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If you thought, after watching the two segments of Jon Stewart's interview with Bill O'Reilly this week, that Stewart landed some telling observations, but he seemed to pull his punches a bit -- or at least they seemed to have been pulled for him -- you were right.

If you also noticed, as I did while making the clip, that the segments were pretty hamhandedly edited -- the continuity, especially in terms of Stewart's demeanor, was jarring -- it turns out you were also right.

Fox actually put the entire, unedited version of the interview up on its site, and the difference is jaw-dropping.

John Cook at Gawker (with the help of a couple of interns) got ahold of the full interview first, and provides a nice dissection that you should read (and watch) in full.

We've clipped some of the highlights for our own video, above.

If nothing else, the unedited video will be long remembered for the following quip:

I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it's the same thing: "I'm not saying your mother's a whore. I'm just saying she has sex for money. With people." [F]ox News used to be all about, you don't criticize a president during wartime. It's unacceptable, it's treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, "Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country."

Though I also thought this exchange was perhaps the most telling:

Stewart: But let's go into this. Because all I hear on your network is, this guy is -- it's tyranny, and socialism.

O'Reilly: That's what he believes.

Stewart: So, how is Barack Obama a socialist? As far as I can see, the majority of the billions of dollars he's given, he's given to banks. So if he is a socialist, he's dyslexic! Because when you redistribute the wealth, it's supposed to be going to --

O'Reilly: But he does believe in redistribution of income.

Stewart: Well, he's redistributed it to the banks.

O'Reilly: And that is a socialist tenet -- no, he's redistributing it --

Stewart: He's going up. He's dyslexic! It's supposed to be coming down!

O'Reilly: He -- Look. If you don't know that the Obama administration is redistributing income, then I'm gonna have to haul your program away from you. Get you off the air.

Stewart: Let me ask you: What is different about his redistribution of income and all other presidents -- he wants to raise the marginal tax rate back to where it was during the Clinton era. Was Clinton a socialist?

O'Reilly: He has promoted a variety of programs, OK, that --

Stewart: We already have Medicare, right? We have Medicaid. We have Social Security. Are we a socialist country? Do you want to get rid of those three?

O'Reilly: No.

Stewart: So are we a socialist country?

O'Reilly: But I want to moderate them so we don't go bankrupt.

Stewart: OK, but that's different. Now you're talking about fiscal responsibility.

O'Reilly: In a socialist country, the government pays for all of these entitlements -- the Obama administration is down that path.

Stewart: Who pays for Medicare? Who pays for Medicaid?

O'Reilly: The government pays for it.

Stewart: So now we're socialist.

O'Reilly: But now we're on Medicaid and Medicare with steroids, with the new health care bill. That's steroids!

Stewart: Once again, this is like the old joke. "Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?" "No." "Would you sleep with me for a million?" "OK." So now we know what you are, you're just negotiating price. For you guys to stand up --

O'Reilly: Of course, that's the degree of anybody when you describe socialism. There are little socialistic programs and giant socialist programs. OK? And some people believe that Obama is on the huge government creation -- the government dominance. And you yourself said it! You yourself said it! He wants more regulation, he wants to create things, he wants big government.

Stewart: But he's given back so much executive power!

O'Reilly: What?

Stewart: Executive power!

O'Reilly: He hasn't given back anything. He just hasn't handled the Congress. He doesn't know how to handle them yet. That's inexperience. Now --

Stewart: So he's not a tyrant. Because if he's a tyrant, then he's pretty lame for a tyrant.

O'Reilly: I don't object --

Stewart: How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture? Very few.

OK, OK. So it wasn't a literal evisceration. Stewart did not unzip O'Reilly from scrote to sternum and empty out his intestines. We understand that he's a tad sensitive about how his takedowns are described these days.

Still, you can sure see why O'Reilly's producers edited this stuff out. Lord knows the regular septuagenarian Bold/Fresh audience would have fainted dead away.

For anyone that would like to watch the entire video, Fox News actually has it posted at their site. I know we'll be doing more here at C&L with just how much of this ended up on the chopping block.

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From The O'Reilly Factor, the second half of Jon Stewart's interview with Bill O'Reilly. Topics ranged from global warming, to Iran, to terrorism trials, to whether we should close Guantanamo Bay to Sarah Palin. Stewart didn't do ClusterFox any favors with this half of the interview any more than he did the first half Bill-O aired.

