The Clinton campaign confirms that Hillary is poised to break bread with Fox News' infotainer Bill O'Reilly. The appearance on Wednesday will be Clinton's first ever appearance on O'Reilly's show.
And, it could be potentially dangerous. If you cast your mind back to July of 2007, you might remember the birth pangs of O'Reilly's Luddite jihad against insufficiently moderated blog comments, which featured O'Reilly needlessly badgering Clinton communication director Howard Wolfson over the comment streams over at DailyKos. At the same time, O'Reilly's website had a comment from a veteran user that read: "If [Hillary] wins... my guns are loaded."
Still, seeing as how the Clinton campaign is increasingly at odds with all Democrats who are not currently white, working-class, and carrying a lunch pail to work at some failing mill in some economically depressed Rust Belt burg, she's likely to find a significant ally in O'Reilly, whose well-worn common man schtick belies the fact that he's a prissy millionaire fussbudget who's too cowardly to meet with the veterans he's disparaged. Chances are good they'll have a nice laugh over terrorists destroying the arugula chomping elites of San Francisco.
UPDATE: Via Johnny Dollar, here's O'Reilly talking about the interview this morning on The Radio Factor, promising that it's "not gonna be a gotcha interview," but rather a "face to face" discussion of "a lot of policy stuff."
MORE UPDATES: TalkingPointsMemo's Greg Sargent reports that Clinton will not "be taking on O'Reilly in some way, as Obama was criticized for not doing during his interview with Fox's Chris Wallace." A "senior advisor" states: "That's not the plan."
Also, MoveOn has offered the same criticism of Clinton that they gave Obama after the Illinois Senator failed to similarly challenge Fox News:
"With no plan to call out Fox's Republican agenda, Senator Clinton's appearance on 'The O'Reilly Factor' does nothing more than legitimize a network that will then use that credibility to smear Democrats and progressive ideas in 2008. She's pandering to a small audience that is not persuadable."