Before reading this latest story, I’d all but forgotten the incident last month where both Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walked off The View during a heated discussion with Bill O’Reilly regarding the planned “Mosque at Ground Zero.” (I’ve put that in quotes because I’ve read that it’s neither a Mosque nor very close to the former site of the Twin Towers.) The conversation turned into a “Muslims killed us on 9/11″ argument and there was some yelling, during which Whoopi called Bill’s argument “bullsh*t.”

On The O’Reilly Factor, Bill and Whoopi where much nicer to each other and pretty much acted like everything was fine. They did discuss their viewpoints on the issue of terrorism and Islam, (Bill continued his “Muslims attacked us on 9/11″ argument and Whoopi said he was overgeneralizing) but were calmer about it despite their disagreements. Whoopi was promoting her latest book, Is It Just Me?: Or is it nuts out there?. Here’s some of what these two said and the video is above. (I’m not going to recap all the other stuff, you can watch the video if you’re interested.)

Whoopi Goldberg has apparently buried the hatchet with Bill O’Reilly.

The “View” co-host made an appearance on Tuesday’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” where the two discussed Whoopi & Joy Behar’s “View” walk-off during O’Reilly’s visit to the morning show last month.

“Here’s what I want to know: what did you guys say about me after you left?” O’Reilly asked, in a preview clip posted by FOX News.

“I said that I thought you did not realize how hurtful…” Whoopi started to explain before the TV talker jumped in.

“You said that on the air, but I mean off the air,” O’Reilly interjected.

“I said the same stuff off the air,” Whoopi insisted.

“Were you cursing me out and stuff?” he asked her.

“No, no, I heard myself say the B-word, and that’s when I knew had to get up,” Goldberg replied. “Ooh, I had to get up child.”

“After I left, were you and Joy mad at me?” the FOX News talker inquired.

“No, no. Because, at least for me, I know that if I cross a line, which I crossed, because I heard myself say something I had no business saying, I knew… I had to go,” Whoopi concluded.

As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, in October, during O’Reilly’s visit to “The View,” he proclaimed that “Muslims killed us on 9/11,” prompting Whoopi to lash out.

“My God! That is such bulls**t,” an incensed Whoopi said at the time, before she and Joy walked off the set mid-interview.

[From Access Hollywood]

Their political arguments give me a headache, but good for Whoopi and O’Reilly for getting along, as annoying as it is to hear them argue about this sh*t yet again. Then again, it’s probably the first time I’ve ever watched more than a minute or two of the O’Reilly factor at a stretch.

Whoopi and Bill went on to talk about the pitfalls of the Internet, and how people can hide behind screens and anonymity to be mean and bully others. They agreed on that point, and they didn’t say anything new or particularly interesting about it. It made them sound kind of old and out of touch. Maybe they have more in common than they know.

Last week there was a big controversy over the fact that Whoopi and Joy walked off The View while Bill O’Reilly was a guest. The topic was the proposed “Mosque at Ground Zero,” (which is neither a mosque nor is it at ‘Ground Zero’ but whatever) and when the shouting started happening and Bill said “Muslims killed us on 9/11” Whoopi and Joy both hightailed it out of there, leaving Barbara Walters and the rest of the panel in a tizzy. On Monday’s View, Joy and Whoopi spoke out about the incident. O’Reilly also apologized on his show, adding that it was everyone else’s fault for not understanding that he meant something that he didn’t specifically say. He said “I assumed that most people would be intelligent enough to know that I was saying ‘radical Islamists attacked us’.”

Both Whoopi and Joy said on The View’s postmortem that they’re glad they walked off. Whoopi claimed that she was about to go off on Bill and needed to leave while Joy explained that she was “enraged.” Barbara noted that Bill had played them both and that he got a huge kick out of it. Here’s Radar Online’s recap, where you can also watch a video clip.

On Monday, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar finally had their chance to defend walking off the set of The View last Thursday in response to guest Bill O’Reilly’s controversial remarks about Muslims being behind 9/11.

Since the show last Friday was pre-taped prior to the walkout, this was their first chance to publicly address the controversy on their own show.

“On this show we always speak about standing up to bigotry, so I stood up,” Behar said.

“I had reached my saturation point,” Goldberg added. “I had enough. As soon as I said the B word, I knew to get up and leave. Because I knew what was coming next. I was going to cuss him out.”

