Bill O'Reilly fancies himself a "crusader" in the "Culture Wars," which we presume is why he aired a segment tonight about the dangers posed to children by the shocking amount of pornography available on the popular video site YouTube. Now, we applaud the Fox News host's determination to keep pornography away from children, however it's puzzling why O'Reilly and his producers felt the need to show clips of porn from YouTube during his discussion of the dangers it poses. And not just a single clip, or a quick montage: O'Reilly aired extended montages of multiple YouTube porn clips.
O'Reilly began the segment with a rather strange statement: "I know a lot of adults don't go to YouTube, but this is the rage among American children, children as young as six, seven years old." In fact, we're quite sure that YouTube is "the rage" among adults as well, but moving on.
His guest was conservative columnist Amanda Carpenter, who started her analysis by explaining exactly what YouTube is. However, the camera quickly turned away from her and went full screen to YouTube porn videos, effectively turning Ms. Carpenter's description into a voice-over for a porn montage.
The camera panned back to O'Reilly after Carpenter finished, and he settled on the two of them while he asked a question about the volume of porn available on YouTube. Carpenter begins her answer, and the camera quickly went back to the YouTube montage of various soft porn clips.
Ms. Carpenter gets some real face time towards the end of the segment when she discussed some of the steps YouTube has taken to combat the accessibility of inappropriate videos to children, but by then the audience has likely had its fill of YouTube porn. And if not, well, O'Reilly just showed you the sheer diversity of the porn available on YouTube.
We assume there was nothing cynical in O'Reilly's decision to titillate his audience with long porn montages while railing against the dangers of porn. Then again, Fox News does have a rich history in arousing its audience for ratings.
Watch O'Reilly's warning below: