Rosie Calls O'Reilly an "Imbecile," Murdoch "Big Brother"

Rosie O'Donnell spat back at conservative talk-show pugilist Bill O'Reilly after he called for her firing from ABC last week, comparing him to a character in George Orwell's "1984" who is "a fattish ... man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms."

She didn't reserve her fire for O'Reilly, however. On her blog at Rosie.com, Ro accused O'Reilly of being a totalitarian puppet of News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, as she put it, in her lower-case verse, "like 1984/molding the facts/2 suit the needs/of big brother rupert." And Rosie also revealed that when she and co-host Joy Behar made reference on "The View" to a sex scandal involving O'Reilly, they were told they had to can it about O'Reilly or else "bill o would 'go after' all the hosts" of their show.

Well, Bill O. did go after Ro at least, as TMZ noted last week, calling Rosie "nutty" and "irresponsible" and suggesting that ABC should oust her from the show. Rosie went all literary-nasty on O'Reilly, comparing him to Parsons, a fellow employee of protagonist Winston Smith, whom Orwell says is "one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended."

Response from O'Reilly is awaited.