As RadarOnline.com has previously reported, on The View last Thursday, O’Reilly said, “The Muslims killed us on 9-11.” Shortly afterward, an enraged Behar stormed off the set; Goldberg quickly followed her. The other ladies of the panel stayed on, and Barbara Walters scolded her colleagues for walking off.

Monday, Goldberg made no apologies; she said that O’Reilly needed to be more cautious in his statements because it’s a volatile time. “I”m glad that I left,” she said.

Walters countered that the country needs conversations without yelling and walking off. “You don’t walk out of your own home,” Walters chided her colleagues. “We’re used to Bill O’Reilly. He loves this. He loves to pull your chain. He loves to get you angry. This is just what he wanted.”

Responding to some critics who questioned if the entire scenerio was staged in a ploy to get ratings, Sherri Shepherd adamantly stated that it was not staged and that O’Reilly seemed “energized” during a commercial break. He promised to show the clip on his Fox show, The O’Reilly Factor, and said it would help the ratings for The View, Shepherd said.

Shepherd said that Walters told O’Reilly: “We’ve been doing fine without you trying to make our ratings.”

Shepherd added, “He knew what he was doing.”

The notoriously conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck said her staying didn’t mean she agreed with O’Reilly. Hasselbeck stressed that the terrorists killed us in the 2001 attacks.

Behar also brought up the Henry Fonda movie 12 Angry Men, cited the bigoted character played by Lee J. Cobb. She pointed out that the other jurors stood up to him. “I believe that was what I had to do,” Behar said.

“We are supposed to be civilized,” Goldberg said. “I know that had I stayed there, for me at least, it would have gotten worse. … He was so enraging and so disrespectful.”

“Bill loves to pull your chains,” Walters said.

Behar admitted her surprise at all the attention the incident attracted, saying, “Two girl comedians walk off in the face of a bully, and it gets to be all over the world. Interesting.”

During the interview with O’Reilly last Thursday, both Goldberg and Behar returned to the set to finish the interview after O’Reilly -prompted by Walters- apologized if he offended anyone by his comments.

[From Radar Online]

Whoopi and Joy interview people for a living, they’ve been doing it for years, and they should be able to handle some ass who is known for being incendiary without getting all offended and storming off. Bill needled the crap out of them and he got the response he was looking for. The fact that they still can’t see that they reacted just as he hoped they would just serves to show why they would leave in the first place. I don’t like Bill O’Reilly and I don’t agree with his point whatsoever, but everyone knows how he is. If they don’t want to deal with his behavior they shouldn’t have him on the show.

Joy also talked about this on her CNN show yesterday. I like what her experts have to say about the issue. Here’s video of that.

Do you know how much I hate covering anything to do with The View? SO MUCH. But CB sent me this, and I suppose people will be talking about it. Bill O’Reilly came on The View this morning, and I guess they were talking about Obama’s low poll numbers and then they got to polling numbers for what America thinks about the “Ground Zero Mosque” and then sh-t gets all shouty and hysterical. After Bill says “Muslims killed us on nine-eleven” Joy Behar gets up and says something about not engaging in this sh-t while Whoopi is shouting about extremists. Then Whoopi gets up with Joy and they both walk off the stage. Barbara then gets her lady drawers in a twist and says that we should all be able to talk about this sh-t without having people disengage or whatever.

I have mixed emotions. Obviously, Bill was trying to get the ladies riled up, and he was much more animated and blowhardy than he would have been on, say, The Daily Show. That being said, he threw out a relatively easy one (compared to other bullsh-t he could have said) and Whoopi and Joy took the bait like morons. Bill will get extra coverage, blah, blah, blah, so that makes him smart, I guess.

But in defense of Whoopi and Joy: I do this too. I would much rather disengage from some heated argument than sit there and try to shout my point. I realize they walked away for different reasons, and it might have even been preplanned, but I’m just saying, I get it. When it comes to these stupid hot-button political issues, for the most part I’m not interested in shouting my point of view to whoever disagrees with me. Is it maturity? Is it a heightened fight-or-flight instinct? Or it my smug sense of superiority? I don’t know. I just know I don’t care enough to shout about it. And if you shout at me about something, I’m never going to agree with you anyway.

