The writers of Owl and Bear vs. Bill O’Reilly: our latest theme?
If you haven’t heard, Bill O’Reilly recently caught some flak for making a vaguely-racist comment about Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle. Someone called into his radio show and made comments indicating that she had an anger problem. O’Reilly insisted that they had to look into the facts more and, “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”
This is very similar to the comments he made a few months ago–another botched attempt to say something relatively admirable. If you’re not like me, and the event is not seared into your memory, O’Reilly was complimenting patrons of a Harlem restaurant civil and “not eating with their hands.” The implication being, of course, that black people eat with their hands when left to their own devices, and it was good that this restaurant curbed their alleged instinct. O’Reilly was honestly trying to compliment the restaurant–just as he is trying to insist that we wait for evidence to accuse Michelle Obama of having anger issues–but it’s the way he makes this statements that indicates his latent racism.
Mr. O’Reilly, you don’t get to say you wish to lynch a black woman just because you are also saying that you need more evidence. It’s people like you that are wrong with America.
Bill is a clown and some others on the far right are just as bad. It just bothers me so much that race is such an issue in the current presidential race. Another writer over on Highbrid Nation wrote a piece about how very recently Repulicans have been surveying college students to see how far they could push the racial stereotype language before people would say its too much. How crazy is that?! It’d be nice if we could judge these candidates on their leadership skills and nothing else. I know, thats not gonna happen.