Why should Letterman or anybody else watch O'Reilly? By all appearances, O'Reilly is first and foremost an axe-grinding hothead. If you dig culture war bloviations like his "war on Christmas" nonsense, I suppose O'Reilly's worth watching, but otherwise it seems kind of pointless.
Just for amusement, I googled O'Reilly Letterman and came up with this amusing chain involving Letterman appearances past:
THE REST OF THIS POST IS ABOUT AN APPEARANCE IN 2004:
I finally got a copy of Bill O'Reilly's Tuesday appearance on Letterman where he lied about Outfoxed. He really did just completely make this up.
In the last 6 years, we did a search to show how many times I actually said shut-up on the air. 6 times in 6 years, averaging once a year. Okay. They of course use all 6 of those times, and they use them 7 times, that's 42 times.
He repeated something similar on the September 27th O'Reilly Factor:
So, and then [CBS] did the shut-up-athon. But they did say that I... and I said, "Look, do you know how many times I said 'shut up' in six years on THE FACTOR? Six." But the reason, as John said, they did that because they wanted their audience, who are left-leaning, to go, "Oh, that O'Reilly guy."
This man truly is a pathological liar. Slate identified 30 times he said shut-up on the air. Why weren't they all in Outfoxed? I couldn't track them down in time. In Outfoxed, there were 6 clips from the Factor, and 1 clip from the book fair. None were repeated, and none were taken out of context. jimgilliam.com
The video of that apparently equally sterling appearance by apoplectic Bill is linked at jimgilliam.com ; the Slate link, slate.msn.com , contains this amusing documentation of O'Reilly's "seldom flat footed" six in six years assertion:
Two-for-One Bank Shot
"Already the two parties are blaming each other [about the power blackout]. And I have two words for them—shut up."
—Aug. 15, 2003
On Location at the Los Angeles Book Fair
[To Al Franken]: "Hey, shut up! You had your 35 minutes! Shut up!"
—June 1, 2003
Continue Article
Where O'Reilly Learned To Say "Shut Up"
"My father didn't tell me anything. My father just said: 'Shut up. Eat your food. There are people starving in Korea,' but he didn't—he didn't offer a lot of career counseling, but he never discouraged me."
—Sept. 17, 1999
No-First-Amendment Zone
"All of these spin-meisters on both sides should just shut up until all the [Florida] votes are counted."
—Nov. 9, 2000
That Means You, Sid Blumenthal
"There is no victory for any American in the impeachment trial. The president should be ashamed of himself, and his partisans should shut up."
—Feb. 4, 1999
Hollywood Sissy
"He has dodged this program, Alec Baldwin has, for years. Bottom line: If you're going to sling it, Alec, then stand up to some fire. If not, shut up and don't be ridiculous."
—Jan. 2, 1999
Bill's Amen Corner
"Anyway, Kelsey Grammar and Robert Duvall were at this dinner, and [they] both said, hey, Dixie Chicks and all—these people should just shut up."
—April 28, 2003
Military Immunity
"I would never tell a general to shut up under any circumstances."
—April 3, 2003
Shut Up for Freedom
"And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins, unless—unless facts prove the operation wrong, as was the case in Vietnam."
—Feb. 27, 2003
To Our Brothers and Sisters in the Great White North
"Canada shouldn't have any say [about the Guantanamo prisoners] at all. I mean, just shut up about it."
—April 16, 2003
To an Anti-War Protester Whose Father Died on 9/11
O'Reilly: "Shut up. Shut up."
Jeremy Glick: "Oh, please don't tell me to shut up."
O'Reilly: "As respect—as respect—in respect for your father, who was a Port Authority worker, a fine American, who got killed unnecessarily by barbarians—"
Glick: "By radical extremists who were trained by this government—"
O'Reilly: "Out of respect for him—"
Glick: "—not the people of America."
O'Reilly: "—I'm not going to—"
Glick: "—the people of the ruling class, the small minority."
O'Reilly: "Cut his mic. I'm not going to dress you down anymore, out of respect for your father. We will be back in a moment with more of The Factor."
Glick: "That means we're done?"
O'Reilly: "We're done."
—Feb. 4, 2003
Presidential Gag Order
"What Jimmy Carter should do is privately give Mr. Bush his opinion and shut up publicly."
—Feb. 18, 2003
Diplomatic Gag Order
"But if the Bush administration wants to attack al-Qaida in Yemen, the Swedes should shut up, because basically it's our people who are dead, they killed our people, and we have to run them down."