Vanity Fair just put up an excellent interview with Mary-Louise Parker, who is once again nominated for an Emmy for her performance in Weeds. The interview was conducted by Eric Spitznagel, who is totally boy-crushing on MLP because she’s so f-cking hardcore and “not America‘s sweetheart.” He tells a story about MLP from several years ago, when she was participating in an Emmy roundtable with members of the press, discussing her character on The West Wing. She admitted that West Wing fans didn’t care for her, but dismissed the fans saying, “They probably have to f-ck with the lights off.” Crude! And funny. The full VF piece is here, and here are the best parts (there‘s a long conversation about marijuana lollipops that I found boring, so I took it out):

Eric Spitznagel: You know how sometimes watching a TV show about food can make you hungry? Whenever I watch Weeds, it always makes me feel like I need to get stoned immediately.
Mary-Louise Parker: Yeah, so many people tell me that.

Does the same thing happen for you? When you finish shooting an episode, do you feel an urge to light up a joint?
I don’t do drugs, but I’m really suggestible. So I imagine if I did, that’s exactly what would happen. I’d be smoking all day long.

Wait, you don’t smoke marijuana, or you’ve never smoked it?
I’ve never smoked it.

Wow. That’s like finding out Tommy Chong never touched the stuff. I feel so betrayed.
I guess if it was going to happen, it would’ve happened when I was younger. But that was never an effective or interesting form of rebellion for me. Because everybody did it. Marijuana was just a social thing. It wasn’t dangerous or frowned upon. If I’d been popular in high school, I’m sure I would have wanted to do it. But I wasn’t.

So you didn’t smoke pot because nobody was offering it to you?
Oh no, it was definitely offered to me. All the time. I was hanging around a lot of musicians, so I definitely had access to drugs. It just never appealed to me. Everybody was doing it, and I didn’t want to be part of the crowd. There was no part of me that wanted to fit in.

You should do a P.S.A. You’ve almost convinced me that pot is boring.
Yeah, probably. But I’m not saying pot is a bad thing. I know plenty of people who should be smoking pot. I’m just not one of those people. I don’t think it would be the best drug for me. What am I going to do, start doing drugs at my age? It’s a little late. I’m a mother of two. It’s probably not the best idea for me to start getting into it now.

Well, I know a few mothers who still partake.
Yeah, I do too. They just wait until their kids are asleep. I don’t know, I guess marijuana just wasn’t made for me.

Over the last few seasons of Weeds, we’ve learned that Nancy likes her sex a little freaky. She wants a lover who isn’t shy with the slapping and the spanking. Is that something you can relate to at all?
I think for her, sexuality is something that she wields. And she needs sex to be somewhat punitive. You know what I mean?

It has to feel like punishment?
Yeah, in a way. I think a lot of people have so much guilt wrapped up in sex, so they almost can’t tell the difference. There’s a scene we did for this season that gets pretty explicit. It was just supposed to be sex in a bar, but I really wanted it to be almost abusive. Because I think she needs it that way. And that’s really informative. If you just see two people f-cking on screen, it’s not necessarily revealing about those characters. But if it’s coming from a particular point of view, that’s when I think it gets interesting.

You’ve been called a “thinking man’s sex symbol.” Does that mean dumb people don’t find you sexy?
I guess so. Dumb people don’t want to f-ck me. (Laughs.) I really don’t know what to say. “Thinking man’s sex symbol.” What do you suppose that means?

I’m not sure. When you get approached by male fans, are they usually neurosurgeons or college professors?
Not really, no. And thank god. I couldn’t even have a conversation with a neurosurgeon. I wouldn’t know what to say. I think that’s probably not an accurate way to describe me. Plenty of dumb people want to f-ck me. Oh god, that’s not going to play well in print, is it?

I think it’s great. What are you worried about, offending dumb people?
Yeah, I could be alienating the dumb people who want to f-ck me. I’m just happy that anybody considers me a sex symbol at all. It does not cause me any amount of grief to be objectified in any way. I welcome it.

If your fans can’t be categorized in terms of intelligence, how would you describe them? Are they a certain age or social class or demographic? When you’re approached in the street, what’s the common denominator?
I never know why people come up to me. I think a lot of them just get super-excited because they recognize me from TV but they don’t remember where. It’s not like they’re necessarily happy to see me, you know?

You’re just the lady from the talking picture box.
Yeah, exactly. I think it’s a little dangerous if you overvalue that kind of attention. My son has recently started to notice it. One time a lady came running up to me in the street and said, “I love you! I love you so much!” And my son asked me later, “Why did that stranger say she loved you?” That’s a very hard question to answer.

