When I heard that Bill O’Reilly was a guest tonight, I was afraid that Dave was just going to lob softballs at him. After all, he’s no Al Franken or Keith Olbermann.
But in his own inimitable way, Dave really socked it to O’Reilly. They talked about the “Banning Christmas” nonsense, and Dave essentially pooh-poohed the whole business, saying he thought there was no threat, and that O’Reilly was just making it all up.
Then they got onto politics, and O’Reilly mentioned Cindy Sheehan, slightingly, of course. Dave asked him if he had ever lost a family member in armed conflict. O’Reilly said no, and Dave said, “So you can hardly speak for her can you?” Big applause.
The discussion went on a bit, and toward the end, Dave said, “I’m not smart enough to debate you point by point, but I have the feeling that about 60% of what you say is crap.”
It was just great. Thanks, Dave, for helping take this blowhard down another notch or two.
And I just became a Letterman fan. Well, I haven’t watched a network late show in years, but next time the Colbert Report is a repeat and I don’t feel like falling asleep/staring into space for awhile I’ll totally tune in.
This is just my theory but the last time O’ Reilly was on Letterman, he was promoting his book of ethics and morals for kids. From what I recall about the appearance, Dave went fairly easy on O’ Reilly. However, not long after that, O’ Reilly became embroiled in an embarassing sexual harassment suit (real good lesson for the kids there!). I think Dave didn’t want O’Reilly to totally get away with his bullshiat a second time.
There are a lot of people on both the left & right who ‘blowharder’ than O’Reilly. For the most part I find him to be fairly moderate.
I’ve been a big Letterman fan since his morning show in 1980 and Dave is the most apolitical man in show business. Ten years ago he had James Carvelle on and treated him much the same, basically laughing at some of the explanations he gave for things. Same for when Rush Limbaugh was on…
Kick ass! I stopped watching Letterman back in the eighties, but this sounded like it was worth checking out. Flipped over to CBS just in time to hear Dave say “We’ll be right back with Bill O’Reilly.”
What is particularly galling is that even today O’Reilly is sticking to his “War on Christmas” story. Has he no shame? It’s one thing to utter bollocks, get called on it, and then drop it.
It’s another thing to stubbornly keep repeating baseless crap. I’m sure he’s gotten plenty of mail filling him in on the “RED AND GREEN BANNED!” non-event, but he still characterizes it as “kids being told not to bring red and green” to the party. And by now somebody has to have told him that “Cold in the Night” lyric is from a Christmas play that is Christian enough to have been performed in Christian churches for the last twenty years without anyone accusing them of being less Christian. One example.
OMG! Churches are part of the conspiracy to take the Christ out of Christmas! Where does it end? I can trust only Bill O’Reilly.
I’m watching (well, listening. Can’t watch and type after all.) this right now. I like how Dave just blew him off about this whole “war on christmas” thing. The Cindy Sheehan bit just came up. Nice moment.
It’s good to see people playing hard ball with O’Reilly. He’s gotten away with his crap for too long.
I saw a clip of it. The thing is that Falafel can’t really do much when he’s not on his own show. He can’t cut people’s mics when he gets mad at them. Have you ever seen that showdown he had with Al Franken on CSpan. It was quite funny actually. But he’s also probably a bit afraid of Letterman. A lot of people watch him and he also has the reputation for being intimidating. I watched that, and it was nice to see Falafel knocked down a few pegs.
I just saw the interview here. When I saw that he’d be on I was thinking it was going to be like when Dave has any other “news” (although the crap O’Reily peddles can loosely fit into that I guess) talk about the events of the week whatever.
As soon as Dave replied back to the “erosion” of Christmas bullshit - that it’s nothing. I twigged and yeah watched it unfold, I guess we got an insight into some of Dave’s opinons on things, maybe there’s some truth behind the gags in the monolouges, not just taking the piss because it’s in the morning papers.
Longtime fan of Letterman, since channel 9 started to broadcast it into Australia way back in the early 90’s. Much rather his show over Leno’s anyday.
I loved the short bit between dickhead and Eric Bana (go aussie!) when they came back from the break, Dave to Paul “How did that go Paul?” Paul “Interesting television” Dave “Apparently during that, the cat dialled 911” (the nights running gag was a cat by a phone in the greenroom. trying to re enact what happened last week somewhere, the gag before dickhead was that the cat dialled for a dominos pizza)
All in all, great to see someone finally bringing this idiot into check. I guess I’m lucky coz whenever I flick on RepublicanTV (Foxnews) and see him being an ass I can simply dismiss it as “American shit, no affect on me” although there might be an aussie version of him pop up one of these days (heaven forbid)
I noticed that towards the end, shithead tried to take control, I’m thinking “mate, it’s not even your show and you’re trying to lecture the host?”
typical facist i guess…
Did O’Reily have his cheer squad email him trying to repair the damage to the ego that launched a thousand air strikes? Or was it on too late for the evangelical set?
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