Posted on 10/18/2004 1:37:23 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 10/18/2004 2:53:02 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
The woman accusing Fox News host Bill O'Reilly of sexual harassment wants her life and career back, she told the Daily News yesterday.Fox News officials ordered "The O'Reilly Factor" associate producer Andrea Mackris to stay out of the office as they moved to fire her.
Mackris said yesterday she is determined to stay in journalism even as her life has been upended.
"I love being a journalist. I never expected my life to take this acute left turn," she told The News yesterday.
Mackris, 33, has not set foot in Fox News since she sued the network's star commentator on Wednesday, alleging a string of "vile and degrading" sexual advances.
She said the scandal is an unwelcome detour that has disrupted her life and career.
"Fox told her not to come in," her lawyer David Ratner confirmed. "She hasn't been in since we started meeting with Fox."
Mackris did collect her regular paycheck on Thursday, sources said, but Fox has asked a judge to clear the way for her termination.
"We have asked the court to consider whether the allegations made public by Ms. Mackris are valid," said Fox spokeswoman Irena Briganti. "We have also asked the court to advise Fox News about the possible termination of Ms. Mackris' employment. Ms. Mackris is still employed by and on the payroll of Fox News."
In an explicit lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Mackris claims that O'Reilly subjected her to phone sex against her wishes on three separate occasions in August and September.
She also contends O'Reilly previously told her to use a vibrator "to blow off steam," described his "amazing" endowment and recounted dalliances at a sex show in Thailand.
O'Reilly, 55, a married father of two, has teamed with Fox to file his own suit in Nassau County. He accuses Mackris and her lawyers of a politically motivated scheme to extort $60 million in "blood money."
He called Wednesday "the worst day of my life."
Mackris and her attorneys later updated their suit to charge that O'Reilly's Nassau complaint amounts to illegal retaliation.
"My logic in not going through the quote-unquote proper channels of Fox News' legal and Human Resources departments has been borne out in the retaliatory actions toward me since I came forward," Mackris said yesterday.
O'Reilly's wife, Maureen, meanwhile, kept mum yesterday as she pulled out of the family's Long Island driveway. "This is a private road," she said.
O'Reilly has hired private security to sit in front of his tony Plandome home. "He doesn't want anyone on his property," a silver-haired guard said.
Originally published on October 18, 2004
She is suing Fox too.
BOR isn't suing Fox. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
BTW, here's an excerpt from something I spit out to a small e-mail list back in July, 2001. Notice the mention of Bill O'Reilly. ...saw it coming a long time ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On the same topic about another man, Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News, does the same thing. When the women of his offices come around for his approval of feminism, he appears to lose his senses and to blindly follow that same aroma. How could a young husband in O'Reilly's neighborhood hold on to his marriage if a man like O'Reilly is a friend to the young man's wife? It's not likely, because Mr. O'Reilly is the only man in this world (as all followers of the aroma are) who is good enough for any woman (or all women).
Should we trust such men around our wives and daughters? How can most fathers (not just half) hold on to their marriages while so many incentives exist to entice wives to divorce?
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my FoxFan list. *Warning: This can be a high-volume ping list at times.
She is being smeared as a freak. Well, she may or may not be, but BORe has just the personality to do what she says he did. I believe her, not because of her, but because of what I have seen and heard of him.
LOL! ...good one, SunnySide.
Here's another one, from March, 2002. Did he listen? Nooooooo. And look what his behavior brought him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bill, a few months ago, I watched you as you emotionally, repeatedly spoke of Dr. Stephen Baskerville's [fathers' rights] "agenda" and hushed him on the air. Your agenda was and is transparent.
Now you've debated Dr. Holstein, saying that Russell Yates should have stayed home with his children and should be charged regarding the murders of his children by their mother.
Just before the interview with Dr. Holstein, you implied things about alimony/support ("child support" in feminist-speak), including that fathers should be imprisoned when they don't pay. The use of debtors' prisons must stop, as imprisonments of fathers resulting from accusations alone by way of laws like the VAWA must be stopped.