How do you explain it? “The world is full of lonely freaks?”
I just said, “She was being hyperbolic, honey. Sometimes when people see someone from television, they feel like that person has come to life and they’re not just inside the TV box. They get very excited and don’t understand personal boundaries.”

And sometimes they like to give mommy pot brownies.
Precisely. But thankfully, they haven’t really done that in view of my children. Although my kids have started to hear about it. They know that my character on Weeds does something with drugs. So now I get questions like, “What are drugs?” And I’m like, “Well, it’s something that … people do.” It’s so hard! Sometimes it’s just easier to say, “She does things that are really, really naughty.” Kids love to hear that. “Oooh, like what?”

Well, like sometimes she has unprotected sex with Mexican mobsters and ends up having their baby.
That’s right. And sometimes men spank her in the back of limousines.

Jennifer Aniston got some flack recently from Bill O’Reilly because she said it’s O.K. to be a single mother. O’Reilly went so far as to call her opinions “destructive to society.” I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this already, but as a single mother who plays a single mother on TV, do you disagree?
I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Why is being a single mother destructive?

I’m not sure I follow his argument. Something about the nuclear family and fathers being disrespected.
Give me a break. He sounds like an idiot. Who is he again?

He’s got a show on Fox News.
That’s the right-wing channel? Well, there you go. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. I don’t think you necessarily have to be part of a traditional nuclear family to be a good mother. A lot of children from traditional nuclear families have really unhappy childhoods, and they have dysfunctional, distant parents who don’t pay attention to them. Also, some people don’t plan on being single parents. It’s not like you’re sitting at home and thinking, “Wow, I’d really like to do this by myself. I’d love to wake up six times a night and change diapers and have nobody to help me. That’d be great!” I certainly didn’t do that.

So you’re not buying O’Reilly’s theory that single mothers are destroying the fabric of society?
I think that opinion is pretty narrow-minded. People like him—and I don’t even know who he is, so this is just a guess—they usually just say sh-t like that for attention. He probably comes from a nuclear family and didn’t get enough attention as a child.

[From Vanity Fair]

Oh, snap. I love her, and yes, she is hardcore, and no, she’s not interested in being America’s Sweetheart, and isn’t that refreshing? I also love this: “Also, some people don’t plan on being single parents. It’s not like you’re sitting at home and thinking, ‘Wow, I’d really like to do this by myself. I’d love to wake up six times a night and change diapers and have nobody to help me. That’d be great!’ I certainly didn’t do that.” THIS. This is the closest she’s ever come to bitching about Billy Crudup ever, I think. He left her when she was eight months pregnant, so being a single mom wasn’t her plan, but she embraced it and had fun with it and never played the “I’m so wronged, love me!” card. And that is why MLP is the Queen.

One last thing: this is the photo VF used… how crazy is this? I realize she has a killer figure, but the ’Shopping must stop.

VF photo courtesy of VF online. Header photo courtesy of WENN.

While on the red carpet for The Switch, the people at E! asked Jennifer Aniston about Bill O’Reilly’s comments against her pro-single mother stance. Her roundabout kind of stilted answer seemed like a giveaway that she didn’t write the initial brilliant statement responding to Bill’s criticism. (Or maybe she did and just isn’t as practiced at speaking off the cuff.) Aniston isn’t the most skilled when it comes to giving quotes, and I guess she was trying to say that Bill wasn’t either. It came off as a little ironic.

How caught off guard were you with the Bill O’Reilly comment?
I think as caught off guard as anybody would be in reaction to hearing such a rude sort of comment towards you and other women, but you know, I think people like that must not know any better, because if they heard how they sounded I’m sure they wouldn’t – they were trying to make a point – speak that way.

Now who needs to hear how they sound? I guess she’s saying that Bill didn’t really mean that, but it’s hard to tell and doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not a decent point anyway, because pundits like O’Reilly talk smack for a living. They know exactly what they’re saying, they just say things we don’t agree with. It’s not like they “don’t know any better,” they seem to believe these things and it’s their job to tell us about it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Aniston needs to work with someone to teach her how to give coherent talking points. People listen to what she says and she needs to be more polished in interviews. She did a decent job promoting The Bounty Hunter and seems to have improved in interviews in the past couple of years. Her job may not involve talking every day like O’Reilly, but it’s a critical part of promoting her films and I’d like to see her get better at it. I agree with her initial point, and I did agree with her follow-up statement, but this subsequent comment is so muddled that I have no idea what to think.

