site, the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce and Town Hall with mostly negative comments, saying the town is anti-Christmas and erroneously claiming there had been a Christmas-lights ban. Now, local merchants and officials are simply trying to put a positive spin on an incident that’s been anything but.
 
 “It is an opportunity now to get some good press,” said Brian Killeen, executive director of the chamber. “I think if it created a dialogue to do [the holiday lights] well in the future, then I think it’s a positive. I think there were some very bogus issues on the telecast. But I think it will help us all to communicate a little bit better.”
 
Central to O’Reilly’s contention was the town’s unwillingness to refer to annual displays along Main and Railroad Streets as “Christmas lights.”
The two strands —placed and financed by the chamber —have generated discussion each of the last two holiday seasons. Last year  Fire Chief Harry Jennings criticized the lights, calling them  a hazard before a compromise was struck between the Fire Department and the chamber.
 
This year’s controversy caught the town relatively off-guard, according to Town Manager Burke LaClair, who said Fox News had contacted him after Thanksgiving after receiving word an effort was made to restrict the lights.
 
“Fox News invited the Board of Selectmen onto the show, and they declined,” LaClair said. “But we thought it was over. Then they showed up at the meeting, and their were no distinguishing features to indicate they were with Fox News. I saw these cameras there, and I couldn’t figure it out. 
 
“I thought it was to cover a special permit or something.”
 
LaClair suggested the shock was not so much the story, but how it was spread. 
Following the telecast, e-mails and phone calls from all over the country began pouring in, taking Town Hall to task for its alleged refusal to embrace Christmas.
Referring to O’Reilly’s claim that the effort to dim the display at 10 p.m. rather than midnight was a “strategy to diminish the public display of Christmas in that secular town,” LaClair said the lights — or what they are called —had never been a problem before.
 
“It’s never been an issue here locally,” LaClair said, adding that Main Street itself is generally dark because many businesses shut down around 10 p.m. “This was the type of segment that was designed to get that guttural reaction. There was this instant reaction, and it was skewed to be something it wasn’t.”
 
Rob Navarino, who owns  The Chef Shop on Railroad Street and is a member of the South Berkshire chamber, said he had heard many comments about the light display following the telecast, but added he was not worried about any prolonged adverse effect on the town’s merchants.
 
“I think most people can look beyond the opinion of Mr. O’Reilly,” Navarino said. “This town is a very inclusive town. We believe the lights make the town festive for people who celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the solstice.”
And as far as O’Reilly’s claim that a cow belching has more of an impact on global warming than holiday lights?
 
“Obviously not,” Navarino said. “I think the Selectboard here was trying to make an important statement … about saving God’s earth. Most people see this as a TV publicity issue, really, more than a news story.”

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