My good buddy Bill O'Reilly talked with comic Dennis Miller earlier this week, asking why TV critics hate Fox News Channel so much.

I'm not even sure that's true or how O'Reilly knows it's true.

But Miller replied with a semi-rant about us crits getting paid $60 K to watch TV in our undies -- ten grand more, by the way, than the average American makes, though he seemed to intend it as a low-pay slam.

It was weirdly unfunny, the way most of his rants go nowadays; if you want my list of reasons why Fox News Channel is so disappointing, helping turn Dennis Miller into a humorless shill is top of the list.

But what I really wondered, in watching this exchange, was something I've often wondered about O'Reilly: Why does he care what we TV critics think at all?

Plenty of other cable news guys get shredded by us each week. But I've never seen the Olbermanns, Becks and Dobbs rear up to go after TV writers the way O'Reilly has. Nevermind my ongoing tussles with him; he's also investigated which political parties critics are registered for, looked into their political donations and sent producers with cameras to ambush writers he doesn't like. Including me.

It feels like an attempt at intimidation, pure and simple. Which is why its so odd to see O'Reilly ask with a straight face why anyone might have a problem with Fox News Channel. Kinda like the bully who trips you during gym class then plays dumb for the teacher.

What the best of us are trying to do is understand how TV works in our lives and examine what values, ideas and information are being transmitted by those tiny boxes. But that doesn't serve the agenda of many TV pundits, who mostly want the audience to believe whatever their shows tell them.

What a supremely cynical exercise. Check it out below: