Shall we “let them eat sand?”

In 2001, six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bill O’Reilly called on his fellow bloodthirsty patriots to wage a war against civilian targets if the Afghan government did not immediately extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S.

According to the media watchdog FAIR:

“This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard. Remember, the people of any country are ultimately responsible for the government they have. The Germans were responsible for Hitler. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians. But if they don’t rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.”

Of Iraq, another country on which the Fox News host (perhaps clairvoyantly?) fixed his crosshairs, he said “their infrastructure must be destroyed and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain…. Maybe then the people there will finally overthrow Saddam.”

It also seems that O’Reilly in all his wisdom, was an early supporter of the Arab Spring. Sort of.

If Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi didn’t step down and go into exile the U.S. should “bomb his oil facilities, all of them. And we mine the harbor in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. We also destroy all the airports in Libya. Let them eat sand.”

We wonder what he’ll have to say about Chechnya, the once-wartorn republic in the Russian Federation, in the coming days.

Image: [Raw Story]

h/t Peter Hart

PRNewser: Fox News host on its hiring process — “We go into the Victoria’s Secret catalog and we said, ‘Can any of these people talk?’” Okay, but how do they explain Bill O’Reilly?

AgencySpy: Here is a video of children singing that will depress the hell out of you. You’re welcome!

FishbowlDC: CQ Roll Call has a new VP of digital strategy.

The Daily Beast has published a list of the highest paid TV anchors, and it’s massively depressing. It’s sad because some of the people featured in the list don’t do much at all. Like Kelly Ripa.

According to a “highest paid TV star” list from TV Guide, Ripa makes $20 million a year just for acting ditzy on a morning show. Of course Bill O’Reilly gets paid $20 million a year to spread hatred and ignorance, so maybe we shouldn’t be so upset about Ripa’s salary.

Below are a few of the other top earners. The Daily Beast’s full list is here; TV Guide’s here.

• Matt Lauer – $25 million
• Anderson Cooper – $11 million
• Sean Hannity – $15 million

Juan Williams and Charlie Rose/Getty Images for The Guardian

The Guardian, the iconic U.K. newspaper, branched out across the pond last year. Last night, it was time for the tabloid to reap the rewards. Rather than a simple party, The Guardian made it a creative thinking process for the several hundred invited guests.

The newspaper provided a debate between commercial pressures and journalistic standards. CBS This Morning‘s Charlie Rose was the engaging moderator.

The panel featured someone who knows first-hand about the pressures of journalistic standards. Juan Williams was dramatically fired by NPR in 2010. Williams, who remains a contributor to Fox News, has had time to reflect on his ugly end to an 11-year tenure.

“It’s not fun being called a bigot and a bad journalist,” Williams tells FishbowlNY. “The degree to which it was about assailing my personal reputation, struck me as Kafkaesque. I didn’t know what to make of it.”

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• TVNewser: Bill O’Reilly signed a lucrative new deal with Fox News, so naturally he wanted to tell everyone about it and his book.
• AllTwitter: There is going to be something called a “Live Tweet Commercial,” which means there are definitely people in other countries saying “American’s are idiots” and they are right.
• GalleyCat: Today is “Poem in Your Pocket Day” which is only slightly less stupid than a Live Tweet Commercial.

It appears that Fox News has had enough of Gawker’s meager mole, Joe Muto. The network sent a strongly worded letter threatening criminal and civil charges if Gawker didn’t stop publishing Muto’s dispatches. The letter demands that Gawker “immediately stop publishing information and videos that have been unlawfully obtained by or from Joe Muto, and return them to Fox News.”

Speaking of Muto’s posts, we’re guessing that the photo of Bill O’Reilly with a topless woman that accompanies the letter from Fox is Muto’s doing. If so, we should congratulate Gawker and Muto on yet another utterly unimpressive update. The picture looks like it’s about 30 years old and is far from anything scandalous. In fact, all it does is prove that a long, long time ago, O’Reilly was a bro who could bro it up with the best of them.

The longer this goes on, the worse Gawker looks. But maybe that was the goal of the mole all along, and he’s really a counteragent, working for Fox? Now that would be a story worth following.

UPDATE:
See below for the letter Fox News sent to Muto, courtesy of TVNewser.

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Gawker has a current Fox News employee writing “regular dispatches from inside the organization,” which is pretty amazing, considering how little you ever hear Fox employees speaking out against the company. However, the debut column is extremely boring.

The biggest “gotcha” moment from the mole is a behind-the-scenes video of Mitt Romney talking about his love for horses. Scandalous! Yes, it shows how Romney clearly appreciates the finer things in life, but doesn’t everyone already know that? The mole clearly thinks it is a big scoop:

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• TVNewser: Here’s a sentence we never imagined writing — Bill O’Reilly defends Ellen DeGeneres.
• PRNewser: Clint Eastwood insists that the Chrysler ad he starred in wasn’t a show of support for Barack Obama. We believe him, mainly because making Eastwood mad isn’t a good idea.
• FishbowlDC: The White House has a “soup of the day.” Oh c’mon, that’s at least a little interesting.

I’ve been covering  Wednesday’s at Michael’s for five years and have never seen anything like the head-spinning scene that unfolded there today. Harvey Weinstein and Steve Tisch threw a pep rally to end all pep rallies, and the media A-list all came out to cheer on their favorite team. Peggy Siegal and her minions descended on the place before the crowd rushed in with plenty of New York Giants paraphernalia, transforming the California cool decor into an indoor tailgate party.

By noon, I counted at least a dozen paparazzi staked out at the entrance, and they certainly weren’t disappointed. Drew Nieporent was the first to arrive (“What’s for lunch?”), and in short order the lounge was flooded with famous folks, including Brian Williams, Gayle King, Piers Morgan, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb (wearing newly identical red dresses and looking fabulous), former governor George Pataki, Matt Lauer and various members of the Tisch family.

Everyone’s mind was on the big game; conventional wisdom says the Giants will be this year’s Super Bowl champs, but it’s going to be a close one.  (All except Jerry Della Femina, who predicts the Patriots will take it 27-24.) “I think it’s going to be a squeaker,” offered Andrew Ross Sorkin. “At least I hope so because it will be a better game.”

Not surprisingly, Giants legend Frank Gifford, who will be watching the game from his home in Greenwich with family and friends, predicts a 30-10 win for his former team. “Eli Manning has really come into his own as a quarterback,” he told me. “But a quarterback is only as good as his team. They’re a great team. If you were playing for the Giants, you’d be a great quarterback.” Doubtful, but we appreciate the sentiment. Brian Williams, who’ll be going to the game, refused to speculate on the final score for fear of tempting the gods. ”You just don’t do that,” he told me.

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• TVNewser: Surprisingly enough, Bill O’Reilly isn’t a fan of people who protest Republicans.
• AllTwitter: Twitter is rolling out a complete redesign, so feel free to start complaining starting… Now.
• PRNewser: In an effort to make everyone ignore how stale it tastes, Heineken is blitzing Facebook. Good luck.