From the Washington Post (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/art...Apr15.html)
The Unfunny Factor
By Lloyd Grove
Tuesday, April 15, 2003; Page C03
Maybe Bill O'Reilly should declare a "No-Quip Zone."
Emceeing Saturday night's Best Friends rock-and-roll gala at the Marriott Wardman Park -- which raised $800,000 for the 15-year-old charity benefiting inner-city schoolchildren -- the Fox News Channel star was trying to fill dead air during a lull in the entertainment.
Members of the "Best Men," as the sixth-to-eighth-grade boys in the program are called, were delayed getting onstage to perform a lip-synced rendition of the Four Tops standard "Reach Out (I'll Be There)." O'Reilly ad-libbed: "Does anyone know where the Best Men are? I hope they're not in the parking lot stealing our hubcaps."
Many in the audience -- which included Cabinet secretaries Tommy Thompson, Gale Norton and Mel Martinez, Mayor Tony Williams and business types Fred Malek and Jim Kimsey -- apparently didn't hear about the hubcaps amid the hubbub. A witness spotted attendee Bo Derek's jaw dropping, and yesterday she confirmed that she did hear it, but declined to comment further. Channel 9 anchor Andrea Roane was overheard murmuring: "Unbelievable."
"To say that this conservative audience -- dominated undoubtedly by many of Mr. O'Reilly's biggest fans -- was aghast, is an understatement," one attendee e-mailed us, asking for anonymity. "The well-known Republican politicians and their spouses seated at or near my table were appalled."
Yesterday O'Reilly told us: "This is ridiculous and foolish. No good deed goes unpunished. If you guys want to snipe at me, then snipe at me. This thing raised a lot of money for a good charity. Everybody was happy. I don't want to comment on anything else."
Best Friends founder Elayne Bennett, wife of virtues czar William Bennett, said O'Reilly has donated $60,000 to the program over the past 1 1/2 years, including a $5,000 check he handed over Saturday: "Bill has been wonderful to these boys. He puts his money where his mouth is. He's a New York guy. He was a schoolteacher in the New York City public schools. He loves these kids."
As for O'Reilly's attempt at humor, Bennett told us: "I didn't hear it, but it was absolutely a throwaway line."
