Bill O'Reilly's All Tantrum Zone

You know, Bill, you should really change the name of your show to "The Tantrum Zone". Oh, and btw, while we're at it, the hair dye you're using just works badly with the redness in your face when you get upset under the TV lights. In fact, it's looking so wretched that I'd swear you were about to run for Congress!

From Howie the Putz at The Post:

When he appeared on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Channel show last week, Georgetown law professor David Cole was impressed that the hard-charging host played, as part of his opening commentary, "a balanced sound bite" from the chairman of the 9/11 commission.

Cole was less impressed when an aggravated O'Reilly stopped the taping of "The O'Reilly Factor" and killed the sound bite. And when Cole brought up the incident during his interview, he says, O'Reilly "exploded," called him an SOB and declared he would never be invited back.

O'Reilly says a left-wing academic is using a minor staff mistake to try to discredit the program. "We're trying to be fair," he says. "We're trying to give the other point of view so people can see who has the stronger argument. It's really depressing that the discourse has sunk to this level."

The heated words -- which were edited out of the program seen by viewers -- involved O'Reilly's criticism of the New York Times and its coverage of the controversy over whether there were links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In kicking off what he called "no-spin coverage" of the issue, O'Reilly began the show by saying that "the Times and other newspapers have been under heavy fire for their misleading headlines, basically saying there was no link" between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

As Cole listened from Washington, the program played a clip of commission chairman Thomas Kean saying: "There is no evidence that we can find whatsoever that Iraq or Saddam Hussein participated in any way in attacks on the United States -- in other words, on 9/11. What we do say, however, is there were contacts between Iraq and Saddam Hussein, excuse me, al-Qaeda."

O'Reilly complained that this was the wrong sound bite. In retaping the commentary, he paraphrased one of Kean's points but not the other: "Governor Thomas Kean says definitely there was a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. And he's the 9/11 investigative chief, but that's not enough for the Times."

"I was sort of astonished he would do it so brazenly in front of guests," says Cole, an activist attorney who has challenged the USA Patriot Act in court.