Usually he can find at least one bamboozled philosophy major who doesn’t know the national debt by heart, prompting a snappy one-liner from Watters, a zany sound effect from the producers and a pithy throw back to O’Reilly in the studio. Only 15 of the total 323 donors recorded gave to conservative candidates.
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In the segment, O’Reilly and Watters express quite a bit of outrage that they are eventually barred from harassing students by Cornell’s media relations department, because that’s not their job or anything. Like a good college administrator, Osgood had come out to advance a career – that of Watters, Fox News’s resident man-on-street interviewer.
Many non-Fox viewers are familiar with Fox News Channel’s superstar pundit Bill O’Reilly, but they are perhaps less aware of his self-styled impish and incorrigible sidekick, Jesse Watters.
On Monday, Watters might have gotten a little too comfortable in his role of right-wing gadfly in a visit to Cornell University, another dispatch from the “indoctrination” camps of liberal America.
Midway through another student interview, the university’s deputy director of media relations, Melissa Mae Osgood, walked up and interrupted.
“Can I buy you one?”
As the segment ended, Watters and O’Reilly complained that “they basically didn’t want [Watters] there”, and that “the real reason they didn’t want you on campus was because you have mittens” – and not because he was using his camera crew to hit on women.
Carberry declined to tell Watters why he was denying him permission, only promising to send him a statement via email. Watters said a statement issued later also didn’t explain the decision, only saying “Cornell does not consider a person’s political stance in its hiring practices”. “This time, there was no advance notice”. “I will send you the statement”, responded Carberry.
“Don’t they understand that they look 18 times worse than if they’d just left you alone?”
Fox News/Via Youtube In his segment, “Watters’ World”, Jesse Watters interviews college students, typically poking fun at them.
The vast majority of media interactions on campus, including faculty and student interviews, are done in compliance with our policy and with full cooperation between our Media Relations Office and the news organization. “This was one of the rare cases where the media refused to cooperate”. Our decision to apply our media policy to Fox News, as we do to all news outlets, was motivated by our responsibility to protect student privacy.
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The highlight of the video may be an exchange between Watters and a female student.
