Tonight on 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace had a chance to interview Bill O’Reilly. Blowhard that he is, O’Reilly didn’t disappoint most of the folks who watch him. But Mike Wallace feigned surprise at some of O’Reilly’s stances on certain things.

The full transcript can be read here, but here’s a partial:

The concept was simple enough: bring the Op-Ed page to television. “The O’Reilly Factor” is all about opinions: O’Reilly’s opinions.

And the Factor Formula works. It’s made him incredibly popular and incredibly unpopular, too.

“When I tell people I’m gonna do a profile of O’Reilly, ‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Don’t let ‘em off the hook. Go get ‘em. Bring ‘em down. You’re the guy who can do it,’” says Wallace on reaction to his interview with O’Reilly.

So why do they want to bring O’Reilly down? “I don’t know who you hang around with,” says O’Reilly. “I suspect they’re ‘pinheads,’ but I don’t know for sure.”

People dislike O’Reilly because of statements like these:

“I’m more angry about it than you are!”

“What about George Bush? He had nothing to do with it.”

“Why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn’t have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn’t you just shut up?”

“That’s not an interview,” Wallace remarks. “That’s a lecture.”

“Oh, I lecture, where I’m a commentator. We went back and did research on the last six years of ‘The Factor.’ Do you know how many times I told people to shut up? Six. Three times in anger and three times just, ‘Ahhh, he didn’t want to shut up about things,’” says O’Reilly.

“My program, my house. You’re disrespectful in my house, you’re putting things out there that are defamatory in my house, you’re gonna get taken to the cleaners.”

You can view the segment and make your own judgments. I just thought it was strange that Mike Wallace chose to interview him.

Watch the interview here.