Bill O'Reilly vs. George Clooney Again?
Reported by Deborah - February 20, 2006
O'Reilly and Clooney have had a few bouts in the past. The other night Clooney was interviewed by Larry King who asked him, "How did you get in trouble with O'Reilly?" and Clooney told him the story. Now O'Reilly is doing his show from L.A. this week and in the promo he featured a shot of Clooney. This could get interesting.
This is what Clooney said about O'Reilly on 2/16 on The Larry King Show.
KING: How did you get in trouble with O'Reilly?
CLOONEY: He started it. He started it. I mean it's that simple. I was doing a telethon for 9/11. He wanted to do an interview for it and I was putting together the interviews that we were going to do and the networks said everybody gets one. He said "I'm the news man for FOX" and I said "No, you're not."
And then the month after that he claimed that the thing was a fraud and people canceled checks because of that and my job was to defend the people who showed up and put their name on something because they wanted to do something good.
And he said I said it was a ratings thing that he was doing because he tried to get everyone to come on his show and he said "There's no such thing as sweeps in cable." It was the same week he ran an ad that said "Bill O'Reilly beats Larry King for the first time." I thought well that's sort of unusual.
And then I said if it's truly just about helping the people because he said he just wants to help the people, I go "If it's truly about helping the people and nothing to do with ratings, then debate me on Larry King during sweeps if that's what you want to do, if that's what you believe" and that's how it started.
KING: And is it ended now? CLOONEY: No, listen, I've asked him a dozen places. I'd debate him here again on any of those subjects but he doesn't want to do that, you know. He doesn't want to debate anywhere but a place where he owns the microphone and that's fair. You know, listen, I wouldn't want to debate it either. He's sort of got some vulnerabilities now, you know.
That could be interpreted as a challenge to debate. Let's see how O'Reilly responds, if he responds at all. Here's a link to the entire interview with King .
