A judge criticized by Bill O’Reilly responded:
It was the third time that O’Reilly has attacked the judge on TV. Months ago, O’Reilly vowed to make sure Rapkin was not re-elected — when Rapkin announced he was retiring at the end of this year, O’Reilly took some of the credit.
Wednesday night’s salvo was over another Rapkin ruling. Last month the judge overturned the city’s camping law, which allowed police to arrest hundreds of homeless people.
O’Reilly let him have it.
“Now tomorrow, when a homeless person in Sarasota kills a little girl, then Rapkin gets that on his sheet, too?” O’Reilly asked a Sarasota police lieutenant on “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Rapkin, reached a few hours before the show at a private retirement party at a Main Street bar and restaurant, said O’Reilly has “got a lot of nerve” to attack him.
“Somebody who sexually harasses women and then pays millions of dollars in a settlement to get out of it has no place criticizing me,” said Rapkin.
While the charges that O’Reilly was being blackmailed were at least plausible, so was Andrea Mackris’s account alleging that she was repeatedly harassed by O’Reilly. Did FOX investigate O’Reilly? Given the seriousness of the charges, they should have.
If FOX did investigate, then only if the charges were untrue should there be no serious discipline (of course, not all serious discipline is public).
If Mackris’s account is true (and on the surface it seemed to be based in part on transcripts of phone conversations), then I don’t see how FOX News could fail to take action against O’Reilly.
I understand that this was not on-air misconduct as in the Dan Rather affair, but (if true) it was extremely serious misconduct by one FOX employee against another employee of FOX. (Tip to Instapundit.)
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