Bill O'Reilly misrepresented the reason that “San Francisco pinheads” have called on Fox News and Westwood One to take O'Reilly off the air. On the December 5 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, in a list of criticisms against “the far left,” which “doesn't want free speech,” O'Reilly claimed that the “San Francisco pinheads wanted me to be fired because I criticized their anti-military vote.” In fact, Chris Daly, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, did not demand that O'Reilly be fired over his criticism of the city's “anti-military” vote; rather, Daly cited comments O'Reilly made on November 8, documented by Media Matters for America:
O'REILLY: Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."
O'Reilly made those remarks in the context of criticizing a recent ballot measure passed by 60 percent of San Francisco voters urging public high schools and colleges to prohibit on-campus military recruiting.
In response, Daly appeared on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and stated:
DALY: We don't find your satirical riff funny. We find your words damaging, you know, and dangerous for 770,000 San Franciscans, over 100,000 San Franciscans who are children. You know, this is dangerous, Fox News and Westwood One need to take some accountability for this and terminate Bill O'Reilly's employment.
From the December 5 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: Now for the top story of the night: Talk about attacking those with whom they disagree, some anti-Iraq zealots booed [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] over the weekend in Chicago.
CLINTON [video clip]: -- expressing your opinion. But let's make sure that people have a chance to be part of a dialogue. And I do not believe that they want to hear from you at this moment.
O'REILLY: All right. Well, those boobs were taken out of the arena. Joining us now from Boston, Fox News political analyst Mary Anne Marsh. Here in the studio, Kirsten Powers, also a Fox News analyst.
All right now, ladies, look, there's no question that the far left doesn't want freedom of speech. We've seen it in the last week. Ann Coulter, they're having a riot up there in Storrs, Connecticut, the university. They don't want her to speak up there. The San Francisco pinheads wanted me to be fired because I criticized their anti-military vote. And now, we have Hillary Clinton, the icon of the left, being booed and tried to shout it down.
So what say you, Kirsten Powers?
POWERS: I think that people are expressing their free speech. And they have a right to protest. And Hillary Clinton can respond to that.
O'REILLY: Oh, OK. So you think shouting down someone at a podium is appropriate behavior?
