Friday, October 15, 2010

Olbermann: O’Reilly ‘just another Fox News bigot’

By David Edwards

It wouldn't have been hard to predict who who would top Keith Olbermann's 'World's worst' list Thursday night.

Bill O'Reilly may have become Thursday's most talked about story after his comments caused two hosts of ABC's The View to walk off the set.

Over a year ago, an alleged "truce" was forced upon both O'Reilly and Olbermann after their networks said their bickering was bad for business. "It was time to grow up," an official at one of the networks told The New York Times.

But the altercation on ABC's popular daytime show gave Olbermann just the excuse he needed to take aim at O'Reilly. The Associated Press detailed the walk off.

Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the stage of "The View" during an argument with Bill O'Reilly over the proposed Islamic center near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The women objected to the Fox News Channel host saying that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

Barbara Walters criticized her co-hosts for walking off stage during the live show. But she said O'Reilly should make the distinction that extremists committed the terrorist act.

Behar and Goldberg returned after O'Reilly said that "if anyone felt that I was demeaning all Muslims, I apologize."

Olbermann, who has a longstanding feud with O'Reilly, couldn't let the opportunity pass without using his "Worst Person in the World" segment to call out the Fox News host.

"Lost in that, of course, is that fact that Bill O. without the benefit of a script revealed himself to be just another Fox News bigot and Islamophobe," explained Olbermann.

"It's like asking who used to be the cleverist juvenile delinquent in a school. Now he's just parroting Gretchen Carlson and Glenn Beck over there," said Olbermann. "It's sad."

But some think that O'Reilly may have actually come out on the winning end of the exchange.

"[W]hen Behar and Goldberg literally walk out of an interview with O'Reilly... doesn't O'Reilly win?" asked Glenn Davis at Mediatite.

Behar used her platform on Headline News later that evening to elaborate on the controversy.

US Magazine noted:

On her Headline News show Thursday night, Behar continued her O'Reilly rant, stating that he had a "pinhead moment."

She said she was "really angry ... I thought he was saying something that I construe as hate speech, frankly."

To say Muslims were responsible for 9/11, "to lump an entire group like that," is wrong, she said.

Behar told PopEater, "He's an idiot!"

O'Reilly was nearly triumphant when he spoke about it on his Fox News show that night.

"I loved that exposition today," he said.

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Oct. 14, 2010.

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