Giving in to his inner lech, Bill O'Reilly decides that we should find supermodel Heidi Klum's take on spoofing Tom Cruise in Risky Business for Guitar Hero really, really offensive. My gosh, she was wearing just a bra and panties for a while there. Not like anyone who has ever received endless mailings of Victoria's Secret hasn't seen that, Bill. Like you don't know.

Kotaku has the whole O'Reilly segment...where he posits that this might upset the children who are subjected to the ad while watching those wholesome Waltons on their tv show. Um, huh? The Waltons went off the air almost 30 years ago. And somehow Heidi Klum dancing is more traumatic than the continually running ads for erectile dysfunction? Dude, I know you like to style yourself as a "culture warrior" but seriously, pick your battles.

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Earlier this week on The O'Reilly Factor, the Papa Bear did what right-wingers constantly do when discussing hate crimes: he conflated them with ordinary crimes in a way that deliberately confuses the public regarding the nature of these crimes.

As you can see in this clip (or from the transcript), O'Reilly starts out by discussing the horrendous hate crime on Long Island wherein a group of six young white thugs went out looking for Latinos to harm for "sport", and they wound up killing an Ecuadoran immigrant named Marcelo Lucero.

But then he seems to connect this crime to a completely unrelated tragedy involving the deaths of two women at the hands of a drunken driver who happened to be an illegal immigrant.

How are they connected? O'Reilly explains:

So, three human beings are dead because of irresponsible conduct and failed government.

The New York Times and Newsday have covered the Lucero murder extensively, as they should. It is a horrible crime, and seven young men may pay a steep price for being violently stupid.

But the Times and Newsday have pretty much ignored the deaths of the two women. This is a pattern in America.

People killed by illegal aliens can expect little coverage from a media that wants amnesty for foreign nationals here illegally.

But in the end, it is the federal government that is truly responsible for the deaths, and for the entire illegal alien problem. ...

It would be nice to think that O'Reilly simply doesn't comprehend the difference between a hate crime and an ordinary crime. I've explained this many times:

Hate crimes are message crimes: They are intended to harm not just the immediate victim, but all people of that same class within the community. Their message is also irrevocable: they are "get out of town, nigger/Jew/queer" crimes.

That's why bias-crime laws are about imposing stiffer sentences on their perpetrators: they cause more real harm to the community. This principle -- greater harm brings stiffer punishment -- is a basic element of criminal law.

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Bill O'Reilly started off his TPM segment by being angered that Obama wants to close Guantanamo Bay and not use torture. "Where will he put those Gitmo guys." He feels the ACLU will sue him if they come to the US. BillO then asks what exactly is torture.

O'Reilly: Keeping a suspect awake, loud music, bad food? Will President Obama eliminate all stressful interrogation methods? If so, that will end most of the information flow from captured terrorists. Most of these guys are hard cases. They don't give up information easily.

Notice he never mentioned waterboarding at all and that's his favorite technique. I think the military knows how to get information without torturing detainees. I don't seem to remember BillO or his buddy Dick Morris bringing up Gitmo or McCain's stance on torture when they cheer-leaded for him during the general election. Nope. They were more interested in Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, but I do know that Bill is just looking out for the folks.

Here's McCain on Gitmo via his own 60 Minutes interview on CBS:

PELLEY: Would you close Guantanamo Bay?

MCCAIN: Yes. I would close Guantanamo Bay. And I would move those prisoners to Fort Leavenworth. And I would proceed with the tribunals.

PELLEY: Why? What's wrong with the way it was handled?

MCCAIN: Guantanamo Bay has become an image throughout the world which has hurt our reputation. Whether we deserve it or not, the reality is Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have harmed our reputation in the world, thereby harming our ability to win the psychological part of the war against radical Islamic extremism.

And in the same interview, even though McCain did vote that the CIA could use waterboarding, he talks about being against the use of torture.

PELLEY: There have been a lot of semantics over the last few years about what is torture, what isn't torture, whether American tortures prisoners.

MCCAIN: Yeah.

PELLEY: What would you bring to that as President?