Markos Moulitsas joins Keith Olbermann to defend his Daily KOS/Research 2000 poll against the attacks of Bill O'Reilly. As Markos and Keith note apparently Bill-O and his buddies at ClusterFox aren't too happy about having a mirror put up to their face.

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Bill O'Reilly was all worked up last night on his Fox News show about that DailyKos poll revealing the Republican base for the collection of nutcases that it's fast becoming -- thanks in no small part to Fox News.

He launched into a vicious attack on not just DailyKos, but the rest of the liberal blogosphere as well, comparing them to the Birthers:

Apparently the leader of the Kos brigade is writing a book comparing Republicans and conservatives to the Taliban, and so this poll was designed to back up his insane point of view.

The survey says 39 percent of self-identified Republicans believe President Obama should be impeached. Sixty-three percent believe he is a socialist. Only 42 percent of GOPers think the president was actually born in the United States. And 31 percent believe he hates white people.

Now, if you believe that poll, you also believe Nancy Pelosi once dated Dick Cheney. The poll is a fraud, as is the Web site. But what is serious is the hatred that ideological Internet nuts continue to spew out there, and they have enablers on TV and radio, as we all know.

In fact, President Obama himself is very annoyed by the continuing intrusion that cable news has upon his administration. On Wednesday, he said this while addressing Democratic senators:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, your, you know, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Now, "Talking Points" understands the president's pique, but when you consider that the mainstream media has been very friendly to Mr. Obama, his concern about cable TV news rings somewhat hollow. I mean, just about every major urban newspaper in America loves the president, so I don't know why he's so annoyed that there are few verbal snipers on the tube.

What Mr. Obama should be concerned about is the growing acceptance of lies by some Americans on both the left and the right. For example, by investigating the birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers in August of 1961, "The Factor" has proven that Barack Obama was indeed born in America. It would have been impossible for anyone to get bogus birth announcements into two newspapers. And why would anyone bother unless they knew baby Barack would someday become President Barack? The birther deal is just madness.

On the left, we already told you about the crazy Kos people, but somehow folks like Arianna Huffington are now considered legitimate news sources. That's what the president should be worried about.

It is now very easy to demonize anyone in America, to slander and libel them all day long. There's no question the president has been treated unfairly in some precincts, but the garbage flows both ways, and Mr. Obama should point that out.

That's right, it's not right-wing kookery that Obama should be concerned about -- it's the liberal blogosphere.

Of course, O'Reilly neglects to provide any examples in which the liberal blogs, either DailyKos or HuffingtonPost or for that matter any of the rest of us on the "far left", have actually traded in bizarre conspiracy theories or provably false information. Indeed, what we've all tended to be preoccupied with is the provably false information and bizarre conspiracy theories being peddled on Fox News.

So then he brought on Karl Rove to agree with him:

O'Reilly: Now, the DailyKos -- it's interesting, it's not a real power in America but it does get picked up by powerful people, which is usually the way this game works. These far-out websites on the left, and on the right, a little bit, but not so much, uh, filter their little garbage into the New York Times and other people and then it gets mainstreamed out.

They are presenting a picture of the Republican Party as a bunch of extreme loons. You know, they want Obama impeached, they think he's not born here, or that he's a racist, he hates white people. You know, what I'm trying to get at it is this:

There's no doubt there's an extreme element of the Republican Party in the conservative movement. There's no doubt. They're there. But how much do you think that is?

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Tackling Bill O'Reilly on his home turf is never easy, yet Jon Stewart more than held his own last night.

The L.A. Times has more:

But most of all, Stewart used his second appearance ever on "The O'Reilly Factor" to levy a robust critique of Fox News and its coverage of President Obama.

"Here's what Fox has done, through their cyclonic perpetual emotional machine that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: They have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao," the comedian told his host.

"I think some people do that, but most people don't," O'Reilly responded, calling it "the narrative of a couple of guys."

That is, of course, a whole lotta hooey, as Stewart himself has ably limned.

You could tell that O'Reilly was on the defensive: He resorted to a cheap physical-intimidation tactic, shoving his finger at Stewart over the fact that Stewart made fun of Fox for cutting away from President Obama's tete-a-tete with the GOP last week. Stewart had to explain to him that he made fun of Fox because it was funny, not because he had anything against Fox.

