Looks like Bill O'Reilly's a factor in a lawsuit brouhaha.

The Fox News gabber, whose The O'Reilly Factor is the highest-rated cable news show and a favorite among conservative Republicans, filed suit against one of his producers Wednesday, claiming that she and her lawyer tried to extort $60 million from him in exchange for not filing a sexual-harassment complaint against him.

O'Reilly, who's been making the talk-show rounds promoting his new children's book, The O'Reilly Factor for Kids, stated that producer Andrea Mackris targeted him because of his fame.

"There comes a time when enough's enough," O'Reilly said in the "Talking Points" segment of his show Wednesday. "So this morning I had to file a lawsuit against some people who are demanding $60 million or they will 'punish' me and Fox News. Sixty million.

"I really can't say anything else. I don't want to waste your time with this. The justice system has the case. We'll see what happens. But in the end, you should know this is all about hurting me and the Fox News Channel.

"It's a shame we have to live in a country where this happens, but you got to go through it."

Shortly after O'Reilly filed his suit, Mackris fired back with a lawsuit of her own, alleging that O'Reilly forced her to have phone sex with him several times against her will while she was in his employ.

Both lawsuits were rapidly posted on The Smoking Gun Website.

Mackris had worked on The O'Reilly Factor since May 2002, and for Fox since April 2000, save for a brief stint at CNN from January through July of this year, after which she returned to work for O'Reilly.

Her suit claims that O'Reilly acted inappropriately on numerous occasions, for example, calling her to discuss matters such as his fondness for inhibition-free Caribbean vacations and how he would perform were he to take her on such a vacation.

During an August 2004 phone call, Mackris alleges that O'Reilly suggested that she buy a vibrator and mentioned that he owned one himself. As they chatted, Mackris said she became certain that O'Reilly was masturbating. After he allegedly climaxed, O'Reilly thanked her for the "fun call."

Last month, Mackris alleges, O'Reilly made a similar call, suggesting that next time she come to his hotel room, where they could "make this happen."

O'Reilly's alleged indiscretions weren't reserved for the phone wires, according to Mackris. Her suit claims that he ruminated on the wild sexual escapades of his past and present while at dinner with Mackris and a college friend of hers in May 2003.

Per the complaint, O'Reilly allegedly regaled the women with tales of how he lost his virginity in a cab at JFK Airport, and the steamy encounter he shared with two Scandinavian airline flight attendants, and suggested that Mackris and her pal come back to his hotel room with him.

At the same dinner, O'Reilly also reportedly shared the experience he had at a sex show in Thailand, where a girl was kind enough to show him some things in a back room that "blew [his] mind."

Mackris claims she was nervous about confronting O'Reilly about her discomfort with the situation because he made threats concerning her future. "If you cross Fox News Channel, it's not just me, it's [Fox President] Roger Ailes who will go after you," he allegedly warned her, claiming that Ailes knew powerful people "all the way to the top."

When Mackris asked, "To the top of what?" O'Reilly told her, "Top of the country," according to her suit.

O'Reilly's lawyer, Ronald Green, said he believes Mackris taped conversations she had with O'Reilly. He asked a court to order Mackris to produce any recordings she had made so that they could be played publicly, stating that O'Reilly had nothing to hide.

Mackris would not confirm whether tapes of her conversations with O'Reilly did in fact exist.

Meanwhile, O'Reilly claimed that Mackris' suit was not filed solely for reasons of financial gain, but was also politically motivated. He alleged that Mackris' lawyer and codefendant, Robert Morelli, was a contributor to the Democratic Party, and that the suit was filed in an effort to embarrass him and Fox News shortly before the upcoming election.

Morelli denied that the suit was grounded in politics and called O'Reilly a "bully" during a news conference Wednesday, where Mackris sat beside him, but remained silent.

According to Green, Mackris never complained to anyone at Fox about O'Reilly's behavior. Fox produced a recent email in which Mackris gushed about her job to a friend, calling it "wonderful, amazing, fun, creative, invigorating, secure, well-managed, challenging, interesting fun and surrounded by really good, fun people."

When Mackris returned to the network last summer, O'Reilly agreed to match her salary, Fox said. However, in her lawsuit, Mackris claims she told O'Reilly that another condition for her return was that he cut out the harassing behavior. She said that he had harassed other female staffers and they "might tell someone."

She said O'Reilly told her: "If any woman ever breathed a word I'll make her pay so dearly that she'll wish she'd never been born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed."

On his show Wednesday, O'Reilly called the suit against him "the single most evil thing I have ever experienced.

"But these people picked the wrong guy," said O'Reilly.

Either that, or O'Reilly picked the wrong woman.