Bill O Declares War on N.Y. Times

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly launched a blistering attack on The New York Times over an editorial suggesting the talk show host has “white supremacist views” regarding immigration.

“I’m taking on this New York Times,” O’Reilly said on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday night. “I mean, it’s war. Absolute war.”

The Times’ editorial on Sunday, Jan. 30 stated: “It’s easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out . . . But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

“It is all around us . . . Google the words ‘Bill O’Reilly’ and ‘white, Christian male power structure’ for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration view of the ‘far left’ (including The Times) as racially traitorous.”

The Times ran a follow-up editorial Monday saying that O’Reilly “presents himself as a defender of the ‘white, Christian male power structure.’”

That night, O’Reilly told viewers that Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal was “dishonest and intentionally misleading Times readers.” He called the editorial “more lies by The New York Times over the illegal immigration issue,” and said the paper favored blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants.

O’Reilly played a clip from an October 2007 “Factor” broadcast in which he stated: “I’m pro-immigration. I believe America should offer opportunities to foreigners who obey the rules and want to work hard. I want to continue our tradition of welcoming people who believe America is the land of opportunity.”

He said after the clip, “Yeah, that sounds like white supremacism, doesn’t it? Only to a dishonest loon like that guy at The New York Times.”