Fox News' Bill O'Reilly finds himself in fight with the right

NEW YORK -- There's nothing unusual about pugnacious talk show host Bill O'Reilly being in a fight. The real surprise this time is who he's fighting.

In the past two weeks, O'Reilly has come under attack from the right, from the same ideologues who helped make the Fox News Channel personality one of the most popular figures on cable television.

Earlier this month on "The O'Reilly Factor," he had a riveting confrontation with Bible-toting Stephen Bennett, a Connecticut minister who speaks out against gay adoptions.

After O'Reilly called Bennett a "religious fanatic," two conservative groups, Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association, urged its members to protest.

"I got 100 e-mails telling me I'm going to hell," O'Reilly said. "That's a little personal."

It's not as if he's ignoring other ends of the spectrum, either. The rapper Ludacris and his fans are mad because an O'Reilly segment led Pepsi to drop the musician as a spokesman. O'Reilly's fight with Hollywood personalities over disbursement of Sept. 11 charity funds continues.

Calculated or not, the dispute with conservative groups may be as shrewd as a politician who adroitly positions himself in the center just before an election.

When Bennett came on the show, he tried to appeal to O'Reilly's Irish Catholicism by reading Bible quotations against homosexuals.

O'Reilly would have none of it. He couldn't understand why Bennett would object to a troubled child in foster care for six years being adopted by a loving gay couple. Bennett couldn't understand why O'Reilly was advocating for gay rights.

O'Reilly says now what has always been hard for people at Fox News to admit: that he once had a hard-core, right-wing audience.

"I think our audience has changed," he said. "The e-mail reflects a very wide cross-section of America watches the 'Factor."'