As if Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly hasn’t suffered enough embarrassment after having been caught lying about winning Peabody Awards and his alleged upbringing in near-poverty, Eugene at Demagogue noticed O’Reilly on the Today Show yesterday fibbing about the success of his latest book, Who’s Looking Out For You? How very sad.
As recently as last week, O’Reilly’s latest screed was still behind two liberal political books from O’Reilly nemeses, Al Franken and Michael Moore. To the relief of his fans everywhere, O’Reilly broke through on this week’s bestseller list and made it to number one.
The Today Show’s Matt Lauer, noting O’Reilly’s achievement, asked the Fox News host if there was “a little ecstasy” in making it past Al Franken’s latest bestseller.
O’Reilly said, “We’ve outsold that guy all over the place. We’re running against Hillary for most copies of non-fiction books sold this year. That’s who we want to beat, and that’s why I’m here talking with you.”
So Eugene at Demagogue decided to take a closer look at O’Reilly’s claim that his book has “outsold” Franken’s book and that he’s “running against Hillary for most copies of non-fiction books sold this year.” It turns out, much to no one’s surprise, both claims are false.
In fact, as luck would have it, USA Today ran a list yesterday of the best-selling books of 2003. It terms of the political books at issue here, they’re ranked as follows:
7. Living History — Hillary Rodham Clinton
21. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right — Al Franken
60. Dude, Where’s My Country? — Michael Moore
63. Who’s Looking Out for You? — Bill O’Reilly
So, has O’Reilly outsold Franken? No. He hasn’t even outsold Moore. Is he running against Hillary for “most copies of non-fiction books sold this year”? Well, they’re both in the same category, so if you wanted to be really generous, I guess you could say that O’Reilly really was technically “running against Hillary” in one sense. But otherwise, no, he’s just not telling the truth.