For those of you who will say it’s unfair to judge her based on red carpet interviews – this is part of her job. Some celebrities are better at speaking off the cuff than others, but there are surely people who can coach them on giving answers to anticipated questions. This was a huge news item and she should have prepared a more coherent answer to this question. It’s like she wasn’t even aware enough of the statement her people issued to simply phrase it in her own words or quote from it again.

Jennifer Aniston is shown at The Switch premiere on 8/16/10. Credit: Nikki Nelson/WENN.com

Earlier this week, Bill O’Reilly reminded us of Dan Quayle’s 1992 rant against Murphy Brown when he slammed Jennifer Aniston for advocating single parenthood in remarks she made while promoting her upcoming in vitro comedy, The Switch. Aniston’s statement that O’Reilly took offense to was, in part, that “Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child.” O’Reilly countered that we do need men, and for more than just conception. “Jennifer Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her. But she can’t hire a dad. Dads bring a psychology to children that in this society is under emphasized. Men get hosed all day long in the parental arena.”

Then, Keith Olbermann went after O’Reilly personally and claimed that O’Reilly grew up with an abusive father, as if that made him incapable of holding the opinion that single parent households aren’t beneficial to children.

Jennifer Aniston spoke to People Magazine and had some funny remarks to counter O’Reilly’s criticism. She stood by her original statement while agreeing with the opinion that dual parent families are ideal. I’m sure she had help with this, but I really admire the way she phrased her statement. It’s so well worded and pokes fun at O’Reilly in a playful way.

Jennifer Aniston has a few choice words for Bill O’Reilly, who criticized her recent comments about single motherhood.

“Of course, the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age. Parenting is one of the hardest jobs on earth,” Aniston tells PEOPLE exclusively. “And, of course, many women dream of finding Prince Charming (with fatherly instincts), but for those who’ve not yet found their Bill O’Reilly, I’m just glad science has provided a few other options.”

Aniston, who is currently starring in The Switch, a film about a woman who gets pregnant using a sperm donor, told reporters recently that women no longer have to wait for the perfect guy to start a family.

“Women are realizing it more and more, knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child,” the actress told reporters. “Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere.”

Last week, on his Fox News show, The O’Reilly Factor, the host called the actress’s comments “destructive to our society,” and accused her of “diminishing the role of the dad.”

“Dads bring a psychology to children that is in this society, I believe, under-emphasized,” he said. “I think men get hosed all day long in the parental arena.”

[From People]

Maybe now we can put this whole controversy to rest. I never quite got the outrage over this issue in the first place, because it just sounded like a throwaway comment that Aniston made that related to her character’s experience on film. I’m not a divorced dad getting shafted in a custody battle either, though. I looked up Bill O’Reilly to see if that might be where his rage is coming from, but he’s still married to his wife of 14 years and they have two children together. He did settle a sexual harassment lawsuit a few years ago and there were allegations of some pretty disgusting things he supposedly said to a former female producer on his show. Not that it’s relevant to this discussion, but it did come up when I did a search to learn more about his home situation.

Header photo of Aniston from 3/11/10. O’Reilly is shown on 5/8/08. Credit: PRPhotos

My goodness! Jennifer Aniston sure started a f-cked up firestorm when she made some relatively innocuous comments about her new film, The Switch. The plotline of The Switch (a woman impregnates self with a turkey baster, only she doesn’t know the sperm came from her best friend, Jason Bateman) ensured that Aniston got about a million questions about single motherhood and turkey basters and pregnancy and BABIES during her press day. Jennifer comments were pretty general, and she basically stated that single mothers are fine and that women don’t have to “settle” with a dude just because they want to have a baby.

