We Are Shocked To Learn That Bill O'Reilly Beated Up His Wife, Allegedly

GUYS! You are not going to believe this, but it's just possible that Bill O'Reilly, in addition to being a scummy liar who lies and bullies people and is generally the worst person ever, also allegedly assaulted his ex-wife sometime before the couple separated in 2010. O'Reilly and his former spouse, Maureen McPhilmy, have been fighting over custody of the couple's two minor children; according to Gawker, the judge in the case awarded full custody to McPhilmy three weeks ago. While the court records are sealed, a "source familiar with the facts of the case" told Gawker:

[A] court-appointed forensic examiner testified at a closed hearing that O’Reilly’s daughter claimed to have witnessed her father dragging McPhilmy down a staircase by her neck, apparently unaware that the daughter was watching. The precise date of the alleged incident is unclear, but appears to have occurred before the couple separated in 2010. The same source indicated that the daughter, who is 16 years old, told the forensic examiner about the incident within the past year.

And we didn't think our opinion of Captain Loofah could get any lower. Gawker reviews a whole parade of weirdo behavior by O'Reilly following the end of his marriage. Like that time O'Reilly tried to ruin the career of his ex's new boyfriend, a Nassau County cop.

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After the O'Reilly's divorce was finalized, Billo and McPhilmy agreed to work with their kids' family therapist to resolve custody issues, McPhilmy alleges that Bill put the therapist on his payroll (he's a job creator!) after which the shrink began "to perform virtually all of his parental duties." Leaving aside the possibility that, in the long run, the kids may be far better off having a therapist be their full-time daddy, McPhilmy sought sole custody of the kids.

Also too, in March 2013, O'Reilly attempted to get McPhilmy excommunicated from the Catholic Church, presumably because he was pretty sure he could bully God around as well. McPhilmy received a letter from her local parish in Long Island telling her to stop receiving communion now that she is divorced (that'd be one of your Mortal Sins), and also was admonished to stop telling her children that her second marriage was legitimate in the eyes of God, because duh, divorce-n-remarriage = adultery (Catholicism is weird). At the same time, O'Reilly was also trying to have his 15-year marriage annulled, through that grand ecclesiastical argle-bargle that is somehow capable of determining that, nope, there was never a Real Catholic Marriage there, just a mistake, oops, all fixed.

So: Bill O'Reilly, spouse abuser? It seems awfully difficult to believe that such an even-tempered fellow would ever lose his cool and drag his wife down the stairs by her neck, given his strong commitment to traditional values, his worries that America is becoming a bunch of sissy women, and his concerns that angry rhetoric can lead to violence. And as Gawker notes, Billo also cares deeply about how family dysfunction in the black community leads to crime and poverty, too, although apparently in rich white TV news bloviators' homes, it just leads to lawyers' fees.

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Can we really condemn Bill O'Reilly for allegedly dragging his wife, by the neck, down a flight of stairs, in front of his teenaged daughter? The man no doubt suffers from PTSD from all his combat experiences, after all. We've already set our TiVo to record tonight's O'Reilly Factor; we're guessing Bill will talk about how great his ratings are.

[ Gawker ]