Funny that BillO didn't bother to bring up the time that Stewart totally pwned Sean Hannity for showing fake footage. Guess it musta slipped his mind.

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It's been amusing watching Glenn Beck twist and squirm and try to explain what he meant last October when he proclaimed that President Obama was flying the American airplane right into the trees, "taking you to a place to be slaughtered."

After Arianna Huffington raised the matter with Fox Chief Roger Ailes this weekend -- and then explored it in some detail with Keith Olbermann -- Beck has been scurrying about coming up with a variety of shifting rationales for what he was saying.

First, he said, "I don't know if I've ever used the word 'slaughtered'." Then, upon discovering that he had indeed used it, still tried to claim he "had never used it on the air," but was only referring to SEIU's Andy Stern. Finally, he settled on the claim that he wasn't speaking "literally" about "slaughter," he was talking about, um, the economy! Yeah, that's the ticket!

That was the rationale he followed yesterday on his Fox News show, smirking and acting as though his rationale would reveal his critics for the fools they were. Of course, what you can really see is what a fool anyone who believes Glenn Beck is.

Here is what he actually said in October:

Beck: I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit -- there's one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees!

Most likely, it'll happen sometime after Christmas. You're gonna see this economy come up -- we're already seeing it, and now it's gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they're doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No -- we'll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!

As Arianna noted in her response:

No, Beck contended again and again and again, the whole time he was just talking about "the economy." Barack Obama is going to slaughter the economy. Even though he clearly said "taking you" not "taking the economy."

So, to review the ever-changing explanations: Beck never used the word "slaughter" -- until it was proven that he did. Then he only used it in reference to Mao, Stalin, or Hitler -- until it was proven that this wasn't the case. Then, when he used it, he wasn't referring to the Obama administration, he was referring to Andy Stern. Then he was referring to Obama -- but didn't mean it literally.

Got it? You might need to use Beck's trademark chalkboard to keep track.

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Bill O'Reilly has been irked at Joe Klein since last October, after Klein wrote a typical Villager piece for Time castigating President Obama for standing up to Fox News. That's not what upset O'Reilly, though. Rather, it was these lines:

Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.

So last night on Fox, O'Reilly finally got his chance to pin Klein down for this, and found he had his hands full defending Glenn Beck:

Klein: I have worked with an awful lot of Fox journalists, the ones who actually bring you the news, like Carl Cameron and Major Garrett.

O'Reilly: And those people are good guys, right?

Klein: Those -- those are good guys, I think you're a good guy, we come from the same neck of the woods.

But I think that your pal Glenn Beck is peddling a lot of hateful crap.

O'Reilly: But he's funny! He's doing it in a funny way! What's hateful about it?

Klein: Oh, he's doing a hilarious -- I thought the part where he describes the president as intentionally steering the airplane of state into the ground was hilarious. And the stuff about Obama not being an American citizen? That was hysterical!

O'Reilly: He's got a blackboard out there, he's got a phone to the White House -- look, he is everyman sitting on a barstool. Why shouldn't everyman have a show?

Klein: No, no, he is Father Coughlin trying to delude and entertain the American people.

O'Reilly: That's such baloney. That's the left-wing line, that this guy is a threat to the union. If anybody thinks Glenn Beck is a threat to the union, they're insane!

Actually, the comparison to Father Coughlin is more than appropriate -- it fits like a glove.

And dontcha just love how Beck being "funny" means he isn't hateful? I understand Theodore Bilbo was quite the crackup too.

Countdown's Worst Persons for Feb. 1, 2010 with winner Bill O'Reilly -- EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: O'Reilly's math blunder: 4-year trial at $200 million a year equals "almost a trillion dollars"

Runners up James O'Keefe -- Clown Time: James O'Keefe Explains Himself and Mark Levin -- Levin suggests Sen. Patrick Leahy drunk on Senate floor.

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Bill O'Reilly got called out by Media Matters the other day for comparing the South Side of Chicago to Haiti:

O'REILLY: I'm seeing a guy who's very, very committed to the government. To government, the government's going to solve the problems, and I'm going I don't know how that's possible. If you've ever been to the South Side of Chicago, I mean, it's a disaster, all right? It's like Haiti, it's like -- I've been to Haiti a couple of times. I support some charities there, but Haiti just never gets better, no matter how much money you put in there because they don't have a system. And I said the government can't do it but, Obama really believes the government can do it.

