Bill O Reilly

Popular cable TV host Bill O'Reilly will step down as the host of his syndicated talk radio show early next year, saying he can "no longer give both TV and radio the time they deserve." "The Radio Factor" -- which began in 2002 and runs on more than 400 radio stations, as well as satellite operator Sirius XM Radio Inc. -- will end in the first quarter of 2009, Fox News Channel said. Locally, the show airs weekdays 9-11 a.m. on KABC-AM (790). O'Reilly will continue hosting "The O'Reilly Factor" on the Fox News Channel and writing his weekly newspaper column.

With all the bad news in the newspaper -- more people killed in Iraq, record deficits, rising healthcare costs -- I finally read something that cheered me up. Bill O'Reilly is being sued for sexual harassment (Oct. 14). What sweet irony! One of the attack dogs in the Lewinsky-Clinton affair caught with his pants down. I suppose that I could wait to pass judgment until I heard all the facts, but why not just follow O'Reilly's own example and pass judgment based on what side of the political spectrum the accused is on?

An associate producer for Fox News on Wednesday sued her employer and her boss, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, for sexual harassment, alleging that O'Reilly initiated phone sex and regularly used lewd language with her at work and in dinner conversations. In a countersuit, O'Reilly and Fox News sued the woman, Andrea Mackris, and her lawyer, alleging they were engaged in an "extortion scheme" seeking "$60 million in hush money" to keep them from filing the sexual harassment suit.

Your piece on Nancy Grace was right on the mark ["She Rants, They Rave," by Ned Martel, April 11]. News is not arguing with guests and viewers, and if she wants to use these legal skills, why doesn't she work for Bill O'Reilly on Fox? Anita C. Singer Laguna Woods Nancy Grace-less, a vigilante? Hardly. She appears to me a self-promoter whose outrageous comments are low-minded, reveal her disdain for the law and undermine the credibility of the networks on which she appears.

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."

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")

While I agree with Tim Rutten that both Bill O'Reilly and William Bennett are "a melancholy -- even pitiable -- pair," I must disagree that it's "hard to gloat over [their] problems" ["Preaching Virtues From Glass Houses," Oct. 23]. The problem with O'Reilly, Bennett, et al., is not just that they set themselves up as the moral police, but their insistence that anyone who disagrees with them is not different, but wrong. Even worse is their insulting and, frankly, stupid suggestion that personal morality and virtue go hand-in-hand with right-wing political beliefs.

So Howard Rosenberg doesn't like Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" ("O'Reilly's Ridiculous Factor," Sept. 25). He thinks that O'Reilly is opinionated, picky and just plain not a good writer. Well, I have spent several years reading Rosenberg's adoring ruminations on television's wasteland, and I have three words for him: Pot. Kettle. Black. MARK MARTIN Eagle Rock Rosenberg's critique of O'Reilly was too flattering. He failed to mention his venomously poisonous, hatred-spewing diatribes that he unleashes on the Clintons on his daily TV program.

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.

Re "Dream big," editorial, Jan. 1 I enjoyed your somewhat tongue-in-cheek editorial about your editors' 2009 wishes until I got to your penultimate wish about silencing Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. I am no fan of any of those you seek to muzzle, and am glad to be free to choose not to listen to them. But to have the editorial board of what purports to be a bastion of 1st Amendment integrity, and the country's second-largest city's newspaper of record, make public a wish to silence a group of commentators whose views differ from its own is not humorous.