If there was ever any doubt, there should be none now. Bill O’Reilly has lately been vociferously criticizing Mark Cuban for financing Redacted, a movie about American soldiers in Iraq. O’Reilly hasn’t seen the movie but he believes that it is anti-American and “will incite anti-American hatred around the world.” He called for a boycott of the movie and encouraged people to picket theaters that show it. That’s a good idea if you really believe that something is bad – cut off the money.
But Mark Cuban called his bluff. Cuban paid Fox News to show ads for Redacted and specifically asked that they be shown on The O’Reilly Factor. Cuban expected that the sales department would accept his request but Fox would later call back with a refusal to show the ad. That never happened. The movie ads ran on both the live broadcast and the subsequent rerun.