OH, WHAT A TANGLED WEB O'REILLY WEAVES

by Steve Young

"There are lies and there are damned lies." That spin of Benjamin Disraeli's adage may just have to be amended: There are lies and there are Bill O'Reilly lies.

This past week, while railing at a writer from the New York Times, Bill O'Reilly said that "I've been at Fox News for 13 years and I don't know of one time anyone at Fox lied. If they did (Fox News Boss) Roger Ailes would have them fired." If that were true, today there would be no Fox News commentators.

It's doesn't take much research to find if anyone on Fox News has ever lied -- just watch the Factor and Bill.

"France lost billions because of my boycott."

Calling Senator Christopher Dodd a liar for asserting that Bill welcomed a terrorist bombing San Francisco (Dodd only incorrectly attributed it to Bill's TV show instead of Bill's radio show)

Kidnaped teen, Shawn Hornbeck, liked his captivity by an adult sexual predator ("the situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents...And I think when it all comes down, what's going to happen is, there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstance"). Bill later said that he was only discussing "child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome"

And my favorite:

"(Steve Young) is not a TV writer." In the same segment he said I was "crazy." That claim is still up for debate.

There are videos and soundbites aplenty refuting Bill's contention that no one at Fox lies, but he'll only tell you that those video and soundbites are lies or edited or out of context -- even when the entire clips are presented.

"I've been at Fox News for 13 years and I don't know of one time anyone at Fox lied, " can be pretty much debunked before you get through the first half hour of "Fox & Friends."

But just the same he damned Chris Dodd by claiming that Bill was okay with the bombing of San Francisco because the senator named the wrong show, Bill regularly demeans the intellect of his Folks, through his persnickety, often sophomoric, defenses.

It's easy. Let's give it a shot:

"I've been at Fox News for 13 years and I don't know of one time anyone at Fox lied."

Okay, so perhaps he's never actually watched Fox. Or: He doesn't know of "one time," because he can think of hundreds, maybe thousands, but not one.

There are lies and there are Bill O'Reilly lies. Bill attempts to justify his lies by surrounding it with truths -- as my buddy Aristotle once said, "Liars when they speak the truth are not believed."

When Bill says he's objective and fair (and balanced) to Barack Obama, even FDR knew that "Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."

Though I think Bill more channels Lenin: A lie told often enough becomes the truth.