Prince Frederic von Anhalt & Bill O'Reilly

I don't think there has been anything funny about the whole Anna Nicole Smith debacle. I'm sick to death of seeing her image everywhere as though I should care about someone I've never met and someone whom public opinion seems to consider a train wreck. Only in this case I have no problem tearing my eyes away, and frankly, I wish the rest of the world would do the same. The coverage of Smith's death became ghoulish and tacky and over-exposed long ago. Enough already.

Well, except for this one item that showed up in today's news. This is hilarious.

Associated Press is reporting that Prince Frederic von Anhalt, better known as "Gabor's husband", is suing Bill O'Reilly for defamation. Von Anhalt has stated that he could be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby girl. O'Reilly says that's hogwash. Okay, what he actually said was:

"Look, this guy's a fraud. We know he's a fraud. But let's - what I want to talk about is - he's done. His credibility is - is finished."

The thing is, it's not the lawsuit that's so funny. It's the suggestion implied in the lawsuit that when Bill O'Reilly speaks, the public at large takes his word as gospel. That becomes clearer when von Anhalt explains,

People give him dirty looks when he goes to the grocery store.

"They say, 'Look, here comes the fraud,'" he said. "I get lots of e-mails from people bad-mouthing me. It's very embarrassing."

Now, I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that unless people state, "Look, here comes the guy Bill O'Reilly says is a fraud," it's a little hard to prove that people say what they say or think what they think because Bill O'Reilly shot his mouth off one night on his tv show. And how Bill O'Reilly is responsible for the amount of email messages von Anhalt receives is a mystery several layers lighter than who really is the father of her baby girl.

It sounds more to me like von Anhalt wasn't quite ready to give up his 15 minutes in the spotlight, so he's attaching his star to Bill O'Reilly's coattails hoping to grab some extra time with the media. Given the assumption that the attention von Anhalt says he's getting is because of Bill O'Reilly either adds yet another travesty to the whole Smith mess OR it's hilarious.

This time, I choose hilarious.