Bill O’Reilly on Stephen Colbert on 60 Minutes
05-01-2006, the “Most Ridiculous Item of the Day”…
O’REILLY: Time now for “The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day”. A few letters on the “60 Minutes” profile on Stephen Colbert came in overnight.
Bill Mattern, who lives in Pennsylvania, said, “Bill, Morley Safer made you appear as a guy who says ‘shut up’ and cuts people’s microphones off all the time. I wonder how far back he went to dig that stuff up?” And Randy Watts from Virginia wrote, “Safer slammed ‘The Factor’ as full of half-truths.” Well, that he did, Mr. Watts. I saw the piece and was amused by it.
Colbert’s lampooning of cable pundits is fine with me. He’s not malicious.
Safer simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
We have some of the best fact checkers in the business on this program, and when we make a mistake we correct it. You know, I do three hours of commentary every day. Sometimes you’re going to make mistakes.
And Morley has an open invitation to come in here and back up his statements about half truths. All right? I don’t expect to see Mr. Safer.
Some of the old guard bitterly resent the success of “The Factor” and the FOX News Channel, and that might be ridiculous.
Finally, tonight the mail. It was all over the place this weekend.
Rick Lindsay, Brentwood, Tennessee: “Bill, you and your liberal propaganda has […]
This is hilarious for any number of reasons. To be fair, I’m not altogether sure 60 Minutes should be profiling entertainers, as they do. I winced once when they did a profile of the Car Guys — Click and Clack. Or that 60-something year old sex kitten actress whose name escapes me, largely because I could care less.