Normally, were you not to check in with the Los Angeles Times, we wouldn't insult, make fun, or harass you. But this week, if you haven't been reading (the Times' website, in fact) you're really missing something. And it's not Sam Zell announcing layoffs.

It's the battle between Bill O'Reilly and the newspaper over Times columnist Rosa Brook's May 4 article "Sweet Jesus I love Bill O'Reilly!" As you might imagine, O'Reilly had an opinion about it: he didn't like-y. While Brooks' column is dek headed "Why I owe my gig as an L.A. Times columnist to the name-calling cable and radio personality," the meat of her piece focuses on a research analysis of O'Reilly, which finds that while four in 10 Americans think he's a journalist, he's actually a right-wing mouthpiece. (Absolutely mindblowing, we know.) Another fun facts from the study – and the one O'Reilly's camp are angry about – reveals "O'Reilly managed an impressive 8.88 name-calling incidents per minute — an insult every 6.8 seconds!"

On his show, Bill-O called the study bunk, and lashed out at the Times for printing Brooks' column. And here's where things get a little muddy, a little hard to follow. So keep up.

Following the Brooks item, O'Reilly Factor senior producer Ron Mitchell lobbied to have the Times run this May 10 op-ed from him, where he called the original article bogus. The Times thought this would please O'Reilly, but the Fox News host shot back that printing the op-ed only on the Times' website wasn't good enough. (The Times' Tim Cavanaugh explained, in his May 11 blog post, the op-ed never would've run in the paper, it being long-winded and all.)

O'Reilly wasn't through. He again went on the attack, going after columnist Brooks for being "a lawyer representing George Soros's Open Society Institute. But the L.A. Times has not told its readers that. That's amazing." Cue the Times' May 15 response, which includes a nugget about the Times "not telling its readers" about Brooks' affiliations.

And all of this has brought forth this op-ed yesterday from the Indiana University authors of the original study that Brooks cited. Thank god, it pretty much clears everything up … and leaves O'Reilly looking like an incompetent ass. Not that we needed this whole charade to end up back at Square One.