—Nov. 20, 2002
He Even Talks Like This to Colleagues
"I'm going to give you a plug, so shut up for a minute, Dick [Morris]. Here we go. You've got the State of the Union address coming up."
—Jan. 27, 2000
Don't Tell Me To Shut Up!
"You're going to say, 'Shut up, O'Reilly! You—you're a sadist with your guests all the time!' "
—Nov. 21, 2002
Special Guest Invective by Sitcom Star ALF
ALF [to O'Reilly]: "They've got a talking Bill O'Reilly doll. It's only $19.95, but it's $50 worth of batteries. The thing doesn't shut up."
—June 25, 2002
Enough To Make O'Reilly Shut Up
"If Congress would pass that [air safety] bill, then I would shut up for a little while."
—Nov. 13, 2001
And He Wonders Why Daschle Won't Appear
"Believe me when I tell you The Factor goes out of its way to get Democrats on this broadcast. But Daschle has been and remains too frightened to appear. So with all due respect, senator, shut up."
—May 17, 2002
O'Reilly Delegates Authority to Sen. Evan Bayh
"If you see [Sen. Tom Daschle] for me, senator, tell him to shut up. For me. You can be nice."
—March 17, 2003
Scout's Honor
[To an atheist Eagle Scout, Darrell Lambert]: "I want to quote this—'On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and to my country and obey Scout law,' on and on and on and on. I mean, God's in the first 10 words. So why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn't have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn't you just shut up?"
—Oct. 30, 2002
Welcome to My Show To Talk About Sex. Now, Please Put a Cork in It.
"My thesis, you may know, is that nobody should ever talk about their sexuality in any—in any regard ever. You should not define yourself that way. It just makes life a lot rougher. So, therefore, I would probably say, if you're a gay celebrity, shut up."
—March 21, 2001
"I am in favor of having equal treatment for everyone. But I'm also in favor of having everybody in the military shut up about their sexuality. All right. Not discuss it, it's not germane. It's irrelevant."
—Dec. 20, 2000
"You can do whatever you want. Just shut up about it. Little kids don't need to know whether you're homosexual, heterosexual, a cross-dresser, whatever. Don't discuss it. That's reasonable."
—Sept. 28, 2000
"I don't want the Scout master to tell my boys if he's gay, if he's straight, if he's a bigamist, if he's anything. I don't think that has any place in Scouting, so therefore I don't think the Scouts are wrong in saying shut up. We just don't want to hear about this."
—Aug. 29, 2000
"Why didn't you just—why—why didn't you just not say anything? This—I never can get this for you guys, and I—and I don't mean to be arrogant or anything like—I just don't get it. Just shut up about it. Who cares what you do? That's what the Air Force is asking you to do. Shut up."
—June 8, 2000
"If I were Rosie O'Donnell and I didn't want to get married, I'd shut up. The same thing with Madonna. Have the kids if you—you know, obviously, they have money. They can support the kids. But I'd shut up."
—Dec. 14, 1999
"I'm asking you to shut up about sex."
—Sept. 23, 2002
O'Reilly: "I don't go running around telling everybody about my sex life, and I don't think you do either, do you?"
Hugh Downs: "No, you don't have to—"
O'Reilly: "So just shut up about it."
—July 2, 2001
Shut Up, Pinhead!
To Mike McGough of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial page, who accuses O'Reilly of exploiting a murder victim's sister who appeared on O'Reilly's show:
"Hey, Mike, shut up. I resent the fact that you said that we exploited this woman. We gave this woman a voice. That's something that you and your stupid newspaper would never do, you pinhead. You would never do that. "
—Nov. 13, 2002
A Viewer Protests the Treatment of McGough
"Paula Evans, Winston-Salem, N.C. [writes]: 'Bill, if you are so concerned about public figures being bad role models for children, please stop interrupting your guests and telling them to shut up!' "
"Well, the 'shut up' line has happened only once in six years, Ms. Evans, and that's because the editor from Pittsburgh was filibustering, after accusing me of exploiting the families of the murder victims. The no-spin zone is a tough place, and lies and unreasonable discourse will be stopped in their tracks."
—Nov. 15, 2002
Some people dig apoplectic hotheads, but then some people dig W's war and all the associated propaganda campaigns that go with it too. It seems that W and O'Reilly do seem to share a similar devotion to truth in the parallel universe sense of the word, anyway. |
