Hasta La Creative!

As we noted yesterday, one of the most puzzlng aspects of the latest New York Times investigation of former Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly is that, earlier this year, shortly after O’Reilly paid out $32 million to settle a sexual harassment case (on top of other earlier setttlement payments over the years, as previously documented by the Times), Fox News parent 21st Century Fox rewarded O’Reilly with a new (ultimately ill-fated) $100 million contract extension$25 million per year (up from $18 million per year) for four more years.

On last night’s “Late Show,” Stephen Colbertwho famously modeled his old Comedy Central “Stephen Colbert” conservative blowhard character largely on O’Reillypresented a theory about that in a brief segment the show has now posted on YouTube with the title “Fox News, Where Sexual Harassment Gets You A Contract Extension.” In in, Colbert says, “It’s shocking that Fox News knew about all these sexual harassment settlements and kept him employed for so long, but maybe they were just trying to protect their female employees. Because if Bill’s on camera, that’s one hour a day they knew he’s not groping somebody.”

Colbert also parses O’Reilly’s justification for why, according to the Times report, he sent sexually explicit material, including gay pornography, to his victim. It involves some Colbert angry-letter-writing pantomine that is bettter watched than described.

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