Bill O'Reilly was in prime "We'll do it live!" form this morning on ABC's The View -- launching into a bigoted tirade, claiming that "Muslims killed us on 9/11!" It so infuriated co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar -- who just a little earlier had been given the O'Reilly "shut up and listen you stupid bimbo" treatment -- that they walked off the stage together.
It was entertaining, if nothing else:
The Fox commentator was a guest on ABC's talk show Thursday to promote his new "Pinheads and Patriots" book. The discussion got increasingly heated over the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate and he later went on to say "Muslims killed us On 9/11."
Co-Host Whoopi Goldberg disputed O'Reilly's claims that the mosque was inappropriate. "There were 70 families who are muslim who also died in that building," she said.
"Seventy percent of Americans don't want that mosque down there, so don't give me the 'we' business," said O'Reilly to co-host Joy Behar; the studio audience applauded.
Afterward, when pressed by Goldberg and Behar to explain why the "Ground Zero mosque" was somehow "inappropriate," O'Reilly leaned over and pointed at Goldberg saying, "Muslims killed us on 9/11."
Goldberg exclaimed , "That is such bullsh*t," in the midst of a cacophony of back-and-forth yelling. Goldberg shouted that "Timothy McVeigh [the convicted American-born terrorist who blew up the Oklahoma City Building in 1995] was Christian" before she and Behar walked off the set in protest. They later came back to finish the show.
Barbara Walters criticized her co-hosts for walking off stage during the live show. But she said O'Reilly should make the distinction that extremists committed the terrorist act.
Behar and Goldberg returned after O'Reilly said that "if anyone felt that I was demeaning all Muslims, I apologize."
"If anyone felt that"? Gee, I couldn't imagine why they would "feel" something as plain on the nose on your face, Bill.
O'Reilly simply can't escape a simple fact: His position on the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy is innately bigoted, because it is founded on conflating all Muslims with a tiny fringe of violent radicals.
Incidentally, I'm not so sure Tim McVeigh is the best comparison to make to the 9/11 fanatics when it comes to domestic terrorists, other than that he was such a successful mass murderer -- mainly because McVeigh was only nominally a Christian and really was not motivated by religion so much as ideology. A better comparison, frankly, would be with Eric Rudolph, who was decidedly Christian and decidedly motivated by religion.
Or how about Scott Roeder? That's a comparison O'Reilly knows all about. And it just might sting a bit harder.
