If not for the release of the McCain “No sex with that woman, just a little campaign contribution is all” story by The New York Times (a story they’ve been sitting on for months, apparently), the biggest brouhaha in Infotainment land would by Bill O’Reilly claiming he not ready to lead a lynching party against Michelle Obama, yet.
Amazingly, in a year where David Shuster gets suspended for suggesting that the Clinton’s were “pimping out” their daughter Chelsea by having her lobby super delegates, and where Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman was also suspended from her job for two weeks for “joking” that the only way for other PGA Tour professionals to beat Tiger Woods was to have a bunch of players lynch him in a back alley, it looks like Bill “Go ahead and Bomb San Francisco” O’Reilly is going to skate scott free from any consequences for his ugly racist reference to the hideous practice of mobs of whites torturing and murdering African Americans that even George Bush has publicly condemned as little as 9 days ago:
“The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history,” Bush said at a black history month event at the White House . . .
“The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice,” the president said. “Displaying one is not a harmless prank. Lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest.”
As a civil society, Americans should agree that noose displays and lynching jokes are “deeply offensive,” Bush said.
“They are wrong,” the president said, referring to such displays and jokes. “And they have no place in America today.”
Well, such words have no place in America, except on the lips and forked tongue of Fox News’s biggest ratings star, that is, where they are likely to dribble out without any apology whenever the hell Mr. “I didn’t know blacks could act just like civilized white folks” O’Reilly feels like using them to foster racial animus toward a prominent African American.
(cont.)
Update [2008-2-21 15:25:53 by Steven D]: Dave Neiwert at Orcinus agrees with me.
If Don Imus lost his job at MsNBC and CBS radio for calling the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team a bunch of “nappy headed hos” which, while incredibly racially offensive didn’t conjure up images of white mobs killing blacks in the worst expression of vigilante justice in our history. Bill O’Reilly, however, can seemingly get away with tossing the word “lynching ” into a discussion about Michelle Obama, an African American woman and the spouse of the leading contender for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Barack Obama, also an African American, and there is no hint that he will incur any consequences from Fox News, his employer, for these extremely foul and offensive racist remarks.
Just to show you the rank hypocrisy of Mr. O’Reilly, who has made a habit of making offensive remarks about minorities, 9/11 family members, liberals and Democrats on his television and radio programs, here was what O’Reilly had to say about David Shuster of MsNBC when Shuster was rightfully condemned for the language he used to denigrate the Clintons, and suspended by his employer, MsNBC for those comments:
“…(Shuster) shouldn’t be working in the news business period. He is a far left ideologue. However he fits in perfectly with the crew at NBC News.”
It’s a sad day when George Bush demonstrates more integrity and judgment than Bill O’Reilly, and even sadder when you realize that O’Reilly will likely get away with it. After all, if Fox News didn’t fire him for the sexual harassment of one of O’Reilly’s female producers, and indeed paid a large settlement to her to make her lawsuit against Bill O go away, what are the odds that they will do anything to punish him for this latest incident of blatant racism and buffoonery? Indeed, they are already defending him for this garbage.
. . . O’Reilly was defending Michelle Obama, who’s taking some heat herself over comments she made to Newsweek, when he used that term — a fact his executive producer, David Tabacoff, made when I contact Fox News for a comment.
“What Bill said was an obvious repudiation of anyone attacking Michelle Obama,” he said, via email. “As he has said more than ten times, he is giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
Bill O’Reilly should thank his lucky stars the McCain story has knocked his latest contretemps off the front page of every major newspaper, and all but eliminated any serious coverage by any of the major TV news outlets (other than Olbermann’s show) in America. Because if anyone deserves the Imus treatment, Bill O does.
