Next Step Against O’Reilly: Happy American Tourists in Amsterdam

Although they know Bill O’Reilly’s response was “as close as you are going to get to admitting you are wrong”, the two Dutch that attacked the FOXnews anchor are working on a new video to prove that Amsterdam is a safe and pleasant city to live in. That’s what they said yesterday in an item on Netwerk, a Dutch public tv station.

After FOXnews depicted Amsterdam as “a cesspool of drugs, corruption, prostitution and crime”, Elian Wils (28) and Robbert Nieuwenhuijs (26), both from Amsterdam, made a video in which they tried to get some nuance into the O’Reilly’s statements. The FOX anchor replied almost immediately with a new item on his FOX news show. See True/Slant for both video’s.

Moreover, Michiel Mulder, a social democrat member of the city council of Amsterdam, has invited O’Reilly to Amsterdam. “The portrayed image of Amsterdam is false and lies far from the truth. Therefore I would like to formally invite you to visit Amsterdam, in order for you to learn about this city, about its beauty, the attraction it has had on 177 different nationalities.” Billvisitus@gmail.com has been opened especially for him.

Wils and Nieuwenhuijs say they were triggered to make their response because of “all the nonsense” about their city on FOX. “You see a famous American tv anchor who says things that everybody knows are wrong. You could easily see how things were manipulated.” The two were not at all impressed by O’Reilly’s status, Wils says. “We just look at him as a person who proclaims a lot of bullshit. He might be a famous right wing anchor in the U.S. but to me he is just a big prat.”

Nieuwenhuis admits that he was completely surprised by O’Reilly’s second item. “You don’t expect something like that on FOX. After all, our video only had somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 hits on YouTube. When we found out about it, we were quite pleased of course. It was high five.”

Netwerk filmed Wils and Nieuwenhuijs while they were interviewing American tourists for the new video, that is supposed to be ready somewhere next week. One of them is saying that Amsterdam is “definitely safe, there is nothing going on here. You don’t even see any police out here.”

Asked what they would do if O’Reilly would strike back again, Wils says, laughing: “Then we will wait for his invitation to come over to his show. But that will probably not be going to happen.” Nieuwenhuijs: “Then again, it won’t be really necessary, because with our video on YouTube we will reach the whole world anyway.”

At the end of the Netwerk item, Nieuwenhuijs addresses O’Reilly personally, in english. In a direct comment on O’Reilly’s statement that “the way they do statistiscs in the Netherlands is different and it is a small country”, he says: “Come on Bill, the statistics are relative and you know it. And since you script your show up front, I understand that’s as close as you are going to get to admitting that you are wrong.”

True/Slant will publish the new Dutch video as soon as it is available.