Bill O Reilly

No one ever accused Bill O'Reilly of being a wilting flower. So when the Fox News Channel commentator and interviewer appeared midway through a Barack Obama rally at a Nashua high school Saturday, his presence was evident. Tall, with camera crew in tow, O'Reilly marched forward to get a good look. Journalists have been known to seek the best angle. But it was after Obama's speech that O'Reilly threw some elbows. And not so figuratively, either.

Call it life imitating art -- imitating life. Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert, who patterned much of his on-air alter ego on outspoken cable pundits such as Bill O'Reilly, is going to come face to face with his muse next week when he and O'Reilly visit each other's shows. On Jan. 18, Colbert is set to appear on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor." Later that night, O'Reilly will be a guest on "The Colbert Report."

Stephen Colbert strode up to the green marble security desk in the lobby of News Corp.'s Manhattan headquarters, where in minutes he would face off with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, the muse for the strident, preening cable pundit he plays on Comedy Central. Suddenly Colbert realized he had forgotten something. "Uh-oh, I don't have an ID," he said with chagrin to the skeptical woman behind the desk. No worries.

Prince Frederic von Anhalt sued the Fox Network and Bill O'Reilly after the popular talk show host called Von Anhalt a "fraud" for saying he could be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby. Von Anhalt, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and one of three men to file a paternity claim for Smith's 6-month-old daughter, filed the defamation lawsuit against Fox and O'Reilly on Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. He is seeking $10 million in damages.

Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera said Friday that there were no hard feelings after they engaged in a shouting match unusual even for a cable opinion program. No chairs flew and no noses were broken, but the finger-pointing verbal duel over illegal immigration on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" on Thursday night became a water-cooler topic the next day.

Got a bone to pick with Bill O'Reilly? The Fox News Channel talk-show host may be willing to debate you. O'Reilly said Monday that he was launching a contest to pick six people to debate him on his show next month. Interested viewers should e-mail their name and proposed topic to oreillycontest@foxnews.com by Feb. 8.

ON any given evening, you could give even money on whether Bill O'Reilly or Nancy Grace best embodies the decline and decadence of cable television news. It's tempting to sigh wearily that there isn't really a snarl, a gross oversimplification or a sneer's worth of difference between them, and leave it at that -- but it's not quite true.

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was scheduled to return Sunday from a three-day trip to Iraq, his first. Footage from his conversations with soldiers at Camp Victory in Baghdad and interviews with military brass will run on "The "O'Reilly Factor" all week and be featured in a one-hour special next weekend. O'Reilly's swing through Iraq comes on the heels of that of his colleague Sean Hannity, who accompanied Donald Rumsfeld there on his last tour of the battlefield as Defense secretary last weekend.

White House versus Fox News eye gouging has been all the rage in recent days. The Obama administration calls the cable outlet a partisan political organ. Fox retorts that the president can't take a fair punch. Fox says just check its news programs -- filled with "fair and balanced" coverage -- and don't peg its reputation solely on the work of commentators like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. The debate over the meaning of Fox News has become so routine, and so routinely partisan, that one hesitates to join the fray again.

TIM RUTTEN'S review of Tom Wicker's new biography of Sen. Joe McCarthy ["McCarthy's Very American Career," March 29] was excellent until the overly optimistic last sentence: "We're less likely to share [the paranoid political style] today, as we've all learned a great deal more about the paranoids' continuing capacity to make all of us suffer for their delusions." McCarthy's paranoid style lives on today in Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and the other heroes of talk radio, especially in their ceaseless invention of horrible threats to their listeners' values (like O'Reilly's trumped-up "war on Christmas")