Here at News Hounds, we have theorized privately for quite some time that something deeply disturbing must be going on Bill O'Reilly's private life to be driving him so far off the rails so often lately. Thanks to a post on Gawker this afternoon, I think we now know. O'Reilly's involved in a very nasty custody battle with his ex-wife and he seems to think he can get God to side with him against her. Seriously.

We've previously reported that O'Reilly and his wife had separated and that he had allegedly tried to wreak revenge on his wife's police-detective boyfriend by having him investigated by the internal affairs unit. It turns out that O'Reilly is now divorced from his ex and she has married that detective. Gawker and the ACLU are suing for the public records showing whether O'Reilly engaged in any activity designed to intimidate his wife's lover that could  be inappropriate at best and illegal at worst. In today's post, Gawker's John Cook says that action is still pending.

Meanwhile, Cook has this at Gawker:

In October 2011, (ex-wife) McPhilmy took O'Reilly to court after learning that the woman she thought had been a neutral therapist serving the needs of her children was in fact a member of her ex-husband's household staff. The therapist, a Long Island licensed social worker named Lynne Kulakowski, was working long days and some evenings in O'Reilly's house, on his payroll, and basically acting as the children's nanny.

...

At a Second Department hearing in January, McPhilmy's attorney claimed—and O'Reilly's attorney did not dispute—that Kulakowski was earning a six-figure salary from O'Reilly. All of this, of course, made a mockery of the custody agreement's appointment of Kulakowski as a neutral arbiter of disputes—O'Reilly rigged the game against his ex-wife. A lower court initially denied McPhilmy's request for a hearing about O'Reilly's co-optation of the therapist, but the appellate court agreed with McPhilmy and sent the case back for a hearing.

But wait, there's more. O'Reilly - a staunch demander of family values in others - is working to get the marriage annulled at the same time that he's attacking the legitimacy of his wife's second marriage. Gawker notes: 

While he's busy harassing McPhilmy for asserting the holiness of her second marriage, O'Reilly is trying to deny the existence of his first: He is, Gawker has learned, seeking an annulment of his 15-year marriage, which produced two children. Null and void. Invalid in the eyes of God. Never happened. This despite his manifest belief in the "stability" that straight marriage brings to the culture and concern at the (purportedly) declining marriage rates in countries that allow gay people to marry one another. If successful, the annulment would presumably render his 2004 escapade with former producer Andrea Mackris, whom he repeatedly and vividly sexually harassed with threats to take "the falafel thing...and put it on your pussy," retroactively kosher with Jesus. (It would also make him even more of an asshole than his familial nemesis Joseph Kennedy, who tried and failed to have his 12-year marriage annulled.)

I highly recommend the entire article.  Besides the fascination of the lurid details, it also gives me some compassion for the world of pain O'Reilly must be in over this. However, that's certainly no excuse for O'Reilly's hypocritical vindictiveness.

Oy guvalt.