What‘s O’Reilly afraid of?

At 6'4" and with a voice louder than Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's wardrobe, it's hard to believe anything frightens Fox News juggernaut Bill O'Reilly. But there is one thing: bivalves.

"Take the clams out of the shell, though. The shell frightens me," O'Reilly told the waiter at an Italian restaurant in New York while in the middle of an interview with "Newsweek" magazine. The bit is included in an extensive profile covering O'Reilly's power as host of cable news' #1 prime time show and what separates him from Glenn Beck:

While a firmly fixed Catholic (of the Baltimore Catechism, fish-on-Fridays school), O’Reilly steers clear of the faith-based conservatism that animates his friend, and former Fox colleague, [Beck]. When the two men toured together, O’Reilly says, he’d have to warn Beck to avoid evangelizing. “I think he’s a sincere, good guy. I would say to him, ‘Don’t be Elmer Gantry; don’t do that’—because sometimes he would. He really believes that it’s his mission to spread a certain point of view on spirituality. My mission isn’t to convert you, or even to convince you of anything. It’s to protect you.”

And on those sometimes iffy "ambush interviews" his producer Jesse Waters gets down and dirty in? "My job is to bring information to the people. If they wanna think I’m a thug—they’re probably right.”

Read the full profile here.

h/t Mediaite