StreetSheet / Dec Edition / Ferrari Comedy Col: bin Reilly?

[EFerrari]

OSAMA BIN REILLY CALLS TERROR STRIKE ON SAN FRANCISCO – BUT, IN A FUNNY WAY!

"And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead." – Bill O’ Reilly 11/8/2002

Has Bill O’Reilly joined Al Qaeda or does he just hate the holidays? In either case, he should move to a cave in Afghanistan. It’s quieter there. Of course, Al Qaeda would never take him because he’s too crazy even for them. He also doesn’t tape very well either -- but that can be fixed, post production.

After my wife wrote him a letter of protest (For O’Reilly, Only Two Words: Flight Ninety-Three), O’Reilly spent nine minutes of his next show (11/14/05) defending his remarks as a “satirical riff”.

Just for your reference, this is satire:

“I’ve only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.” – Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest."

This is not satire: “I anchored a show called Inside Edition which has won a Peabody Award.” – Bill O’ Reilly. (Actually, this show won a Polk Award one year after Mr. O’Reilly left the show. Definitely not satire.)

Bill is not a satirist, although he once SUED a satirist, does that count? He sued Al Franken, for putting his picture on the cover of his book Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Of course, Bill lost the lawsuit and helped Franken’s book become a huge bestseller.

Let’s look at the satire of Bill bin Reilly as compiled by Al Franken:

Referring to the Koran: “I don’t know what this serves to take a look at our enemy’s religion…I wouldn’t have read Mein Kampf either.”

(But, "My Pet Goat" – oh, just forget it.)

“Somebody calls you a liar to your face, you don’t laugh that off. In the Old West that would have got you shot…I would have put a bullet right through his head.”

(Got it. Put helmets on my shopping list. Request an extra falafel patrol. Check.)

“58 percent of single-mom homes are on welfare.” ( Bzzzzzzzzzzt!!!! Sorry, Mr. bin Reilly, that is incorrect by about a factor of four.)

The U.S. gives “far and away more money to foreign countries to anyone…nobody else even comes close.” (The U.S. gives a smaller fraction of its gross national product than any other developed country. I see a pattern here.)

“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR, gets a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money.” (It was $377.8 million that year. But maybe he meant a brazilian!)

He claims he registered independent. (He registered Republican. That must be the Mother of All hot air exhausting big tents . . .)

“We’ve never had to retract a story here on The Factor.” (Oops! Gotcha.)

He’s been doing this stuff every day for years, but no one has ever before asked Al Qaeda to strike an American city. For being an “anti-military” town, yet. San Francisco?

Oh really, bin Reilly? Tell that to the Navy. Tell it to our 1400 military families – quick, so they can relocate now!

You want al Qaeda to bomb Coit Tower? (Pssst! Dude! That’s a monument to our other uniformed guys, THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.)

You’ve pretty much had it in this town when you mess with the best fire department in the world, Bill. Ask Ahnold, he’ll tell ya – if he pauses long enough in his flight back home, wherever his home might possibly be at this point. Austria won’t have him. Good luck, Grope.

My wife, who has a habit of getting upset when you insult our troops, our fire department AND the victims of 9/11, started a “No Air For O’Reilly” campaign that went nationwide. Bill’s response? “In California, one lady was very upset.” Then he announced that anyone who complained to his sponsors (we did) or the FCC (we did) would have their names posted on his web site. So much for California ladies in O’Reilly world! But we thought, if he wants to start an enemies list, he’s going to need the whole San Francisco phone book just for starters. We sent him one, least we could do. This man needs help. Then we asked a few thousand of our friends to help him. What are good friends for? Community service at its finest.

O’Really bin Billy can’t take time off from his hard work to actually keep his word, so as of today, no Enemies List! (And, he is still on the air, in San Francisco, on KNEW-AM. Thank you, Clear Channel!) Our military families, our 48 fire stations, not to mention our families of Flight 93, are probably not thrilled about this.

I’m disappointed. And bet, his lawyers (the guys that taught him the word “satire” at $500 bucks an hour) will never let him post the names, let alone the photographs of the hordes of objectors to his hate speech, to his website. For one thing, it will cost way too much in bandwidth. It’s cheaper to just repeat it over and over as if it meant something flowing out of his mouth. What a kidder, that O’Reilly!

Please join us in getting O’Reilly off the air before somebody listens to him and more innocent heads explode. Or, just mail him your White pages. When was the last time you did anything for twenty minutes that cost under $5.00 that felt so good? Stop! That’s too much information. This is the Season of Giving so, mail them here:

The Radio Factor c/o FOX NEWS
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Attn: O’Reilly’s Enemies List.

Free speech should be free. Terrorist attacks, not so much.

In grateful memory of Mark Bingham and especially, for Chris

Doug and Beth Ferrari