MCCAIN: I would never allow any technique which would not be publicly known to be used. We are better than our enemies. We are morally superior. That's why we will win this struggle. And I am confident that we will

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Saddle up people. BillO and FOX News have "Only Just begun"

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My friends at MM made me this clip. I didn't have a chance to make it, but it's shocking. And Newt Gingrich wants to run for president ladies and gentlemen. This is an issue that America isknown for. It's called "FREEDOM." And it should be fought vigorously. Freedoms have never come easy in America. Women couldn't even vote until the 1920's and we all know about the civil rights movement.

Country Fair:

On the November 14 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, in reference to actions by individual protesters of Proposition 8, the recently passed California ballot initiative amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich stated

O'REILLY: OK, now, the culture war. I know you've been flying around the country, and you're doing stuff. In the last three or four days, this is really nasty stuff. I mean, you know, hyper -- we're gonna show you some of the video. A woman getting a cross smashed out of her hand. We had a church in Michigan invaded by gay activists. We're gonna show you the video on Monday of that -- we have exclusively. We had a guy in Sacramento fired from his job. We had boycotts called on restaurants.

I mean, it is getting out of control, very few days after the election. How do you assess that?

GINGRICH: Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank -- for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

Gingrich thinks gay marriage is a very dangerous threat to traditional religion. Can he tell me how they are dangerous? Just because he doesn't believe in it doesn't mean it will hurt anyone. This is ignorance. The right needs an issue to motivate their base, but this lack of freedom for the gay community actually hurts their lives on a daily basis where as in the religious community it hurts no one. Are they honestly afraid that their kids will go gay or something? I know what James Dobson thinks:

They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth."

That is pure lunacy as we know. All gays want to do is part of that institution and have the same rights as all Americans do.

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See? They really do hate America.

In one of their first joint appearances as the new Fox wingnut tag-team event, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck sputter in outrage about William Ayers' interview on Good Morning America:

O'Reilly: So here's my question. I know I made a big deal out of it, I know you talked about it on your radio program, got a lot of calls on it, people were angry. But when I go out on the street and I say, "William Ayers, does that bother you?" Just as many Americans say, "No, I don't care." What is that mentality when they don't care about a guy like this? What does that tell you?

Beck: Cakes and circuses and too many dumb people. I mean, we should thin out the herd, you know what I mean?

Um -- I can't -- I can't get my arms around the country that can listen to that and say, 'Oh, well he's saying it's not violent.' And he's on GMA promoting a book about non-violent acts, and comparing what we're going through now with the Vietnam War. He is pushing a book that is not only promoting this 'non-violent act' [air quotes] of blowing things up if you disagree with the government, and on top of that, the man is a university professor, he is a teacher! He is organizing people and telling them what we should teach our kids!

This is a total outrage, Bill. There is a disconnect in America. We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance, and I think we're at a crossroads here. We're still about here [points to spot on hand], where the roads are just starting to split, but pretty soon, this side and this side are not gonna understand each other at all, because we're living in different universes.

Yes, we are indeed, Glenn. And yours is known as Planet Bizarro:

At any rate, if this is the quality of discourse we're going to get from these two, I think I'll just go rent the DVD:

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Papa Bear was on The Daily Show last night, and it made for some rich viewing:

Stewart: I keep watching on your network, everyone is saying, Look, this is a center-right country, and he'd better govern that way.

And uh -- How is this a center-right country? Because it seems to me that it is not.

O'Reilly: Look, the problem is you never leave New York City. OK? That's No. 1.

Stewart: I'm a standup comic.

O'Reilly: Yeah, but if you're Jon Stewart, and you go to Alabama you're going to get killed. You can't go where these center-right people are. Because they'll stone you to death.

Hmmm. What passes for the "center right" part of the country for most of us -- say, suburban Milwaukee or rural Montana -- would be unlikely to react violently to a Jon Stewart. They might ignore him or think him rude, but most likely it would be civil and polite.

In fact, I happened to be in Wasilla, Alaska -- Sarah Palin's hometown -- when a crew from The Daily Show was there filming a segment on the town. No one was about to hurl stones at them. In fact, most of them seemed pretty eager to belly up to the table with Jason Jones inside the Mug Shot Saloon to be interviewed on national TV.

Now, I'm sure there are some quarters of the country where a city guy like Stewart might be wise to go well-armed and guarded -- probably some of them in places like Alabama. But to nearly everyone else in the country, these are the far right corners of the nation.

