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Fox News Reports Parody Story As Real News (video!)

This story has nothing to do with Bill O'Reilly, but its just too great to pass up.

On the Tuesday "Fox and Friends," Fox News aired a story eight times as real news that came from a publication like The Onion, called Associated Content.

This part of the story is real: Last week in Lewiston, Maine, a group of students played a cruel prank on a group of Somalian Muslim middle school students, placing a ham steak next to them. Ham is considered by Islam to be unclean and highly offensive, so school offcials filed a report because they believed it was a hate crime.

Associated Content, a spoof news website similar to The Onion, published a parody story in which they created quotes and made up details about the incident.

In the spoof story, the superintendent said, "These children have got to learn that ham is not a toy", and that "They probably felt like they were back in Mogadishu starving and being shot at. No child, Muslim or normal, should have to endure touching a ham sandwich." The story even made connections the Holocaust, "The Jews had to go through the same thing when the Nazis would force-feed them bacon; do we really want our schools to become concentration camps?" The superintendent wanted his students to know that "They are safe from attacks with ham, bacon, porkchops, or any other delicious meat that comes from pigs." The spoof stated that the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence was working with the school to create an "anti-ham 'response plan.'"

Fox News picked up this parody, and ran it as real news during Tueday's "Fox and Friends." They made fun of the incident, asking whether ham was “a hate crime…or lunch?” The hosts kept assuring that they were "not making this up" and assured that "I've looked it up on a couple of different websites up there..." At one point, one host even said "I thought this was almost from The Onion."

According to SunJournal.com:

Following the Fox broadcast, Levesque's office received dozens of angry phone calls and profanity-laced e-mails, made and sent by people all over the country, who charge the school district overreacted to what they believed from news reports to be a ham sandwich tossed at a Somali student.

"Leaving your sandwich on a table is now a crime in Maine?" one e-mail asked. It continued, "This child did nothing illegal in placing his sandwich in front of several intolerant people that will kill YOUR students for sitting at the same table let alone placing a sandwich next to them."

From North Carolina, a e-mailer wrote that he'd read the "news media of your actions with regards to a child leaving a ham sandwich on a table used by Muslim students at one of your schools. Excuse my bluntness, but are you people insane?"

And, in another e-mail, "A ham sandwich is not a hate crime. It's two pieces of bread with a processed meat between them. Stop catering to the less than 1% and offending the other 99%. Please!"

Another e-mail suggested Levesque wasn't qualified to be superintendent of a public school because he "obviously escalated a simple prank into a hate crime."

Read: Think Progress

A compilation of clips from the show:

O'Reilly Calls Media Matters an 'Assassination Website' a 'Far Left Propaganda Thing' on Irish TV

On April 13, Bill O'Reilly appeared on RTÉ One's The Late Late Show, which is filmed in Dublin, Ireland. Pat Kenny asked O'Reilly about his previous statements referring to the poor as "irresponsible and lazy" and to the Iraqi people as "prehistoric."

Here are the quotes in full context:

O'REILLY: Reagan was not a confrontational guy, didn't like confrontation, much rather be your pal ... doesn't want to get involved with the really nasty stuff, the tough stuff, and that's what racial politics is -- nasty and tough. ... It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period. I mean I know people from Haiti, from the Ukraine from eh, -- we got callers all day long on The Factor. From Romania. You come here, you get educated, you work hard, you'll make a buck. You get addicted, you don't know anything, you'll be poor. But Reagan did not want to confront the issue. And that's the truth about it.

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.

Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.

Taken out of context? Absolutely not. That's just Bill's technique of evading what he said. On April 19th, he complained about Irish media in his column:

Last Friday, I appeared on Ireland's version of "The Tonight Show" and the host had scores of cue cards from "Media Matters," the far-left internet smear-factory.

When I asked the man why he was quoting from an obviously biased source, he blinked nervously and put down the cards.

Transcript from the show:

KENNY: Yeah. Some of the things that you've said and -- either on your radio show or on your TV show. Advice to the poor. "It's hard to do it because you've got to look people in the eye and tell them they're irresponsible and lazy, and who's going to do that?"