Two-thirds or more of all divorces are sought and filed for by women. Very few divorces are sought for reasons of cruelty. These are facts, Mr. O'Reilly. Why should men be required to financially support so many wayward women? You should have to support them until you stop promoting violations of fathers' civil rights and disseminating speeches that portray all divorcing women as being infallible and correct in what they do to families.
Men like you are refusing to call for responsibility from women in an episode of feminism that's ruined families for over three decades. As a result of such irresponsibility, some women believe that they can get away with murdering their children. So who's really responsible, Mr. O'Reilly?
Ms. Yates alone was responsible for what she did. If some imagined secondary responsibility was neglected, it was that of all who encourage irresponsibility in women by complaining about men only.
We're no longer going to support pseudo-conservatives like yourself, your bosses or your politicians. You can either support whole, real families by supporting our fatherhood and being more honest about divorced men, or you can expect to see the results when we refuse to participate in electing more false conservatives who support feminism.
Did you read the complaint? He was talking about a lot more than a vibrator?
LIMBAUGH TRIUMPHS: SMASHES O'REILLY IN LOS ANGELES; TOPS FOX HOST MORE THAN 23 TO ONE IN CHICAGO RADIO MATCH
http://www.drudgereport.com/mattro.htm
,,, hang him out to dry BUMP. This issue has my attention Oppo. Thanx for the ping.
Thank you, Shag, for responding, even though it is a foreign issue for you, in a way (and in a way, not).
The moral of the story for O'Reilly: Live by the big _V_ (as in Eve Ensler's _V_--you know, the V word), die by the _V_.
Now we get to the bottom of this story. Mackris would not hang up when the phone call went to red line because she wanted to record it for her lawsuit case. It will be hard to prove that she did not instigate O'Reilly's behavior for the opportune time to get it on tape.
When Bill O'Reilly is right, he's as right as rain.
But when Bill O'Reilly is wrong, he is ever so wrong.
And he was ever so wrong last week in his on-air "memo" to religious conservatives.
The Fox News Channel star supports adoption of children by homosexuals "when there is not a heterosexual alternative." First of all, adoption is not about sexual agendas at all. Adoption is a practice that should be encouraged only for married couples – and there are plenty of them looking for children. Anyone who has tried to adopt a child in recent years can attest to the fact that there is a long wait – thanks to 1.5 million abortions a year and a government foster-care system whose lowest priority is permanent placement of children in caring homes.
There is no need, as WorldNetDaily columnist O'Reilly suggests, to place children with homosexuals because no one else wants them. Just knock down the barriers to adoption and, in no time, you will see every child in America placed in stable homes headed by married couples.
O'Reilly goes on to suggest it is "unconstitutional to deny a foster child a good home because of an American's sexual orientation."
I don't know which revisionist version of the Constitution my good friend Bill has been reading, but, there is simply nothing in the document that would remotely suggest adoption by homosexuals is a civil right. No one – homosexual or heterosexual – has a "right" to adopt a child.
In adoption, the best interests of the child are always considered paramount, not the best interests of the parent.
But, let's face it: O'Reilly's real beef is with people who take their faith seriously and try to act on their beliefs in the public square.
"The founding fathers took great pains to keep the laws of our country secular so that all beliefs and behavior, legal behavior, would be tolerated," he says. To which I say: Utter nonsense.
Is this what they teach at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard these days, Bill? I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Nevertheless, it's pure fiction. Let me give you some examples of specific actions by the founders that should dispel any such notion:
I could go on and on. I could provide hundreds of similar actions if space permitted. I could also cite hundreds of quotations from the founders that articulated their heartfelt convictions that only a people steeped in the faith and morality of the Bible were capable of governing themselves under the Constitution they ratified.
