Bill O'Reilly says that this sexual harassment suit against him is part of an extortion scheme in which Mackris and her lawyers attempted to get him to pay them $60 million.
I hear big numbers like that a lot, so I didn't really pause the first time I saw the figure. It was only after awhile that it really sunk in.
Sixty.
Million.
Dollars.
Supposedly that's what they're asking for in the lawsuit, too, though I can't confirm that anywhere.
At any rate, AJ told me about this earlier, but I was waiting until I found a decent article before posting about it. Here's one, from MSN.
As far as I can tell, thesmokinggun.com does not have a copy of O'Reilly's complaint. However, Matt Drudge does, and here it is. (Is there a particular reason why thesmokinggun.com would be uninterested in O'Reilly's countersuit? Hmm.)
Of course, I have no idea who's telling the truth here. AJ says that the purported O'Reilly quotes from Mackris' suit don't sound like anything O'Reilly would say--that O'Reilly's speech is more sophisticated. I don't watch The O'Reilly Factor, so I can't really comment on that, but I do think it's dangerous to assume that how someone speaks on a scripted television show is how they will speak casually.
The idea that a woman would lie about this, would write pages and pages of allegations that appall the reader and garner her the sympathy of all women, would use sexual harrassment--a serious and sickening issue--in order to make some money, is despicable. And the idea that a man would do this to a woman, would ignore her protests and force his way into her private life, using her as a sex toy, stringing her along with promotions and raises and all the while threatening to ruin her, is also despicable.
So no matter who's lying here, somebody is despicable, and I hope the courts can ferret out who it is.
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I didn't actually mean to sound completely supportive of O'Reilly. I don't get cable at home, so really the only times I see his show is when it happens to be on when I'm at someone else's house that happens to have Fox News.
There is guarantee that he'd carry himself the same way on-air when he's calling up girls to get his thing on, but what I read of her complaint sounded more like something a romantic-minded teenager would spout than Bill O'Reilly.
I also found it odd that (if this is true) she left Fox for CNN, but then came back "home" to the Factor. I don't know all the dates of this shit - maybe he waited until she came back to start his sex talk. Maybe they had some kind of relationship that both of them are denying. I'm not sure.
But the 60 million is the thing that fucks with me. I can't confirm it either - that's just something one side in this is claiming, as far as I can tell. Truth be told, I haven't investigated it very much. If she's bullshitting here, then it bothers me. If she's telling the truth, then it bothers me. But neither of them really mean shit to me, and I have no real personal stake.
It's one of those matters that jumps out at you and grabs your attention - makes you want to see SOMETHING done about it, but then you find that you don't really know who to believe, and you have to decide you'll wait for the courts to figure it all out.
All I wanted to get across was that, although it's a shocker at first, sometimes its too easy to think that someone in power is corrupt. Most times, they are, but sometimes they aren't. I figured I'd look at the Fox News icon fair and balanced. ;> We'll see what happens.
-AJ
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