Categorical Aperitif

Y'know what's most endearing about Bill O'Reilly? His frequent assurances to his viewers that his program researches stories carefully, so you can trust him when he tells you something 'cause he and his crack staff always check it out and tell the truth about it. Except when they don't.

On the April 24 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly, discussing a controversial ad by the North Carolina Republican Party attacking Sen. Barack Obama and Democratic gubernatorial candidates Beverly Perdue and Richard Moore, asserted, "[T]he reality -- and we've researched this -- is that Senator McCain has no power at all in North Carolina, all right? And Republican leaders in that state think that ad is going to help them, so they're going to go with it, no matter what McCain says." O'Reilly added, "And that's the truth. And that's what we do on 'Reality Check.'" But, contrary to O'Reilly's assertion that McCain "has no power at all in North Carolina," several supporters listed on McCain's website are also listed as having leadership positions on the North Carolina Republican Party's website and have also donated money to both the North Carolina GOP as well as Sen. McCain's presidential campaign. McCain has yet to remove their names from his website and has not reportedly returned their donations to his campaign. Additionally, neither McCain nor the Republican National Committee (RNC), which has also denounced the ad, has suggested that the North Carolina GOP will face any repercussions during this campaign season, at the party's nominating convention in September or otherwise, for its refusal to pull the ad.

Nice, but this is nowhere as impressive as the time when, to back up his false claim that his mighty boycott over their refusal to join the Iraq attack had cost the French billions, he cited a nonexistent publication called the Paris Business Review. Inventing, not just a fact, but a whole source: now that's chutzpah.

Or is it? The simplest explanation, of course, is that guys like Bill O'Reilly are just shameless liars, but as I have previously speculated apropos of Chuck Asay, there is a more charitable possibility: that O'Reilly lives in an alternate universe but broadcasts in this one. In the universe he sees, there really is a Paris Business Review, France really was left economically bruised and battered by an O'Reilly-led boycott, and John McCain really does have "no power at all in North Carolina"; in the universe he broadcasts in, however, he just winds up looking like a mendacious blowhard. If only the ontological rift that bridges the two universes could be closed permanently with BO'Re on the other side, so he could pontificate in a place where his genius and honesty would be appreciated. Science? Get the Large Hadron Collider on it, pronto.