David Letterman, Bill O'Reilly

LOGIC VS EMOTION

Against O'Reilly, Letterman's In Over His Head






In a testy rematch of their previous late night bout, Bill O'Reilly and David Letterman duked it out over Iraq, President Bush and the upcoming elections. And once again, Letterman tried to use name- calling and emotional outbursts to win the argument, with no more success than the last time around.

For his part, O'Reilly remained calm, stuck to the facts and made his case that regardless of how one may have felt about the war in Iraq from the beginning, it makes no sense to exit now without a sensible plan. Letterman, however, could barely contain his unhinged inner rage, hurling more nasty insults at Bill.

Calling the FOX News Channel talker a "bonehead" and accusing him of utilizing "artificial facts", the Late Show host admitted he has no idea how to find the FOX News Channel on his dial and apparently has never seen The O'Reilly Factor. Bringing no facts to the table, Letterman made an emotional argument that based on the number of casualties, Americans shouldn't be in Iraq.

Dave also accused O'Reilly, Limbaugh and others of faking their stances, in what he called "horsing around".

Here's how the AP is covering the story today:

NEW YORK - David Letterman and Bill O'Reilly got into it last night about the war in Iraq on Letterman's late night show.

Letterman called the Fox commentator a "bonehead" and O'Reilly told Letterman to "stop it" when Letterman questioned whether the situation in Iraq is better now than it was before the U-S invaded in 2003.

O'Reilly told Letter- man that Saddam Hussein slaugh- tered hundreds of thousands of his people, so it's wrong to portray the United States as a bad country and President Bush as an evil liar.

Letterman shot back that O'Reilly was putting words in his mouth, "just the way you put artificial facts in your head!"

And after O'Reilly noted that people make mistakes in war, Letterman asked whether the way to get out of a mistake is to "stay there and kill as many Americans as we possibly can."

An edited, CBS- supplied clip is below, otherwise, Brent Baker at NewsBusters has links to the entire segment, here.




And here is their previous slugfest:





For both hosts, one might wonder why these somewhat bizarre match- ups are even occuring on Letterman's show. Both have much to gain, however: O'Reilly gets a chance to put his views out there and reach a very different audience just in time for upcoming sweeps, while Dave attracts a rare bit of publicity for his slowly fading late night program.

Letterman, however, ought to realize that his audience expects comedy, rather than anger. And if he really wants to enter the political arena, The Late Show is the wrong place to do it. In addition, Dave should treat guests with far more respect than he has given O'Reilly in these match- ups.

For his part, O'Reilly was smart to keep his cool, to the point of trying to diffuse tensions a bit with humor. Isn't that normally supposed to be Dave's job?

No doubt O'Reilly's friend Keith Olbermann has already watched this segment 50 times or more.

Olbermann image: Pete at IHillary

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