Critics Blister O'Reilly for Linking Gays to Al Qaeda

Will 'inclusive' McDonald's ads include terrorists?
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 4, 2010 3:12 AM CDT

Bill O'Reilly talks to Jane Skinner about a new McDonalds ad in France featuring a gay teen character that's part of an ad campaign encouraging consumers to "come as you are."
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If one of McDonald's new series of "diversity ads" involves gays, can one featuring Al Qaeda be far behind? That's what Bill O'Reilly wants to know after viewing a French ad featuring a gay teen and his dad, and now furious critics are demanding he apologize. "Bill O'Reilly should be ashamed for equating a family with a gay son to terrorists," a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign tells the New York Daily News. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation sent out an action alert to followers urging them to demand an apology from Fox.

An O'Reilly spokesman called the controversy "silly." The ad features a soft-spoken teen who talks to his boyfriend by cell phone before his pop sits down at their fast-food dinner to tell him he could get "all the girls he wants." Does "this make you want to have a hamburger?" O'Reilly scoffs. When Fox anchor Jane Skinner explains that it's one of the company's pro-diversity "come as you are" commercials, O'Reilly responds: "Do they have an Al-Qaeda ad?"
(More Bill O'Reilly stories.)

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