Bill O’Reilly’s late-night legacy
Throughout Bill O’Reilly’s long tenure at Fox News, the pugnacious TV host was a recurring presence on late-night television, where he sparred with David Letterman and enjoyed a particularly contentious rivalry with former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. Stephen Colbert famously parodied O’Reilly and other conservative talk show hosts on “The Colbert Report.”
On Wednesday, Colbert paid biting tribute to O’Reilly on “The Late Show” after 21st Century Fox announced that Fox News had parted ways with its marquee commentator amid a series of sexual harassment complaints against him.
Here are a few standout
interviews and moments that illustrate O’Reilly’s late-night legacy. Stephen Colbert
“I owe a lot to Bill O’Reilly,” Colbert said on “The Late Show” Wednesday. “I spent over nine years playing a character based largely on him — and then 12 months in therapy to de-bloviate myself.”
Colbert and O’Reilly go way back, even trading guest spots on their respective shows in 2007. After leaving his Comedy Central alter-ego to helm “The Late Show,” Colbert took a more straightforward approach when it came to challenging O’Reilly. The conversations
were civil, but left no confusion about their vastly different political stances. David Letterman
“In my mind, I think of you as a goon,” Letterman told O’Reilly while hosting him on “The Late Show” in 2009. The jab was part of a long-running rivalry between the two hosts, who over the years debated topics including the war in Iraq and the Occupy Wall Street protests. Though they rarely agreed, their exchanges were generally respectful. In an interview with Vulture last month, Letterman said he actually liked hosting O’Reilly on the show “before he became standard talk-show fare.”
“All I knew about him was that his ideology seemed counter to mine,” Letterman said. Jon Stewart When it comes to O’Reilly’s late-night rivals, no one holds a candle to Stewart. In 2012, the hosts participated in the “Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium” at George Washington University, where Stewart’s opening statement helped explain their complicated relationship: “My friend Bill O’Reilly is completely full of (expletive),” Stewart said. Jimmy Fallon (but really, The Roots)
Fallon typically avoids playing hardball with guests on either side of the political spectrum. But O’Reilly wasn’t spared completely during his visits to “The Tonight Show.” When O’Reilly visited in 2015 to promote “Killing Reagan,” The Roots played Killer Mike’s 2012 song “Reagan.”
It wasn’t intended as a tribute.