Stand clear!

Giants rolling around in the media dust!!

It all began with a simple challenge to the actual results of a liberal program. On Sean Hannity’s show the other night, Americans for Prosperity’s Jennifer Stefano challenged Bob Beckel with what Ronald Reagan used to joke about: liberals who know so much – all of it wrong. This is a fun thing to do with Bob Beckel, as the nation has learned through liberal true-believer Beckel’s appearances on Hannity’s TV show and now with Beckel as a co-host of his own show, The Five.

Apparently during the commercial break Stefano had sufficiently exercised Beckel’s legendary impatience with conservatives, and as the show returned to the air, with Hannity noting “we’re back”….Beckel dropped, as they say, the “F-bomb.” Astonishing Hannity and doubtless America.

Once understanding he had said it on the air, Beckel apologized. Although not for the “intent.”

I’ve met Bob Beckel a couple times, the last time on this very segment of the Hannity show. Beckel, liberal politics notwithstanding, is a good soul with a hilarious sense of humor. While a moment like his slip on Hannity can be funny, in fact in the television or radio business, a slip like this can indeed get the perpetrator in hot water. Not funny. He made the best of it the next night on The Five by pouring change into “Bob’s Swear Jar.”

Thus it was something of a surprise to see fellow Fox host Bill O’Reilly take advantage of a colleague’s low moment to publicly twit him by re-running the episode and calling Beckel a “pinhead.” A viewer called O’Reilly out on this the following night, and the host joked that he has never had the problem, presumably a reference to this aging YouTube jewel catching O’Reilly on camera if blessedly off-air. Last night at the end of The Five Beckel took note of O’Reilly’s jab but resisted the doubtless considerable temptation to say, well, One More Thing.

We have no idea what’s going on over there behind the scenes with the Fox crew. One would think that O’Reilly and Beckel would hit it off. O’Reilly once noted that the “far right” hated him, and Beckel, as evidenced, can have problems with conservatives when…ahhhh…. prodded.

Beckel doubtless agrees with O’Reilly’s assessment of the Obama presidency made in that CBS 2008 interview. O’Reilly said of Obama that “I can read people pretty well… I think he’ll govern to the center like Clinton did” O’Reilly, like a lot of people, got taken in by the “hope and change” spin – while Beckel still looks at Obama and sees a liberal centrist.

All of that said, you would think they would get along swimmingly.

But I’m not so sure.

Into my e-mail last night popped this interesting YouTube feature that I was misleadingly told was O’Reilly in a staff meeting, doubtless in a bid to get me to open the attachment. “O’Reilly” had just been informed of the news that President Obama had been eating dogs and that the O’Reilly family dog had been… well…. Check it out for yourself. Maybe it was nothing more than that O’Reilly’s frustration at being spun by Obama just finally boiled over and the sender wanted to call it to our attention.

The sender’s address simply read “Bob@FoxNews.com.” There are presumably a lot of Bobs at Fox News, so I can’t say for sure this was from Beckel. But… but… hmmmmm.

Here it is.

We report. You decide.