Poor embattled O'Reilly.  He says his remarks were taken out of context.  He built his career by taking peoples words and incidents out of context.  I'm sure that the people who pander to him are more surprised that he went to a Harlem restaurant, any Harlem restaurant, with Reverend Al.

Al was his native safari guide!
:P

I've heard that blowhard pound his fists for 10 years about how everybody else should run their lives, especially African-Americans--the Black community shoud do this and the Black community shoud do that.

I didn't think he was "racist" but more selectively bigoted, like a lot of right-wingers.  You know, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, and Bill Cosby are his kind of folks, and he can get along with Blacks he meets in his social circle, and he blames any problems Blacks have on liberals and liberal policies, not on African-Americans themselves.  That's how the Right denies the other "racism" charges.  Of course, this is even more racist than blaming Blacks because it implies the White liberal elite makes up their minds for them! 

Bear with me for a sec--one time I was in a McDonald's and there was a cop standing in line.  This little kid sees him and says, "Look mommy, policemen eat lunch too!

That level of naivete is perfectly adorable coming from a five-year-old, but not from Bill O'Reilly who like the little kid all of a sudden realized in his 60 years that Black people do the same things he does, you know, go out to restaurants and have a good time, etc.  That he didn't know how offensive his remarks would sound illustrates a profound level of racism.  It's just a little disturbing when you think about it!
:o

yeah, i heard about that. so whenever people talk about bill o'reilly, i can say, yeah, right, that's the racist dude who advocated using starvation as an instrument of warfare in afghanistan. right. and then people will get offended, like the evidence was somehow not clear on this point. ::)

Yup, Bill has fallen into his own trap. How many time is he on the giving end of this kind of story-now he is on the receiving end and he claims that people (like CNN) are using this story to increase their ratings.


My opinion about the comment itself: I don't think it says that he is racist but it definitely shows his ignorance.



Cat

What blows my mind is that he seemed so surprised that African-Americans had the capability to eat in a nice restaurant with dignity and class.  All that was missing were comments about their financial ability to eat there......

(I only read about this on cnn.com last night, so that is my only source of info.  I can't watch him.)

What blows my mind is that he seemed so surprised that African-Americans had the capability to eat in a nice restaurant with dignity and class.  All that was missing were comments about their financial ability to eat there......

(I only read about this on cnn.com last night, so that is my only source of info.  I can't watch him.)



We watch him to see what kind of lies he is spewing. We usually can't last more than a few minutes before we have had enough. What really bothers me is how I feel when I watch him. I get REALLY angry-and I don't like it when I get angry. Please don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.



Cat

We watch him to see what kind of lies he is spewing. We usually can't last more than a few minutes before we have had enough. What really bothers me is how I feel when I watch him. I get REALLY angry-and I don't like it when I get angry. Please don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.



Cat



I got frustrated just reading the article about him.  Don't know if I could handle hearing/watching him!

I got frustrated just reading the article about him.  Don't know if I could handle hearing/watching him!



It just floors me that so many people think that he is so honest. At the end of his show, he always says, "The spin stops here" and he can't say it with a straight face. He really means that "the spin STARTS here".



Cat

We watch him to see what kind of lies he is spewing. We usually can't last more than a few minutes before we have had enough. What really bothers me is how I feel when I watch him. I get REALLY angry-and I don't like it when I get angry. Please don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.




Yeah, some people say to me, "how can you watch that sh#t?"  (FOX News).

I would feel the same way if the FOX guys were smart and knew what they were talking about, but Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, and all that lot are such dodo birds it's more entertaining than anything.

I get angry at intelligent commentators.  Take Christopher Hitchens---I agree with him sometimes but even when I agree with him he bugs me.  Then he supported the Iraq war, wrote a diatribe against Mother Theresa, all the while claiming MY favorite writer, George Orwell, as HIS favorite!  It's like having the biggest a-hole in school steal your date from you at the sock hop!
;D

I'm still cracking up.  This O'Reilly thing is too funny.
:D

I mean, aside from the part about it being so crassly racist and insensitive it boggles the mind and this guy has the most popular cable news program.
:-\\

The nerve of this guy, he actually said, it was like being in an all-white neighborhood and going to an Italian restaurant.*
Funny, I seem to remember something about "all-white" neighborhoods not wanting Italians and Irish because they were dirty rotten papists and this means YOU O'Reilly, but anyway...when you follow up the words  "Harlem," "M-fer, I want more iced tea," and "craziness," with "all-white neighborhood" free association leads you to all sorts of...Bill-O, you really stepped in it this time!

* I'm kinda ripping off Jon Stewart here, but I thought in Italian restaurants Vinnie and Tony exchanged many a "Fuh-get about its" over canolis, and then Big Paulie and the Gambino crew bust through the door and machine gun Jimmy the Squirrel who dies bleeding all over the white tablecloth with his face collapsed in his linguini and red clam sauce....