Last night on his Fox News show, O'Reilly -- rather than apologizing or ignoring the matter altogether (which is the Loofahmeister's usual MO) -- decided to double down on it altogether:

O'Reilly: Now those comments deeply -- deeply -- offend far-left Kool Aid drinkers even though every word is true. And if you don't believe me, just ask a guy named Lupe Fiasco.

Lupe Fiasco, it seems, is a rapper who was asked about O'Reilly's remark and answered that he agreed with him insofar as some parts of minority communities in America are like third-world countries.

That's right: O'Reilly cites a rapper -- who on any other occasion would be dismissed as a caricature by O'Reilly, particularly if he had disagreed with him or called him out -- as proof that he's right.

Moreover, Lupe Fiasco didn't seem to be agreeing at all with O'Reilly's larger (and more outrageous) claim -- that these poorer quarters of the world are essentially hopeless, and that the government should have no role in changing their conditions -- that it should just step aside and let nature take its course.

O'Reilly indeed expanded on this:

O'Reilly: For decades, Chicago's South Side has been a pocket of poverty and brutality -- Barack Obama is well aware of that, because he worked there. An enormous amount of federal and state money is poured into the South Side, and yet it remains a major problem.

The situation directly parallels what's happened in Haiti: massive aid, few results. Self-reliance is the key to success in life. A nanny state chokes that. If the president and I have one area of disagreement, it is big government. I believe it cannot solve your problems, he believes it can level the playing field at least somewhat.

Claiming that the conditions that created the malaise on Chicago's South Side are the same that made Haiti into the nightmare it is today is just ludicrous. About the only things the two have in common is that they're both products of generations of the systematic disenfranchisement and impoverishment of black people; to claim that American "big government" and federal aid to Haiti have somehow worsened the situation there is sheer ignorance.

And finally, has O'Reilly forgotten that, you know, there was just this thing called an earthquake that recently killed 200,000 people and turned Haiti into a massive disaster area?

Does he really think it's even remotely accurate to compare anywhere in the United States to that? It's one thing to talk about the Third World generically, but to make an analogy to Haiti, of all places, is indeed outrageous.

And you don't have to be from the "far left" to see that.

Countdown's Worst Persons for Jan. 26, 2009 with winner Bill O'Reilly. Runners up Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Grace.

Bill-O -- O’Reilly jokes: Kidnap top Dems, waterboard Speaker Pelosi:

During a recent stop of the Bold & Fresh Tour with fellow Fox News personality Glenn Beck, right-wing talker Bill O'Reilly couldn't help but to spin a hypothetical.

In his fantasy world where Obama hires him as a presidential adviser, O'Reilly explained the first thing he'd do is lavishly decorate his office. Thing two would be having the CIA director kidnap top Democrats and "waterboard" Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

He was, of course, "joking" during the Jan. 23 appearance. The audience roared with laughter, even as O'Reilly had cautioned, "Don't tell anyone I said this, please."

Rush -- Defending Limbaugh, right-wing media smear Foxman:

After Anti-Defamation League (ADL) national director Abraham Foxman criticized Rush Limbaugh for his January 20 statement that "a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there" -- remarks Limbaugh later lied to defend -- the right-wing media has rushed to defend Limbaugh and to attack Foxman. Foxman has been smeared as a "terrible Jew" and a "plague on his people," and described as a "disgusting, craven little twerp."

Nancy Grace -- Nancy Grace Interview Contributed To Melinda Duckett Suicide, Professor Says:

A Harvard professor says CNN Headline News host Nancy Grace's relentless questioning of a Florida mother three years ago contributed to her suicide, according to a filing in the family's wrongful death case.

Grace launched aggressive nightly coverage of 2-year-old Trenton Duckett's case shortly after he disappeared in 2006, usually with a collection of analysts. When the boy's mother, Melinda Duckett, appeared by telephone two weeks into the case, speculation was beginning to narrow on her possible involvement.

Dr. Harold J. Bursztajn, a clinical professor of psychiatry, wrote in a filing this week. that Grace "struck a highly accusatory tone."

The professor saw "a distraught young woman who is subject to repeated and increasingly sharp questioning by a hostile interviewer who displays increasing suspicion and anger towards Ms. Duckett."

The next day, the 21-year-old Duckett shot herself in the head.