Then, two nights ago, Bill O’Reilly attacked Jennifer for leaving fathers feeling underappreciated and undervalued in society, and that she was too rich to know about the real struggles, etc. He said she was “destructive to society.” While I found a couple of his points to be on-target, the gist of his discussion basically boiled down to a promotion of the nuclear family, which is bullsh-t, in my opinion. Anyway…

So you know that O’Reilly’s self-appointed nemesis Keith Olbermann couldn’t let Bill-O attack Aniston’s honor that way. Except that Keith doesn’t really give a hoot about Aniston, he just wanted to attack O’Reilly. And attack he did, and it was kind of below the belt. Keith named O’Reilly one of “the worst people in the world” and said: “There’s been a lot of amateur psychoanalysis about what O’Reilly is doing this time. If you read Marvin Kitman’s biography of O’Reilly, it’s pretty simple. Virtually every reference O’Reilly makes to his own father describes how the man hit, slapped, punched him. As Ktman put it simply, ‘O’Reilly has a history of physical abuse from his father.’ It is actually very sad.” Here’s the video (the O’Reilly part starts around the 37 second mark:

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Ouch. This is one of the reasons I don’t watch Keith so much anymore. He really goes after people on a personal level. And, if O’Reilly’s father did hit him, I don’t get how that is directly affecting O’Reilly’s comments about Aniston, I really don’t.

Aniston in London on July 21, 2010. Credit: WENN.

When Jennifer Aniston did press day for her new film, The Switch, she probably got a million questions about motherhood and basters and being single and babies. Those quotes have been flying around all week, notably her quotes on single motherhood: “Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child. Times have changed and that is also what is amazing… that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents’ days when you can’t have children because you have waited too long. The point of the movie is what is it that defines family? It isn’t necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children and a dog named Spot. Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere. That is what I love about this movie. It is saying it is not the traditional sort of stereotype of what we have been taught as a society of what family is.”

Most people have been reading this as a defense of single motherhood, an embrace on “non-traditional” families, and just a simple agreement with the basic plot of her film. But Bill O’Reilly got his panties in a twist about it:

While promoting her movie ‘The Switch’ earlier this week, Jennifer Aniston told reporters that women don’t need men to start a family or be good mothers. When Bill O’Reilly caught wind of her bold statements, he debated the topic of single motherhood on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ and called out the 41-year-old actress. “She’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that, ‘Hey you don’t need a guy. You don’t need a dad.’ That is destructive to our society,” O’Reilly railed.

FOX News contributor Margaret Hoover and FOX News anchor Gretchen Carlson debated the topic with O’Reilly, admitting young teens wouldn’t be able to comprehend the vast differences between a 40-year-old woman and a teenager raising a child as a single mother. “She is glamorizing single parenthood,” Carlson said.

In ‘Switch,’ Aniston plays a woman who elects to take on life as a single parent through artificial insemination. During the movie’s press conference in LA, the actress admitted “times have changed” and women don’t need to rely on men to be good mothers.

“Women are realizing more and more that you don’t have to settle, they don’t have to fiddle with a man to have that child,” Aniston said. “They are realizing if it’s that time in their life and they want this part they can do it with or without that.”

O’Reilly called out the actress, deeming her message inappropriate. “Jennifer Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her. But she can’t hire a dad. Dads bring a psychology to children that in this society is under emphasized. Men get hosed all day long in the parental arena,” he ranted.

“Any man who leaves their children is not a man. Let’s make that perfectly clear. But the fathers that do try hard are under appreciated and diminished by people like Jennifer Aniston,” he continued.

Finally, O’Reilly challenged Aniston to come on his show and defend her statement. “If she wants to explain, she can get her butt right in here.”

[From PopEater]

Don’t hate me, but I understand where O’Reilly is coming from, even though I don’t agree with him in general. I think one part of O’Reilly’s point does stand up: it’s very easy for Jennifer Aniston to stand up for single motherhood and the idea of women doing it by themselves because of where she is in her life, being 41 years old and rich. That isn’t the experience of most single mothers, and maybe the rah-rah single mother thing isn’t the best message for young girls. That being said, I think O’Reilly is full of it because Aniston dared to suggest that anything other than the perfect nuclear family was acceptable, and that is bullsh-t. And being raised by single mothers, or in non-traditional families, doesn’t f-ck your children up, for the love of God.

Also: At first I thought this was some kind of twisted cross-promotion between Fox News and some Fox-owned movie studio, but Miramax is putting this film out, so there. Bill is just being a blowhard, per usual.

