O’Reilly Letterman Feud: Get the Timeline Here

While driving to work in late October, with my favorite morning radio talk show on, the news of the latest feud between O'Reilly and Letterman was the topic of the morning, complete with soundclips of the previous night's Late Night with David Letterman talk show. The clips gave the audience a wonderful idea of just how exciting the famous celebrity feud had become to the nation when O'Reilly told a heckler within the audience to pipe down, as he blasted the "perceived leftist views" of Letterman and minimized Letterman's understanding of O'Reilly's notion of the war as a "complicated situation" beyond the grasp of the typical American news listener's attention.

If you haven't heard of the O'Reilly Letterman Feud by now, then you must have been hiding someplace within a cave in the country somewhere for the past year. For those of you who need a timeline of the famous celebrity feud between Fox News' broadcaster Bill O'Reilly and Late Night's David Letterman, here goes:

The original O'Reilly Letterman Feud began on January 3, 2006, when O'Reilly first appeared on Letterman's Late Night show to speak about his promotion of "The War on Christmas." For the facts regarding O'Reilly's promotion in his Late Night appearance, see the article entitled "Bill O'Reilly Needs Help," Fair, November 3, 2006, which includes Letterman's questions to O'Reilly in regard to O'Reilly's opinions of the perceived war on Christmas at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2988.
On May 19, 2006, obviously upset with Letterman's remarks in regard to his "War on Christmas" allegations, O'Reilly interviewed then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on his O'Reilly Factor program and mentioned Letterman's "leftist, anti-war stance" when questioning Rumsfeld. For an article regarding this interview, see the article entitled "O'Reilly Used Rumsfeld Interview to Stoke Letterman Feud," Media Matters for America, May 23, 2006, at http://mediamatters.org/items/200605230004.
On October 27, 2006, O'Reilly appeared for a second time on Letterman's Late Night show, and the feud was "rekindled." For facts pertaining to this rekindling appearance see the article entitled "O'Reilly, Letterman Rekindle Feud," USA Today, October 29, 2006, at usatoday.com.

Of course, O'Reilly, at the top of cable news ratings, with over 2 million viewers, as I heard his comments about his ratings on soundclips on my favorite early-morning radio talk show, is used to controversy, and he's not in the least bit worried that those ratings will go down anytime soon.

Only time will tell if O'Reilly's opinions of what the American listening public really wants, which is to escape an "uncomfortable situation" and to replace it with trivial entertainment, are factual or not.