O'REILLY: Well, where did you get that? Because I don't remember saying that.

KENNY: That's Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly. 11-06-2004.

O'REILLY: By whom? Who put that out?

KENNY: We got it off the website.

O'REILLY: OK. The website you got it off is called Media Matters, which is an assassination website. It's a far-left propaganda thing.

Now, I do two hours -- you do radio, two hours as well. They'll take two, three sentences; they'll put it on out of context. I can't possibly answer that question. I don't know what the discussion was.

But be very careful when buying into the American website factory, because they're set up to assassinate people with whom they disagree. That's where you got it, and we know that game. They play it all the time.

KENNY: But you do have views on, say, the Iraqi people. Did you say that thing about the Iraqi people, that they're "prehistoric?"

O'REILLY: No. I don't remember saying that at all. And, again, taken out of context. And if you want to ask me a question about the Iraqi people or about American poverty --

KENNY: Which I will.

O'REILLY: I'll be happy to answer it. But be careful about this.

[...]

KENNY: But there's another problem. Maybe it's true of all Western democracies. And maybe democracy is not the only way you can rule a people.

O'REILLY: True.

KENNY: There have been other ways.

O'REILLY: True.

KENNY: But when I look at the caliber of the people who are running for the United States presidency, without running any of them particularly down, I mean, it's not exactly a glittering field, is it?

O'REILLY: You know, I'm not going to say that. I admire and respect people who put themselves out for public service. But I will tell you this.

KENNY: But do you know what I mean?

O'REILLY: Those cards you have in your hand came from one of the most vicious websites on earth. All right? And there are a hundred of them. And if you run for office in America, or you're me and you go on every night, those people will assassinate your character every single day. They will lie about you, they will defame you, they will slander you. And we can't sue, unlike the British system. If you're famous in America, you can't sue.

So, put yourself in a position of, "Do you want that kind of life? Do you want your family threatened every day, like my family is? Do you want that?" So the good people say, "We don't want this."

KENNY: Yeah. And if they've ever done anything remotely sinful or wrong or --

O'REILLY: Oh, they'll make it up. They'll make it up. You don't have to do anything. They'll make it up. So, good people --

KENNY: But is there any way to reform that kind of system?

O'REILLY: There has to -- there should be.

KENNY: Because if it's a --

O'REILLY: There should be tort reform in the United States.

KENNY: What does Hillary Clinton got? Forty-four million bucks so far?

O'REILLY: Well, that's fine. That's a different measure --

KENNY: No, but do you know what I mean? If that's what it takes to get elected --

O'REILLY: That's what it takes.

KENNY: It means that some campaigner, someone who leads with his or her heart, unless they have the cash, they can't do it.

O'REILLY: Well, that's true. America, you have to buy TV time. You have to campaign coast to coast. You've gotta have to have a private jet. You've gotta be everywhere.

But the money doesn't bother me as much as the defamation. Because now politics is a vicious game. It used to be in our country where people shook hands and this, that, and the other thing. Now, it's like the Mafia: "Let's kill them." And that has driven good people away.

O'Reilly Again 'Worst Person' for Cutting off Co-Host's Mike

On the March 12th Countdown, O'Reilly again received 'Worst Person' honors after cutting off the mike of his co-host on the Radio Factor after she said that Gonzales-gate mattered and reminding him that under the President's offer, Rove would not have to testify under oath.

OLBERMANN: But our winner, Bill-O. Had his radio engineer turn off the mike of his own co-host, Lis Wiehl, because she said Gonzales-gate mattered and because she reminded him, under the president's offer to Congress, Karl Rove and company would not have to testify under oath. "Stop talking," he yelled at her. "It's not about you, and you're misleading the audience. Stop talking." He then had her mike shut off for three minutes, and asked rhetorically about Wiehl, "What can we do to her? What can we do to her?"

Bill-O, she has to sit next to you for two hours a day. You are already doing just about the worse thing you can do to her. Bill Orally, today's "Worst Person in the World."