And, if O'Reilly really wants to argue that the Constitution drafted by those men justified adoption by homosexuals, perhaps he can explain why Thomas Jefferson, as governor of Virginia, proposed the death penalty for those guilty of sodomy. By definition, homosexuals are practitioners of sodomy.
I've praised O'Reilly when he's been right. I just can't hold back when he's wrong.
© 2002
,,, you're right, O'Reilly's removed from my locale but he's a face that fits anywhere. We've got our troubles too.
By Art Moore
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Fox News is threatening to sue a prominent evangelical minister in the ex-homosexual movement who engaged in a volatile exchange over biblical morality on the top-rated television program "The O'Reilly Factor" in September.
Stephen Bennett, who says he left his homosexual lifestyle nearly 11 years ago, has distributed a 60-minute audio tape program called the "The O'Reilly Shocker," in which he responds to host Bill O'Reilly's characterization of people who take the Bible literally as "religious fanatics."
Fox claims Bennett's use of clips from the interview is a copyright infringement.
 Bill O'Reilly |
On the Sept. 3, 2002 program, O'Reilly, a Roman Catholic, called Bennett a "religious fanatic" who wants to "deny people rights" and suggested the minister wanted "all gays to go to hell."
Bennett said he has received hundreds of e-mails from viewers of the segment who said they were outraged at O'Reilly's "anger and verbal abuse."
O'Reilly is coming on like a "bully," charged Bennett, who still counts himself as a fan of the Fox News nightly show.
 Stephen Bennett |
"He's a libertarian who relishes the fact that he doesn't care what you talk about, but we have to have that right of free speech," Bennett said of O'Reilly. "Yet when it comes to me now speaking out – never saying anything nasty about anybody but just addressing the issues – he does everything possible to silence me."
Bennett said he has nothing against O'Reilly personally.
"This is just an issue the two of us do not agree on," he said.
A recording artist and national speaker, Bennett's Huntington, Conn.-based group, Stephen Bennett Ministries, says that it offers help to people who want to "come out" of the homosexual lifestyle.
Bennett, who is married with two children, also is a spokesman for the lobby group Concerned Women for America, which just prior to the Sept. 3 interview criticized O'Reilly for telling the homosexual magazine The Advocate that he favored homosexual rights.
Lawsuit threatened
Bennett received a letter yesterday from a New York City law firm representing Fox which charged him with copyright infringement for sale of a product that uses "almost all, if not all" of O'Reilly's four-minute interview with Bennett.
In the letter, Dori Ann Hanswirth of Hogan and Hartson warned Bennett that if he does not stop distributing the tape and does not turn over all remaining copies, Fox will file a lawsuit seeking monetary damages and injunctive relief.
However, Bennett's legal defense, the American Family Association, maintains that the tape is legal because it uses excerpts from the interview for the purpose of commentary.
WorldNetDaily sought further clarification from Hanswirth, but after conferring with her client, she replied that Fox News does not comment on pending legal matters.
Michael DePrimo, senior litigation counsel for the AFA's Center for Law and Policy, told WND that his reading of Hanswirth's letter is that Bennett cannot use any of Fox's material.
Bennett's tape, part of his group's regular tape-of-the-month series, is legal under copyright law's allowance of fair use and comment, DePrimo said.
"Certainly Mr. O'Reilly put it at issue when he called Mr. Bennett a religious fanatic and did not give him a chance to respond," he said.
DePrimo, who vowed to "vigorously defend" Bennett if Fox proceeds with a lawsuit, noted that it would not be legal "if somebody puts effort into a particular product and another person tries to appropriate it and sell it as his own."
That is not the case in this situation, he insists, charging that Fox simply "does not like the fact that Bill O'Reilly has been exposed as a homosexualist."
Bennett called Fox's demand's "ridiculous."
"Of course I can comment on that interview," he told WND. "If the heart of the interview was on cats and dogs, that means I can't talk about cats and dogs?"
After reviewing his tape again yesterday, Bennett said he has a total of about three minutes of audio clips from the Sept. 3 "O'Reilly Factor" interview and 57 minutes of original commentary.