No?  It isn't like that?  It really isn't?
:-[

i really like christopher hitchens. i pretty much disagree with him about the iraq war and i find his position on that strange -- yes, he's all up in noam chomsky's and susan sontag's face but he refuses to acknowledge the economic dimensions of the iraq war. i mean, yeah, if i actually BELIEVED the bush boys when they say they wanted to liberate iraq from saddam, i'd probably support the war. but it's such an obvious ruse it's odd to me that someone as smart as hitchens would believe it. but he either does, or is making on like he doesn't see through the conjob on the war because maybe he thinks it's more important to inculcate a really deep-seated aversion to dictatorship and genocide. if so i could almost see the value in that strategy, i dunno.

and his atheist thing is overwrought, for sure -- including his slamming mother teresa, which i kept seeing as he's almost doing some sorta highbrow version of a shock jock routine; did you grok when either the host or one of the callers accuses him of being an entertainer? i don't think he is, exactly, but he's shrewdly calculating his rhetoric to get attention. (notice noam chomsky has rather failed in that regard?)

i dunno, either my elaborate theory about him is right, in which case he's really really cool, or he really believes this stuff, in which case he's really odd -- a smart guy with these certain particular ideas about which he's quite stupid.

i really like christopher hitchens. i pretty much disagree with him about the iraq war and i find his position on that strange -- yes, he's all up in noam chomsky's and susan sontag's face but he refuses to acknowledge the economic dimensions of the iraq war. i mean, yeah, if i actually BELIEVED the bush boys when they say they wanted to liberate iraq from saddam, i'd probably support the war. but it's such an obvious ruse it's odd to me that someone as smart as hitchens would believe it. but he either does, or is making on like he doesn't see through the conjob on the war because maybe he thinks it's more important to inculcate a really deep-seated aversion to dictatorship and genocide. if so i could almost see the value in that strategy, i dunno.

and his atheist thing is overwrought, for sure -- including his slamming mother teresa, which i kept seeing as he's almost doing some sorta highbrow version of a shock jock routine; did you grok when either the host or one of the callers accuses him of being an entertainer? i don't think he is, exactly, but he's shrewdly calculating his rhetoric to get attention. (notice noam chomsky has rather failed in that regard?)

i dunno, either my elaborate theory about him is right, in which case he's really really cool, or he really believes this stuff, in which case he's really odd -- a smart guy with these certain particular ideas about which he's quite stupid.

Hitchens is an Iconoclast (hence Mother Theresa was a hypocritical con artist).  He gets off on people hating him.  Hitchens has a sh*tty remark to say about everybody and everything.  He's the intellectual's Don Imus!  Guys who knock everything and are really great at it are fun when they're knocking stuff you hate...but then they turn around and knock stuff you like.  The conservatives courted him when he was bashing Clinton.  The liberals courted him when he was bashing Kissinger.  The liberals got disowned him when he went hawkish after 9/11 and the conservatives saw red when he p*ssed on Jerry Falwell's grave before the old f*cker even got cold!  Hitchens is like playing with matche: It's lots of fun, but you gotta accept you're gonna get burned sooner or later!
;D

I'm sure I'm gonna' get slammed for this, but I think the comment was taken out of context.  I mean, if you walk up to someone and just blurt it out, yeah, but if you listen to the rest of the conversation, it was not racist.  They were talking about how blacks are stereotyped by what is seen on TV and in music videos.  I think he was trying to point out that those stereotypes are wrong and using one of his personal experiences as an example. 

That being said, I agree with the fact that he's an idiot and is getting a taste of his own medicine.  What goes around comes around, Bill.

I'm sure I'm gonna' get slammed for this, but I think the comment was taken out of context.  I mean, if you walk up to someone and just blurt it out, yeah, but if you listen to the rest of the conversation, it was not racist.  They were talking about how blacks are stereotyped by what is seen on TV and in music videos.  I think he was trying to point out that those stereotypes are wrong and using one of his personal experiences as an example. 

That being said, I agree with the fact that he's an idiot and is getting a taste of his own medicine.  What goes around comes around, Bill.


Uh, Kim, in what context would Mr. O's comments be inoffensive?

If Bill O'Reilly was an old hillbilly who never left Duddie's Branch and learned all he knows about Blacks from MTV, I could say, well this guy's just ignorant.  In fact, Bill O'Reilly has lived most of his life in greater metro New York and has lived in a half dozen cities around the country and has a Master's from Harvard University and has a 30-year-career in journalism under his belt and has traveled to five continents for both work and leisure and has hosted a controversial cable news show for eleven years and has a team of editors and advisors working for him and...

I mean, it's almost unfathomable how he could make such obtuse remarks in public!
:D

Uh, Kim, in what context would Mr. O's comments be inoffensive?

If Bill O'Reilly was an old hillbilly who never left Duddie's Branch and learned all he knows about Blacks from MTV, I could say, well this guy's just ignorant.  In fact, Bill O'Reilly has lived most of his life in greater metro New York and has lived in a half dozen cities around the country and has a Master's from Harvard University and has a 30-year-career in journalism under his belt and has traveled to five continents for both work and leisure and has hosted a controversial cable news show for eleven years and has a team of editors and advisors working for him and...

I mean, it's almost unfathomable how he could make such obtuse remarks in public!
:D
If you're talking about how ludicrous stereotypes are.....I took it as him pointing out that there IS no difference between black and white.

Have you actually heard the entire conversation?

So the half smart, no lipped, mini-man is getting a dose of his own medicine.  He of all people should know better than to say things that could be taken out of context, it is how he runs his business.

If you're talking about how ludicrous stereotypes are.....I took it as him pointing out that there IS no difference between black and white.

Have you actually heard the entire conversation?


OH, I see.  Now I get it.  It was a way of illustrating how blacks and whites are just the same in a language is dopy fans might be able to understand!

I believe in Kingdom Come and all the colors bleeding into one big mess!

--U2 parody by Negativland