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.