Roger Ebert, the only critic in America who understood how awesome KN0W1NG was, is taking on cable shouter Bill O'Reilly.

The Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert's professional home since O'Reilly was a bold fresh piece of Marist College undergrad, dropped O'Reilly's syndicated column, because who on Earth has the time or desire to read Bill's ghostwriter's regular musings on current events? So Bill put the Sun-Times in his illustrious Hall of Shame, right next to The New Yorker and The Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus (neither of those are jokes).

Ebert explains that the paper only picked up the column when it was owned by right-wing criminal Conrad Black, and that they dropped it to save a little money, because Conrad Black bankrupted them. Also, naturally, fewer readers have complained about the change than have complained about the paper dropping Nancy. Then the kicker:

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?

That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

Hah. A dick joke!

You know, in different circumstances, they might've been friends. A filmed adaptation of O'Reilly's classic novel Those Who Trespass may have even delighted the man who authored the camp classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (Well, ok, Bill's obvious inability to write a slightly realistic—let alone erotic—sex scene is what makes his novel camp, so maybe they would not get along, as Ebert has a sense of irony.) But no, it was not to be.