Here is the video from Part 1 of Bill O’Reilly’s two-part interview with Jon Stewart. This is all over the media today, and most commentators and pundits are acting as if this was going to be some kind of epic showdown, like Stewart’s interview (re: beat down) with CNBC’s Jim Cramer last year. Now, it’s no secret that I think Jon Stewart is absolutely lovely. Many people even agree with me – last year, Stewart was voted “America’s Most Trusted Newsman”. During the overly-hyped Daily Show “debate” between Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Stewart pretty much killed Cramer and lifted his leg on Cramer’s corpse. So how, perchance, would Stewart perform when he was no longer on his home turf? When Stewart left The Daily Show studio and went over to Fox News for a one-on-one with Bill O’Reilly?

In truth, this wasn’t the first time Stewart and O’Reilly have tangled. They’ve been guests on each other’s shows before, to mixed results. And while I think O’Reilly is a falafel-rubbing blowhard, next to Glen Beck, even O’Reilly looks sane and reasonable, and he played nice with Stewart. I also thing this was a factor too – Stewart and O’Reilly have never tangled when there was a Democrat in the White House. O’Reilly ended up being the most quotable of the event, claiming that Jon was used to criticizing “evil Republicans” and calling The Daily Show’s viewers “stoned slackers who love Obama”. Jon played it straight for the most part, although he did fall back on his “I’m just a comedian who talks about the news” shtick.

Here’s Part 2, when Bill and Jon really start to get into it:

So who won? Gawker has a blow-by-blow of points scored, and they declare Stewart the winner with this quote of Stewart‘s: “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.” Okay, that is a good line. Bless Stewart’s heart. I love him.

Bill O’Reilly is on the war path. Nothing new, right? He’s always on the war path about something, whether it’s Spain or UPS or rape victims who somehow deserved it because of what they were wearing. Bill’s latest target is Eminem. It started with Eminem’s new song and video, the one that mocks people like Jessica Simpson, Kim Kardashian and Gov. Sarah Palin. It was the Palin reference that bothered O’Reilly – Eminem sings “I’ll invite Sarah Palin out to dinner, nail her/ Baby, say hello to my little friend.” That line is so friggin’ stupid, I don’t even have words.

It was enough to get O’Reilly’s panties in a wad, though. Bill calls the song, and the “attack” on Palin was “crude”. Duh, it’s Eminem, not Rachmaninoff. But then Bill went off on how Eminem is “the lowest form of entertainment in this country” and that “Eminem means nothing”. You know the best way to deal with a has-been entertainer who is mildly annoying? Just ignore him. Don’t give him that which he most wants – attention. That works for both Eminem and Bill O’Reilly. US Magazine has more:

Eminem – a rapper’s delight? Not in Bill O’Reilly’s eyes.

On Wednesday’s O’Reilly Factor, the Fox News host, 59, slammed the rapper, 36, for mocking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in his new song.

On the song, Eminem also raps, “I’ll invite Sarah Palin out to dinner, nail her/ Baby, say hello to my little friend.”

O’Reilly said the “attack” on Palin was “crude.”

“Few Americans take the vile rapper Eminem seriously,” he said. “He represents the lowest form of entertainment in this country and is a publicity hound to boot.”

“Kids see it, not adults,” said O’Reilly, adding that “no one over 25 listens to him.”

He said he also was surprised women’s groups and “left wing” media outlets are not protesting the rapper, who also mocks Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan in his video.

If Travis Tritt made a derogatory reference about Hilary Clinton or Michelle Obama, O’Reilly argued, media outlets would “kill him.”

“Eminem is obviously on an obscene rant about Sarah Palin,” O’Reilly said. “It’s totally obscene, totally inappropriate.”

“All I want to do is repeat that Eminem means nothing,” he added. “The video means nothing. It’s played for kids that are confused.”

From US Magazine

Eminem is “a publicity hound to boot”. Seriously? First, fame-hungry pot meet fame-hungry kettle. Second, if Eminem is such a publicity hound, why are you giving him publicity, O‘Reilly? I suppose if I wanted to be really “meta” I would include this post in the rant… why give either of them more publicity?

As far as the whole “if a Republican did it to a Democrat, somebody would be lynched” argument that is the new go-to talking point, I’m sure some people will believe it. What would happen if Toby Keith or somebody like that did a song where they included some line that was basically saying the guy wanted to have sex with Michelle Obama? Probably nothing. Olbermann might mention it, but it would probably be a one-minute story. Here’s another idea – just scroll through some of the fringe and mainstream attacks made on the Obamas and the Clintons the past two years, and ask yourself how many of those people still have their jobs? Oh right, nearly all of them.