Bill O’Reilly Starts a Feud with Jon Stewart

Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:08 pm

On his FNC show The O’Reilly Factor last night, host Bill O’Reilly went after Jon Stewart when The Daily Show host used a segment Wednesday night to illustrate FNC’s ever changing opinion of protesters to make the claim that FNC has gone liberal. This joke set O’Reilly on the attack as he went on to claim that Stewart was playing to his liberal audience.

Here is the original The Daily Show video:

Here is the video from O’Reilly:

O’Reilly said, “I like Jon Stewart. He’s a clever guy usually not mean spirited, and puts on an entertaining program, but last night Stewart went off the rails, deriding Fox News for its coverage of the healthcare controversy, so I your humble correspondent, feel it necessary this evening to set Stewart straight. Let’s begin with the set up, Stewart told his viewers that Fox News has become liberal because we defend legitimate protesters on the heathcare front.”

O’Reilly claimed that he was taken out of context by Stewart. He continued, “But to be fair Jon, you’re a satirist, you have the license to distort, but everyone should know what you are doing and why, 45% of The Daily Show audience is liberal, according to a Pew Research study. The biggest liberal percentage on TV in that study, so in order to retain his viewers Stewart has to play to them.”

O’Reilly then went on to take Stewart out of context on The Daily Show saying that he gets paid to cheap shot people. O’Reilly summed up his view of Stewart, “He continues to dance down the liberal yellow brick road, mocking folks who might call out far left orthodoxy, and actually protest a liberal president’s policy. Again, I like Stewart, but some young people actually believe he’s presenting an accurate picture of the country on his program, and that is frightening.”

It is ironic that Bill O’Reilly would complain about being taken out of context when he makes his living showing edited clips that take people out of context. I guess Bill-O only defends legitimate protesters, which he considers to be anyone who protests against Obama. It is no big secret that Stewart’s audience is young, and younger people tend to be more liberal, so O’Reilly is exactly breaking any news about Stewart’s audience.

Notice how O’Reilly goes back to the standard argument against Stewart that his audience is young and misinformed. If they would only watch networks like FNC, or listen to Rush, they would really know what is going on in America. What really ticked O’Reilly off is that Stewart showed what a hypocrite he really is, and Bill O’Reilly can’t stand being confronted with his own hypocrisy.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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