Bill O’Reilly Went After Ossoff. Here’s Why He Can Suck It.

I wasn’t going to write about Bill O’Reilly — ever — because I couldn’t stand him when I was one of the lone Democrats at Fox News and it was pretty obvious that he couldn’t stand me after I “disrespected” him on his show once by calling bullshit on something he said. But try as I might not to think of this malignant narcissist, he popped up in my timeline yesterday with a statement so brazen, so utterly devoid of self-awareness that he left me no choice but to write this.

On Tuesday, O’Reilly erupted over Sen. Jon Ossoff’s jab at Donald Trump’s close aide Natalie Harp. Ossoff’s comment — heavens to Betsy! — was that Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” than do his job.

O’Reilly decided that this was not merely cheap politics but a descent into moral depravity. “You don’t get lower than that,” he bloviated, calling Ossoff a “smear merchant.” Then, determined to demonstrate the high-minded standards for which he is famous, O’Reilly announced that he would vote for Vladimir Putin over Ossoff and suggested that, were he Trump, he would be “combing everything that Ossoff’s ever done.” (Maybe Bo Dietl can take on the task of “combing through everything Ossoff’s every done” for Trump, the way he once took on that task for Fox’s lawyers when a young woman came forward alleging that O’Reilly sexually harassed her.)

Nothing says principled objection to smear tactics like demanding that an adversary’s entire life be raked for dirt. But the real obscenity here is O’Reilly’s assumption that he gets to lecture anyone about the gutter.

First, a little background about Fox News and me. For many years, I was one of the network’s few on-air liberals. After I sued Fox and its former chairman, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment and retaliation, I signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement. Knowing what I know now, I never would have agreed to a gag order. In fact, I later cofounded an organization dedicated to eradicating these kinds of silencing mechanisms in the workplace. (You can check out that work here.)

But I can certainly talk about O’Reilly, because my case had nothing to do with him. And here is what I can tell you about what was going on at the network while he was the undisputed primetime ratings king of cable news.