I know, I know. This isn't exactly surprising. You might have heard that Bill O'Reilly claimed recently that the FBI had visited him to tell him he was on an Al Qaeda hit list. I laughed when I heard it, knowing it was probably a bunch of crap. Turns out it was, according to Radar Online.
But the reaction from some of his colleagues sounds more like disbelief. "I've never heard that before," says a correspondent for Fox News, who added that neither he nor anyone he's spoken to at the network has been warned by the FBI. "I do know the government has warned Fox about threats in the past, but I don't think they involved specific people."
A high-level exec at another cable news channel was less circumspect. "That sounds like absolute bullshit to me--it's typical O'Reilly," he says. "We've never received any similar warnings from the FBI or any other government agency, and we've done plenty of reporting to piss off Bin Laden."
Better yet, what does the FBI have to say about it:
A skeptical federal law enforcement official told Radar this morning: "I'm not aware of any FBI agents warning anyone at Fox News of their presence on any list....For that matter, I'm not aware of any Al Qaeda hit list targeting journalists. Agents from the D.C. field office, FBI headquarters, and a hostage negotiator went to Fox's offices in New York last month to advise them specifically on the Gaza kidnapping [of Fox employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig]. But they only talked to management, they didn't talk to any individual journalists."Spokepeople at CBS News and ABC News also said their networks had not received warnings. Although a spokesman for the FBI did not immediately return calls, an official at the agency's New York City office said she had never heard of the bureau issuing the caveat. "I'm not aware of that," she said.
And best of all, here's what a Fox spokesperson had to say:
Asked about O'Reilly's claim, Fox News' reaction was equally confounding. Media relations director Leah Yoon repeatedly insisted the network had "nothing to say," because O'Reilly's interview is being aired on ABC.
"We shouldn't be shouldering the burden of something he said on someone else's network," she said.
LOL. Sorry lady, you hired him, you're stuck with him. And his falafel.
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His paranoia/megalomania has metastasized. Cool.
What about his loofah?
But the amazing thing is that in the interview they show his house, his private dock and other details about where he lives!
A little cognitive dissonance there, I guess.
JON STEWART TARGETED BY AL QUIDA!
Jon Stewart called him out on this last night... by reminding us that Al Quida has pretty much threatened ALL Americans...
Of course not, do they think we're stupid? We all know that ABC, NBC, and CBS hate American and are allied with the terrorists!
About the only terrorist group I know of that has targeted O'Reilly is the christianist Army of God. Scroll down the page and see his pict under talk show hosts (right next to Larry King). http://www.christiangallery.com/SEA.htm
WARNING that site is not only obtuse and unhinged, it contains graphic christianist jihadi-porn.
About the only terrorist group I know of that has targeted O'Reilly is the christianist Army of God.
After all the hard and dangerous work he did protecting Baby Jesus against all those evil store clerks wishing us "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas?" How totally ungrateful of them.
That's where appeasing terrorists gets you...
Maybe he just misheard someone saying he was on the Al Franken hit list and his paranoia got carried away.
jpf-
For O'Reilly, I doubt there's much distinction between Al Franken and Al Qaeda.
But the amazing thing is that in the interview they show his house, his private dock and other details about where he lives!
But isn't he a "cloth-coat guy", like Tom Delay???