Beck and O’Reilly bring "Bold & Fresh Tour 2010” to North Charleston

NORTH CHARLESTON — No one will ever accuse Glenn Beck of being subtle.

The Fox News host — in town Saturday for a performance at the North Charleston Coliseum — said he’d been pondering a response to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s alleged criticism of him for just about five months.

“This is what I’ve come up with: Lindsey Graham sucks,” Beck said. “Put that on a bumper sticker and it might sell.”

Beck was in town with the elder statesman of Fox News TV hosts, Bill O’Reilly, on what they are calling the “Bold & Fresh Tour 2010.” Basically, fans in the audience said, this was a funnier, more intimate version of their TV shows. Or as intimate as you can be in front of 9,000 folks at a sold-out show.

Over the course of the afternoon, the two poked fun at global warming, the Democrats’ health care legislation, the stimulus plan — all the usual targets. They did most of it with great comic timing, including a few jabs at one another.

“I watch these guys every day,” said Chad Coyle of Daniel Island. Like many folks in the audience, he was a serious fan of Beck. “He’s more serious on TV,” Coyle noted.

Beck largely stuck to his usual anti-establishment message, praising folks like Sen. Jim DeMint and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. He brushed aside the popular opinion that Palin is “not smart.”

“It’s Harvard, Yale and Princeton that got us here,” Beck said. “What do you say we give a community college a chance?”

While Beck went for the cheap laughs — contorting his face at one point to look like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — O’Reilly’s humor came into play during meatier subjects. He lambasted the current health care reform legislation, saying he would rather do things that didn’t cost money, such as tort reform and allowing “the lizard with the Australian accent” to sell insurance across state lines.

And forget the public option.

“There are 30 million people in this country who don’t have health insurance and many of them are named Otis the methamphetamine head,” O’Reilly said. “I don’t want to pay for his health care.”

Because this tour has just started, and has few announced dates, the North Charleston show drew a decidedly regional audience. Jim Curby and his wife drove down from Ravenna, Ohio to catch the show. Curby said he’s been to some Tea Party events and likes what he hears from Beck and O’Reilly.

“They’re saying what I’ve been saying for 25 years,” Curby said.

Still, ever the contrarian, O’Reilly told his audience a few things they may not have wanted to hear. He forced a bit of applause for President Obama’s plan to cut small business taxes, and said some criticism of this administration has not been accurate. He said this president “had nothing to do” with the sleazy Wall Street practices that contributed to the recession.

“It’s not his fault that the economy is in a recession,” O’Reilly said, not drawing applause.

But, O’Reilly called the stimulus plan a “bad bet. That’s on his plate.”

Despite the weather, the show attracted a demonstration outside the coliseum. Keely Robinson and her sister, Caitrin, held up signs that said “Glenn and Bill are the Mainstream Media” and “Volume does not equal Truth.” The reaction was mixed.

“Some people gave us a thumbs up at first but then thought about it and gave us a thumbs down,” Keely Robinson said. “They shouted some pretty nasty things at us, which shows the kind of people who come to these things. We just wanted to show that not everyone in Charleston thinks like this.”

But there clearly are a lot of folks in the Lowcountry who do. And most of them at North Charleston Coliseum got just what they wanted to hear.