Discussing theology
Bennett described his response to the interview in a column published by WorldNetDaily in September.
He said that in "pre-interviews," hours before the Sept. 3 show, producers called to discuss probable questions related to his Aug. 27 commentary in the Washington Times about promotion of homosexuality in the U.S. media and its effects on children, titled "The Gay Spin Zone." O'Reilly's comments in support of the homosexual rights agenda published in The Advocate also were added to the mix.
But Bennett says the "O'Reilly Factor" interview turned out instead to be "about Bill O'Reilly's theology."
After numerous exchanges in which O'Reilly tried to press Bennett on whether he thought practicing homosexuals would go to hell, O'Reilly said, according to a transcript, "We live in a secular society. You're a religious fanatic, with all due respect."
Earlier in the day on Sept. 3, O'Reilly referred to Bennett as "an idiot" and "religious fanatic" on his radio program, "The Radio Factor."
Bennett notes that one day later, O'Reilly compared his brand of religious belief to that of the Sept. 11 terrorists in a conversation with a liberal Baptist preacher.
Just a few days before the Sept. 3 program, O'Reilly responded on his show to Concerned Women For America's reaction to his Advocate interview.
O'Reilly opened his Aug. 29 program with this introduction:
In the "Personal Story" tonight, more attacks on your humble correspondent on the Internet. Now, I've gotten used to being pounded by both the left and the right, and very rarely do I see anything even remotely accurate on these websites. This time, a conservative group believes I am patronizing gays. Fine. My stance is simple. We're all Americans here. Nobody should be discriminated against. I'll leave it to God to figure out who's going to hell and who isn't. I'm not qualified, and nobody else on earth is either.
John Aravosis of About.com published a defense of O'Reilly in which he said, "What's troubling about this confrontation isn't that militant fundamentalists are angry about what O'Reilly said, but that they chose to respond to a political difference of opinion by questioning the faith of their opponent."
Calling Bennett a "self-proclaimed 'ex-gay," Aravosis quotes the minister commenting on behalf of CWA, "For a man to come right out and say that he does not believe in the Old Testament … I think that many Catholics across this nation as well as the world are offended by Bill O'Reilly claiming he's an Irish Catholic."
Bennett said that his tape includes Rev. John F. Harvey, a Roman Catholic priest who asserts that O'Reilly is not speaking for the Catholic Church, which views homosexuality as "intrinsically evil."
Harvey, who runs Courage, a spiritual support group in Manhattan for homosexuals, says O'Reilly is abusing his public celebrity platform and promoting a heresy against the Catholic Church. The priest calls O'Reilly "confused" and "filled with pride – putting himself above the Catholic Church."
So she is named as an extortioner?
Grrrrr....give me room...
What a load of crap! Mackris expected to be working with a popular on-air personality hours after publicly making accusations that will taint the guy's reputation forever? Jeez Louise, she filed a $60 million suit, alleges that she couldn't bear working for a pervert like O'Reilly, and THEN says she wants to show up at her job every day?!
And what about going through channels? She hasn't even shown that she told anyone at FNC she had a problem with O'Reilly before she left for CNN, before she returned to FNC, and before she filed suit! What the yell, are all the post-Thomas hearings policies that were put into place all over America to make sure that sexual harassment was nipped in the bud trumped by Mackris' alleged fear of reprisals, giving her some moral authority to go the Anita Hill route?
Mackris is living, breathing proof of a leftist media bias. The only way she could ever dream of that mode of thinking being passed off as "logic" is if she was confident that she wouldn't be laughed off the front page!
Assuming it was true, yeah. But, she didn't have to listen....slam down the phone, sister (unless you're just thinking of the bucks).
Don't you see the problem? It started with Anita Hill. Guys can be real jerks and childish when they get going. I look it as a freedom of speech issue. (and freedom not to listen or respond)
Thanks for the ping!
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