And it's pretty telling that O'Reilly thinks that's the center.

Later on, O'Reilly tells Stewart:

You should get out and meet some of the folks. They're not bad people.

That's true, except for that part about wanting to kill you.

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The wingnuts and their Master, Bill O'Reilly, have been waiting for the day when those darned minorities would stop picking on white people and start turning on each other. Which is why they're selling the Prop 8 outcome as the product of the black vote.

Stephen Colbert, of course, was out giving this line of argument his own special juice last night, beginning with the Papa Bear clip in question:

O'Reilly: Here is really the crux of this issue, ladies -- and gentlemen watching tonight: Why were they outside of Warren's church? It was the black vote that voted down gay marriage. Why weren't they in front of the black church?

Colbert: Yes! There wasn't one protester outside the First National Church of Black!

All Rick Warren did, all Pastor Warren did was endorse the ban to tens of thousands of his church members. We all know who voted for the ban!

[Plays news clips describing 70 percent of the black vote favoring Prop 8.]

Colbert: Gays should protest black people! The new conflict is gays vs. blacks, and blacks vs. gays. And black gays vs. themselves. It's gonna be great.

I've been saying for years these PC groups would turn on each other -- although I had my heart set on Eskimos vs. the handicapped.

Be sure to check out Dan Savage's followup exchange with Colbert, including the classic line:

"Soaking is up what you do immediately after saddlebacking."

Even Colbert had some difficulty maintaining the poker face on that one.

[H/t to Heather for the video.]

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From the Nov. 10 airing of The O'Reilly Factor. Bill-O just can't understand why there are no protests at the black churches. Never mind who paid the money to roll out the ads supporting Prop 8 and who is preaching hatred of gays from the pulpit, Bill thinks it's out of pure political correctness that there aren't protests at black churches going on. I think Bill would just like to see protests at black churches.

While doing some research on O'Reilly lying about not knowing how to define the 'Bush Doctrine post,' I came across this little nugget on IMDB's website from a 2004 episode with Hans Blix.

Keith sits down with John Cleese to talk about the Presidential race, and John also shares a poem he's written.

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Here's another edition of the BillO Comedy Hour. O'Reilly is very worried that he's one of the only people who will be looking out for the folks if Obama and the Democrats win a strong majority in Congress. This is the talking point that Bill and Newt have been pushing: 'Be afraid of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, so don't vote for the Democrats,' even though Republican/Conservative rule has devastated our country and Iraq.

(rough transcript)

O'Reilly:...is, when you have a collision, say Obama wins the election of a committed left Congress and a committed left President with a committed left media, they all then meld together. I don't think this is healthy for the country. I mean, you're going to have a media that's very sympathetic to whatever Congress and the President does no matter what it is. And you're going to have very few voices, talk radio, this network, some people in dissent. I'm getting a little uneasy here, Juan.

Williams: Well, hold on. You had a Republican President, you had a Republican House and Republican Senate for most of the Bush administration...

O'Reilly: And a liberal media.

Williams: Well, but you know what, most of the media was intimidated, remember the whole idea was that this is a right-of-center country and this is a man in power. There's always deference showed to the President...

O'Reilly: It looks like the stars are aligned. {snip} But Mary Katherine, the collusion of a far left Congress to a far left media to a far left media being sympathetic to them makes me a little uneasy because there's no check and balance there, it all goes out the window. The media is supposed to be the check and balance on the Congress and there isn't any check anymore. They are actively rooting and promoting and that's what we have.

I didn't hear Bill complain when the media rolled over for Bush, allowing him to lie us into war and forgo every single campaign promise he made. You remember his "Compassionate Conservative" routine? And has Bill ever heard of the Blue Dogs? Of course everything Bill says is a complete lie in this clip, but we're used to that here at C&L. But if what O'Reilly says was actually true and the Democratic Party does achieve a solid majority after Nov. 4th then let me break down his argument.

1. Talk Radio: Rush Limbaugh and his followers will attack every single policy Obama tries to put forth that will try to help rescue this nation from the complete disaster that has been caused by Conservatism.

2. FOX News: Is an extension of right wing talk radio and so will also try to disrupt every policy decision Obama makes. And they will use every smear available to them.

