O’Reilly/Colbert: Reactions 6…
MSNBC contributor Andy Dehnart was underwhelmed…
The long-awaited meetings between Bill O’Reilly and Stephen Colbert were not epic, televised confrontations that resulted in verbal worldplay. Nor did their appearances result in someone coming across as a winner and the other as the loser.
That’s because, when each guested on the other’s program Thursday night, Stephen Colbert stayed in character, and Bill O’Reilly remained out of character. Colbert, as usual, played the part of an irrational, extremely conservative talk show host, while O’Reilly atypically softballed his guest and played along.
Had they both stayed true to who they are on their own shows, but not when they appeared as a guest on the other’s program, we might have actually learned something. Instead, the two appearances came across mostly as a lark, a promotional stunt designed to help both hosts and hurt neither.
I disagree with your analysis of the appearances. I felt O’ Reilly was outdone on both shows due to lack of preparation. Colbert stayed in character which foiled any “spin” Bill had in mind, including basically only anti-french sentiment and bad pot jokes. The staff at fox news could be heard laughing at parts of the interview. When O’ Reilly made it to the Colbert report his night became even worse, I don’t think he had any idea what he was getting into. Colbert had an almost unending supply of jokes leading up to the interview, which only got edgier and more funny with a early “sexual harrassment” joke, and the 30% off sticker on Culture Warrior. O’ Reilly only continued his assault on nbc and made a borderline racist remark about them and their staff. Colbert wins for being more amusing, better prepared, and mainly just more intelligent entertainment.
Comment by Nathan — January 19, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
Nathan… you are just parroting back what the other reviews said. Did you even watch the interviews? O’Reilly’s night didn’t get worse… all these shows are pre-taped… and based on the fact that they were showing commercials for the Colbert Report that featured Bill in it days before the interview aired… I’m pretty sure this didn’t happen “later on” as it appeared. There’s a lot of projecting going on after these clips… Lots of people manufacturing things that ‘might-possibly been the subtext of what they were hinting at’ but weren’t actually there…
I guess the bottom line is if you hated O’Reilly going into this, you were going to hate him coming out of it… and nothing he’s going to do is ever going to change that.
With that said… I found this review (surprisingly from MSNBC) the most fair thus far. Didn’t try to bend the truth to the writer’s will, just reported what actually happened.
Comment by ImNotBlue — January 19, 2007 @ 4:58 pm
According to NewYork Daily News dated January 18th this was sequence of events:
“Colbert will tape his interview - presumably in character - with O’Reilly around 6 p.m. tonight and O’Reilly will tape Colbert’s show afterward.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/489599p-412267c.html
Comment by myview — January 19, 2007 @ 9:24 pm