Kill him with kindness.

Bill O'Reilly so loves to fight that had he been born a century ago, he'd have turned pro and taken his arguments into the ring. Jab! Jab! Feint! Round-house! followed by a little trash-talking out of his grinning, bleeding mouth:

Come on, you didn't hurt me a bit! The working-class girls I grew up with in Levittown slap harder than that! You call that a left, you Communist sonofabitch? Here's a fair and balanced one-two punch for all those slanderous, card-carrying members of the media elite. Put up your David Dukes and try to stop my no-spin haymaker, you fascist supporter of the ACLU.

O'Reilly's combativeness and array of rhetorical gambits make getting a word in edgewise nearly impossible for guests on his show, let alone beating him. If O'Reilly wants to take you out early in an interview, he'll narrow his eyes in that Clint Eastwood-style what-kinda-nut-are-you squint that he has. The hands go up in the air as his eyes roll, or the two fingers come up and fire at the camera lenses like a pair of six-shooters. The O'Reilly Factor production assistants are already carrying your KO'd body off the set, and Bill has yet to open his mouth.

Then come the interruptions, the pummeling sarcasm ("Come on. … Really? … Great. … Right."), the mock indignation, the righteous fury, and the lecturing. Disagree with O'Reilly using an argument he hasn't heard before, and you get accused of "spinning"—a capital offense in his universe. In July, he tried to cut Reason magazine Editor Nick Gillespie off in the opening minutes of a segment about medicinal marijuana.

"No spin zone," said O'Reilly, when Gillespie started to make his pro-medicinal argument—the very thing the show booked him to do.

"If I could finish," Gillespie responded.

"You can't finish, because what you're saying is ridiculous," said O'Reilly, who argued a few minutes more with Gillespie before pole-axing him: "Mr. Gillespie, I'm going to cut your mike now because you've had your say." (Disclosure: Gillespie is a friend.)

A self-appointed populist, O'Reilly imagines that he's sticking up for the disenfranchised against evil corporations, corrupt governments, wacko academics, busybody pressure groups, and the producers of vulgar pop culture. To cross O'Reilly on his show is tantamount to disrespecting his audience, and he will not tolerate that.

But every palooka, no matter what their won-loss record, can be beat, and Bill "King of the Cable Talk Shows" O'Reilly is no exception.

The first thing to understand about O'Reilly is that he's prickly, although other writers might use the root of that word differently in their description of him. He's irritable. Crabby. A short fuse, pre-lit. But if you approach him the way you might a spooked grizzly bear—low voice, reassuring tenor, respectful tone—he's a tabby cat, purring and pedaling his paws on your lap like a kitten. The basic rules for beating O'Reilly go like this: