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letterman couldn't back up any of his claims. he wasn't able to cite a single thing o'reilly ever said on his show. o'reilly backed up his claims--even if only with anecdotal evidence in the instance of "war on christmas" argument--and letterman only had the petulant and smarmy rebuttal that he didn't believe o'reilly. Notice also how Letterman didn't even know if o'reilly had descendants, yet o'reilly was able not only to confirm that he did, but that they were the same age as letterman's.
i'm a tempermentally conservative progressive. i'm in favor of more, not fewer, civil rights (including privacy) for all americans--including the commonsensical right to marry for citizens who happen to be gay (i believe sexual orientation is essential to a person often, but also essentially unimportant); i'm a defender of the separation of church and state; i'm weary of and wary of the harm the religious right has been doing to the republic for 30 years; i'm distressed by the laziness of corporate-controlled and fairly partisanly Republican big media, i'm a registered democrat, and i don't agree with bill o'reilly often. but, i also think the cheap and easy cheerleading for cheap and easy sucker punches by a late-night entertainer is, in a single word, PATHETIC, and it is a pathetic display of progressives' weakness rhetorically, philosophically, and politically that letterman's interview is seen by generally prudent and informed outlets like Salon.com as something somehow impressive or extraordinary.
in the letterman vs. o'reilly match-up, the round clearly goes to O'Reilly, and those of his viewers who saw it will have only had their maybe not-so-unreasonable-after-all assumptions of "liberals" being out of touch and arrogant seem basically correct.