3. Liberal media: Typical Conservative talking point that has been successful in intimidating the press from doing their job whenever it benefits Republicans.

4. When has O'Reilly ever worried about checks and balances?

But let's forget that. Why would Bill and the media be in "dissent" over Obama? Aren't they supposed to be covering the news as it happens? Being a watchdog of the government doesn't mean that the press has to disagree with their policy decisions from the outset, it means an eye is kept on them.

And so ends another edition of the Bill O'Reilly Comedy hour. FOX shouldn't feel too bad that The Half Hour News Hour failed so miserably. They already have a comedy show that's been running for a very long time now.

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So Bill O'Reilly is finally confronted with the reality that Daily Kos is nothing like a neo-Nazi hate site.

Give BillO credit: He decided to air a segment on the anti-Obama hate sites that can be found on the Web. He had on Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter, who reported to O'Reilly that the virulent hatred of Obama found at neo-Nazi and white-supremacist websites was something truly stomach-churning.

At the height of the discussion he asks:

O'Reilly: OK, now, the Kos is a hate site on the left, uh, how would these neo-Nazi things compare to that?

Carpenter: Ah, these are ... it's, it's much worse than Kos.

O'Reilly: Yeah?

Carpenter: Because it's filled with the worst slurs you could think of against a black person. You know, they talk about aborting black children. The degree of casualness to which it's done is most alarming. I mean, I was frightened in there. I mean there's literature, you know, different kinds of bombs --

O'Reilly: Anything else? Sure. I mean, these are people like Tim McVeigh, who blow -- you know, those people --

Carpenter: Right.

Right. Those whose Name Must Not Be Spoken. And so we quickly move on ...

Except that this kind of blows a hole in O'Reilly's horseshit claim that Kos is a "hate site" just like the Nazis. As we noted at the time, there's a wee problem with this thesis: what real Nazi/hate sites are like.

Ah, but instead we quickly move on to even more specious crap ...

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Bill O'Reilly lied on Letterman the other night as he was protecting Sarah Palin and defending her from the "gotcha" questions by Charlie Gibson. Here's what O'Reilly said.

"The Bush Doctrine? Remember that, when Charlie Gibson went, 'what's the Bush doctrine'? You got the nose with glasses on and all that. I'm sitting at home going 'what Bush Doctrine'? Is that the doctrine where I go to Crawford Texas five times a year? What Bush Doctrine is that? I don't know what that is. That was just ridiculous. It's all gotcha gotcha gotcha."

Now let's get the evidence, Many thanks to the tipsters from the C&L inbox. From his Talking Points segment on Tuesday, March 16, 2004: HAPPY DAYS FOR AL QAEDA

This Spanish election is very bad news for the U.S., which continues to be seen as a villain throughout much of the world. The new Spanish government will not be as supportive as the previous one.

Al Qaeda loves that. Its goal is to isolate America. Many people in Europe are Socialists, as you know. They believe that capitalist America is worse than Al Qaeda. And that crazy view has taken deep root...So the U.S. cannot count on much support from Europe. And that puts President Bush in a difficult position. The Bush Doctrine is to take the fight to the terrorists. Now with the capitulation of Spain, America has one less fighting partner.

And from this Factor Interview with Hans Blix via IMDB:

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Sarah Palin embarrassed herself pretty badly when she practically admitted on national television (in her first serious interview) that she had no clue what the Bush Doctrine was. Last night on the Late Show with David Letterman, BillO showed that he's just as brain dead as the Alaska Governor. The only difference is that he spent much of the last eight years actually defending the overarching premise of Bush's foreign policy.

"The Bush Doctrine? Remember that, when Charlie Gibson went, 'what's the Bush doctrine'? You got the nose with glasses on and all that. I'm sitting at home going 'what Bush Doctrine'? Is that the doctrine where I go to Crawford Texas five times a year? What Bush Doctrine is that? I don't know what that is. That was just ridiculous. It's all gotcha gotcha gotcha."

Is he serious? I could care less if Bill O'Reilly knows what the Bush doctrine is, even if he has been defending it for years now. But I certainly expect someone who could easily be the President in three months to have an opinion on whether or not it's right for the United States to attack countries that we think may present a threat to us sometime in the future. Call me an elitist, but things like that matter.

October 22, 2008 News Corp