On the January 9 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said, "[I]f [former Soviet dictator] Joseph Stalin was still alive, he'd be the UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund] spokesperson." O'Reilly made his comment during a segment in which he and co-host E.D. Hill were discussing a remark UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and singer Harry Belafonte reportedly made on the January 8 television and radio broadcast of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's weekly show. As a January 8 Associated Press article reported, Belafonte called President Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world”:
“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution,” Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.
The next day, UNICEF issued an official statement saying that the comments represented Belafonte's own views “as a private citizen” and not as a member of the organization. It further stated that it did not endorse Belafonte's remarks.
Belafonte met with Chavez in Venezuela as part of a delegation of Americans that included actor and activist Danny Glover and Princeton University professor Cornel West.
From the January 9 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
O'REILLY: Now, you know -- I mean, who cares what he says really. Who cares? Nobody cares about Harry Belafonte here in the U.S.A. I mean he's a -- he's a caricature. The only people who care about Harry Belafonte are the AARP [American Association of Retired Persons], which awarded him one of their men of the year honors this year.
HILL: But he's -- he's -- isn't he the UNICEF spokesperson also?
O'REILLY: Yeah, but that's the U.N.
HILL: Well.
O'REILLY: You know, look -- well, look, let me -- if Joseph Stalin was still alive, he'd be the UNICEF spokesperson. OK. So we don't worry about the U.N. We don't worry about, you know, Harry Belafonte himself. The AARP, I mean, I think, they got some problems. You know, I mean, if this is the poster boy for man of the year, AARP, you got a little -- as Ricky Ricardo once said, “a little splainin' to do.”
