Or maybe it’s something magical about Bill O’Reilly. We have another example of BillO making stuff up. He wrote a book about the Kennedy assassination, and in it, he claims to have been a witness to the suicide of a fringe character in the story, George de Mohrenschildt.
O’Reilly spins the story with third person modesty in Killing Kennedy (p. 300), calling himself “the reporter.” He wrote that he
“traced de Mohrenschildt to Palm Beach, Florida and travelled there to confront him. At the time de Mohrenschildt had been called to testify before a congressional committee looking into the events of November 1963. As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt’s daughter’s home, he heard the shotgun blast [Emphasis added] that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood.
“By the way, that reporter’s name is Bill O’Reilly.”
One problem: he was 1200 miles away when de Mohrenschildt killed himself, in Dallas. We have a tape recording of a phone call O’Reilly made that day, from Dallas, asking for confirmation of the suicide, something he wouldn’t have needed to do if he’d been standing on the doorstep and heard the shotgun go off.
I seem to recall that he claimed to have been in the Falklands, when he was actually in Buenos Aires, 1200 miles away. I’m thinking that he must actually be kind of like an Airy disc, and that around a central peak of O’Reilly, there must be a circular ring of much fainter O’Reillys, with a radius of 1200 miles.
I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate the O’Reilly point spread function. Also, clearly, to eliminate O’Reilly, we’re going to have to trace him back to the aperture source.
1200 miles is the range of vision Jesus gave Bill O’Reilly for winning the War on Christmas.
Does anyone really think anything will come of this? Billo’s defenders will howl and whine about putting us liberals “into a rage” and go “lookie lookie, that other reporter is lying” at any opportunity. Meanwhile Billo will continue to tell people he’s the victim and deny any wrongdoing and people will believe him and millions will still consider Fox News a legitimate news source because it re-enforces their world view.
Is it possible that he’s just bad at Google Maps?
O’Reilly doesn’t seem to comprehend that retcons are a fictional concept.
Well he only said, “that reporter’s name is Bill O’Reilly”. Could have been a different Bill O’Reilly and he’s just depending on people making unstated connections. Well it’s possible…
Like an electron cloud, Billo’s brain exists in a zone of orbital probability that extends some 1200 miles from his empty head. So theoretically, his brain could have been present, Like an electron, the more you can ascertain the position of his brain, the less you can be sure about where it is going.
Let’s just all agree that he’s an empty headed little dolt.
This is Schrodinger’s O’Reilly. He is in 2 places at once, until examination collapses the wave function, and the real O’Reilly physically appears 1400 miles from any danger.
“….a circular ring of much fainter O’Reillys, with a radius of 1200 miles….”
Now that is a truly horrible image…
As I always say O’Reilly? No: Oh Really!!
Fucking thing sucks.
To put it clearly, O’Reilly’s position and momentum are complementary variables. If he’s standing still, you can’t be sure of where he is. Though you can be certain that his head and his anus will remain in close proximity.
He’s Catholic, so the explanation should be obvious. It’s a clear-cut case of Bill-O-cation.
(Sorry, I had to.)
/applause for Andrés Diplotti
Bilocation? That explains how his head can be up his ass and on his shoulders at the same time.
Oh, PZ, you do realize that The Rude One‘s assessment is correct.
Yes, I expect something to come of it, but I also don’t expect to have my expectations fulfilled.
I was just reading that Jon Stewart opined recently (last night?) that we should be talking about more important lies than O’Reilly’s lies about himself, such as Netanyahu’s exaggerations about Iran’s nuclear program. I agree with that. There are more important lies circulating, including those from Faux Noise and even O’Reilly.
But on the other hand, O’Reilly has been a mainstay of this hateful, arrogant media gasbag punditry scene since I first saw him on the McLaughlin group many years ago…and OMG that was on PBS, right after the “liberal” NcNeil/Lehrer Newshour (with it’s seats warmed by experts gasbags from the Hoover Institute and similar conservative think tanks).
So, I can’t help but hope something comes of it. At the very least, I can throw it up on my Facebook page where some of my knee-jerk conservative relatives in the South might see it. Who knows, perhaps one of them will have second thoughts about turning on Faux for “news” tonight.
The Ballad of bill O’Liely
If you miss the blowhard’s book, or you really just can’t look,
You can hear the blowhard blow twelve hundred miles,
Twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles,
You can hear the blowhard blow twelve hundred miles.
Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four,
Lord I’m twelve hundred miles from his tome.
Twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles
Lord I’m twelve hundred miles from his tome.
Not a thought in his brain, ten million dollars to his name,
You can hear the blowhard blow twelve hundred miles,
Twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles,
You can hear the blowhard blow twelve hundred miles.
Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four,
Lord I’m twelve hundred miles from his tome.
Twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles
Lord I’m twelve hundred miles from his tome.
His career goes forever, his lies confronted? Never.
You can hear the blowhard blow twelve hundred miles,
Twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles,
You can hear the blowhard blow twelve hundred miles.
Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four,
Lord I’m twelve hundred miles from his tome.
Twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles, twelve hundred miles
Lord I’m twelve hundred miles from his tome.
=============
If you ever have the misfortune of meeting me in meat space, I’ll sing and play that one for you.
With apologies to Paul Stukey.
A friend cited O’Reilly’s de Mohrenschildt story while making a point about the JFK assassination.
Me: “Hold it – he claimed to have been there fact checking a report? O’Reilly … fact checking???”
My friend doesn’t cite that as evidence for his case any more.
Apparently Bill responded to the reality that he was in Buenos Aries rather than the Falklands by playing some footage showing protests in Buenos Aries. We’re supposed to believe he meant that he was near some protests, not that he was were the real war was going on.
I’m sure he’ll come up with some way to show that he wasn’t technically lying.
I don’t think FOX will care one wit, they don’t consider themselves a legitimate news source preferring to feed red meat to the rubes so that the cash keeps flowing. It’s really the equivalent of a tabloid.
I can hardly fuckin’ wait. I’ll clean toilets in the meantime.
There’s something magical about 1200 miles — Yes, it’s how far up his arse Bullspucky O’reLiar has managed to stick his head.
Kamaka @20:
Don’t worry. I’ll never see any of you. You are safe.
And BILL would walk 1200 miles / and-a BILL would walk 1200 more
just to the BE the man who’d yell right in your FACE
when you opened your door
ba-da-baba…. badada-daba… bumdedumdededumdededumdumdumdededadadaaaaaaaaa…
Bill O’Reilly lied about some nuns too.
Media Matters link
From a friend-
“So an O’Reilly standing somewhere in the vicinity of the airstrip by Grand Forks, North Dakota would also have a firm recollection of being in Springfield and Schenectady at or around the same time, now that he thinks about it?
Looking up putatively optimal spherical codes from Sloane’s database, it looks like there can be at most 36 O’Reillys roaming the Earth without their ego-echoes interfering. Maybe 150 if you only need to prevent an O’Reilly from running into another’s echo and getting confused.
Either way, most of them have to be either boating, flying or clinging to driftwood.”