Why Does Bill O'Reilly Keep Trying to Out-Funny Jon Stewart?
One thing O'Reilly doesn't have is a sense of humor. At all. He's just too intense of a personality who takes himself too seriously to be funny. But, for some reason, whenever he gets in Jon Stewart's presence either on 'The Daily Show' or his own 'The O'Reilly Factor,' he spends half the interview belittling 'TDS' and its audience and trying to keep up with Stewart joke-for-joke instead of interviewing him on substance. And it never, ever works.
Here's the first half of the first part of his interview with Stewart, which aired on the 'Factor' last night. The second half is after the jump.
What I was looking forward to was a substantive interview between the two media titans about how their respective shows view and influence the news cycle, with some funny lines by Stewart thrown in.
We saw a little of that towards the end, as O'Reilly and Stewart debated on whether Fox News is defined by opinion shows like those of O'Reilly, Hannity, and Beck -- Stewart incredulously said O'Reilly has become "the most reasonable voice on Fox," for instance. Let's hope we see more of that in the second part of the interview, which airs tonight. But what I mostly saw in part one was O'Reilly making jokes about Stewart's hand movements and giving him the old saw that 'TDS's' audience is comprised solely of stoned college kids. Wow. Hilarious stuff, Bill.
Why doesn't Bill just stick to what he does best: intense interviews and yelling? That's got to be more effective than trying to keep up with a highly-compensated comedian like Stewart, right?

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