It’s a well-known psychological tenet that the insecure will often ascribe to others the attributes they seek to deny in themselves. For some reason that brings to mind the newshounds. If, say, a person were to lie about his ‘real name’, he’s likely to be allergic to the truth in other areas as well, and if a little Freudian projection is added to the mix, you might just find him charging other people with his own behavior.

The latest from ‘Aunty Em’ is a lengthy screed that deals with the O’Reilly/Ellen Barkin dispute chronicled here. AE notes:

It might be a record, but I’m not sure News Hounds has ever put a clock on his lies. Let’s count them, shall we?

That’s a clever idea, but hardly an original one. And AE kind of blows it by never actually counting them. But in the interests of exploring Dr Freud’s theory, we’ll count how many lies AE tells. First we’ll have to set the ground rules. As is usually the case, AE takes statements of opinion, mistakes, or paraphrases and classifies them all as O’Reilly ‘lies’. Example:

Actress Ellen Barkin recently told the Angeles Times that the Tea Party is a very, very bad thing…” Read it again (above). Ellen Barkin never said any such thing. She never even said anything close to that. A Bill O’Reilly Lie.

Um, really? Barkin referred to the tea party as an ‘extremist, right-wing insurgency’. Is she saying the tea party is a very, very good thing? Because Mr Bill didn’t quote verbatim but gave a summary, AE insists Barkin never said anything even close to calling the tea party bad. She declares it an O’Reilly ‘lie’! That’s the standard we’ll use. And as easy as that, we’re already at [1].

Subscribers to his newsletter, called “Bill's Daily Briefing,” were treated to this crazy item on November 8, 2011

Bill O’Reilly has several newsletters, but none of them is called ‘Bill’s Daily Briefing’. [2] What’s more, the item in question never appeared in any of O’Reilly’s newsletters! [3] It was published at billoreilly.com.

Any 10-year old with the most rudimentary Google skills will find 39,900,000 examples of Fox News lies in 0.24 seconds.

As much as I’d like to give AE the benefit of the doubt and accept the notion that he believes Google hits are all true, relevant, and proven just because they show up in .24 seconds, even he isn’t that dumb. Clearly it’s intentionally false to claim every Google hit is an individual, proven Fox lie. [4] If that were so then here you’d have 153 million examples of Obama lies, and here you’ll find 3 million proofs that Elvis is still alive. This sort of sophistry is embarrassing, even for an outfit as disreputable as the newshounds.

”The LA paper saw fit to print the slander.” Another lie, Billy. Barkin slandered no one and, what’s more, you know it.

Slander defined:

Someone tells one or more persons an untruth about another which untruth will harm the reputation of the person defamed.

So, did Ellen Barkin tell an untruth about O’Reilly? Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what AE himself says just two paragraphs later:

Bill never wrote or said any of what Barkin claimed he did, even though he had insinuated she was a has-been. Simply put: Barkin lied.

Oh, so AE admits Barkin lied about O’Reilly, but somehow that’s not slander? Putting words in his mouth he never said doesn’t harm his reputation? How exactly does this not meet the definition of slander? It clearly does. [5] Note that AE claims O’Reilly ‘insinuated’ Barkin was a has-been. What is that based on? The ‘Daily Briefing’ entry. Unfortunately, AE isn’t even telling the truth about that. The ‘Daily Briefing’ is not a column by Bill O’Reilly. It is plainly and openly labeled ‘the news Bill uses to plan The Factor’. Another thing AE doesn’t tell you is that it plainly and openly states: ’Posted by Eugene Flarmben’, not Bill O’Reilly! Looks like this is another AE...well...let’s just call it [6].

Barkin responded by saying that mentioning Fox got her in trouble. She was clearly alluding to O’Reilly’s joke of a newsletter.

She was? First of all, let’s stop claiming this was in a newsletter; repeating a falsehood doesn’t make it true. [7] More to the point, neither O’Reilly’s newsletters nor O’Reilly’s website are published by Fox News. FNC has its own O’Reilly page; billoreilly.com is published by O’Reilly and his team. Fox News doesn’t edit it, write it, publish it, or anything else. To claim when mentioning Fox News Barkin was ‘clearly alluding to’ a newsletter that Fox has no involvement with whatsoever is just, well, another AE lie. [8]

”I have never mentioned Ellen Barkin on this broadcast. EVER!!!” No one ever said he did. That’s simply another Bill O’Reilly lie.

What’s the lie here? Is AE claiming O’Reilly did mention Barkin on his broadcast? If so he presents zero proof of that. No, this is one of those cases where a hound cries wolf once too often. There is no O’Reilly lie here; ergo the lie is from AE. [9]

He did take a shot at her in his newsletter

Once again, no newsletter was involved [10], and the post in question clearly is by Eugene Flarmben, not O’Reilly. [11]

I could remind you how often you do call people names—there’s a new pinhead every night, for example.

The untruths get more and more blatant. Hey ‘Aunty’, who were the ‘new pinheads’ on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this week? What’s that? There weren’t any? Either AE is ignorant because he doesn’t watch O’Reilly, or else he’s lying again. And since Ellen Brodsky insists her poodles do in fact watch Fox, we’re now up to [12].

”Today HLN announced she will no longer be doing it on that network. Her show’s finished at the end of the year.” Wait. What? Back up, Bill. Do what? What does Behar do?...I can’t even figure out if that’s a lie, or not.

You can’t? That might be true if it weren’t for all the news reports that HLN has in fact cancelled her show. [13]

It certainly qualifies as another lie to accuse a rival network of lying.

Another fabrication! O’Reilly accused Barkin of lying, not HLN. [14] And AE admitted just a few paragraphs earlier that Barkin did lie about O’Reilly.

AE and the newspups claim to be some sort of truth squad, but with at least 14 (that’s where we stopped counting) lies in one article, they’re clearly an anti-truth squad. Of course a few of these are ‘lies’ by the ‘Aunty Em’ standard, i.e. a mistake or difference of opinion labeled a ‘lie’. But others are the sort of premeditated fabrications the newsliars traffic in day after day. Because as ‘Aunty Em’ proves once again, to be a Fox hater, you first have to be a hater.

UPDATE: ‘Aunty Em’ responds:

Tags: newshounds, oreilly, slootsky