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Well, you'd think Bill O'Reilly would at least be a little embarrassed that Fox News Channel was the only news entity on cable TV not to broadcast last week's "Hope for Haiti" concert.

But no. Instead of apologizing or even mentioning some kind of lame excuse why Fox didn't air it, on his show last night O'Reilly actually went on the warpath against the benefit and its organizers, demanding "transparency" and a full accounting of where all the money's going.

What really got his dander up? The benefit's organizers "wouldn't or couldn't" provide a spokesman to come on his show and explain himself.

In my dreams, the answer O'Reilly's people got when they called was this: "WTF? You want us to find someone to take time out of the hard work we're doing here just to satisfy Bill O'Reilly's ego? Get stuffed! If one of the participating channels wanted transparency, we'd be delighted to open the books for them. But we don't owe Fox News Channel a goddamn thing. Good-bye."

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Bill O'Reilly is a gloating kinda guy, and he couldn't help but crow over the corpse of Air America on The O'Reilly Factor last night, lumped in with Fox's recent ratings victories. As usual, though, he didn't just gloat -- he used his "victory" to jump to the conclusion that this all just showed that the nation was "moving to the right."

Eh? Lessee, the long-awaited demise of a business run poorly from the get-go means the country is becoming more conservative?

Then what about the right-wing Washington Times? Doesn't its imminent demise thus prove the nation is turning left?

O'Reilly, in fact, has never even mentioned the demise of the Moonie Times. Funny thing, that.

In any event, the entire "Talking Points Memo" last night was comedy gold, especially the parts where O'Reilly talks about how reliable and accurate a source of news Fox is. Riiiiiiight. That's a knee-slapper.

It is true, in fact, that you have to marvel at Fox's ratings success. It's obvious they have happened upon a singular fact: News is much more entertaining when it's propaganda.

Of course, building your business model on that fact also means the complete abandonment of Fox's civic responsibilities as an ostensible journalistic enterprise. It's more than happy to use the extraordinary power of electronic media as a propaganda arm of the conservative movement, especially because it can really rake in the bucks that way.

But no one should be fooled into thinking that the "news" it purveys is in any way accurate or reliable. And eventually, consumers will discover that Fox peddles falsehoods on a 24/7 basis, and that as an information source it's fundamentally worthless.

As Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law put it:

“I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,” said Matthew Freud, who is married to Ms. Murdoch and whom PR Week magazine says is the most influential public relations executive in London.

O'Reilly should go ahead and gloat while he can. Someday there will be a reckoning.

From The Daily Show Jan. 19, 2010:

Larry Wilmore talks about the one thing we all learned during President Obama's first year in office.

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Well, apparently one good way to make sure your music video gets lots of airtime is to mention Bill O'Reilly flatteringly. Mr. Falafel Head will be sure to bring you on for a talk segment, as he did with Ray Stevens on Monday night.

Nevermind, of course, that Stevens' hit "Tea Party anthem" features a lyric about euthanizing Grandma, which he heard about "from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh". O'Reilly replayed that part for us approvingly again.

But then he launched into a discussion with Stevens about his lame old 1962 hit novelty record, "Ahab the Arab," the video for which O'Reilly also played. And then he whined about how it's so politically incorrect to say that stuff now:

O’REILLY: So 48 years ago — 48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. … We could make fun of people in a general way, and certainly, Ahab was the Arab was a general parody. But now, we can’t. What has changed in America?

STEVENS: I think we’ve gone overboard with the political correctness just like so many other people think the same way about that. And I don’t know. We’ve got to come out of that, I think.

Yeah, it's just tragic. As Adam Serwer observes:

The subtext of this lament is O'Reilly mourning the demise of what he refers to as the "white Christian male power structure." It's not really that you "can't" make racist jokes anymore; it's that you when you make them, you can't expect everyone to remain silent as you assert your cultural or racial superiority through humor.

Still, while we're clearly a country where simply "making fun of Arabs" is seen in most circles as inappropriate, we are a country where it's not as taboo to whine about no longer being able to make fun of Arabs. Meanwhile there's also a bipartisan consensus that anti-Arab racism can be government policy.

But hey, what's racial profiling, indefinite detention, and unprecedented levels of warrantless surveillance when white guys can't publicly tell racist jokes? I think we know who the real victims are here.

Transcript via Think Progress.

Priscilla at NewsHounds has more.