Town Hall 2013 Announcement and Bill O'Reilly

First of all, let's get Bill O'Reilly's talk out of the way.  I will admit I mainly went to Town Hall yesterday to hear the line-up for next year.  I am not a fan of Mr. O'Reilly's, but I was going with a open mind.  I remember a few years ago, George Will, the conservative columnist, was the speaker and he had so many really great ideas about how to approach different problems in our country that I really ended up totally agreeing with him on many things.  I was quite surprised.  I went to Mr. O'Reilly's lecture in the same frame of mind. 

This is what I thought....Mr. O'Reilly does an excellent stand-up comic routine.  I thought I was going to hear something substantive and instead, it was really just lots of "funnies" about the Republican presidential candidates and other various topics.  The morning crowd thought he was hysterical and laughed almost non-stop.  Like I said, he really had his routine down pat and his presentation was fantastic.  He paced the stage like a stand-up comic would and was extremely animated.  I thought it was interesting how he totally took over the interview portion from TH chair Kristine Nickel and then when it was done, he asked the audience to give Kristine a hand and then he stayed on the stage to give us "the real story" about what happened when he visited The View.  Oy... 

My score: Delivery - A+ Content - C-

Now for those of you who haven't yet heard about next year's line-up, here's the scoop from the 2013 chair, Stephanie Grosskreutz: Jan 15 - Award-winning author Walter Isaacson, whose latest book is the biography of Steve Jobs; Feb. 5 - Former Sec. of Defense Dr. Robert Gates; Feb. 27 - Dr. Benjamin Carson who is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and his life story is now a TNT movie - Gifted Hands - with Cuba Gooding, Jr. playing him; Mar. 11 - Astronaut Mark Kelly, who is also the husband of Rep. Gabby Giffords; and finally March 25 - Former NBC news anchor, Tom Brokaw.  A really terrific line-up.  Of course, every year I think it is a really terrific line-up!  The Platinum Dinner speaker is yet to be announced.  I hope it is a woman.