Bill O'Reilly says poor people love free stuff which they don't need because, according to "studies," they already have lots of great stuff like cars and air-conditioning. If you think you've heard this before, you have. Once again, the Manhasset millionaire appears to be sourcing from the right wing Heritage Foundation which, like O'Reilly, has an agenda and it clearly ain't poor people!
In playing to his aging, white, racist audience who "want their country back," Bill O'Reilly loves to blow that dog whistle about how the government is stealing your hard earned money to give free stuff to lazy, drug addled, violent, and promiscuous people with dark skin. A totally pissed off O'Reilly even ascribed Pres. Obama's re-election to those dark skinned people who voted for Obama because - wait for it - free stuff.
As Newshounds Ellen reported, O'Reilly promoted his now patented "free stuff" meme on last night's Factor. While Kirsten Powers ably countered Bill's vile argument that child hunger is a myth, he claimed that his argument was supported by "studies of poverty." Naturally, he didn't identify these studies; but, not surprisingly, it appears that, once again, O'Reilly is referring to reports done by the right wing Heritage Foundation and not reputable studies done by non-partisan sociology researchers.
In 2009, the Heritage Foundation (funded by big $) put out a study ("Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What Is Poverty in the United States Today?") that supposedly proved that poor people are living large with their fancy microwaves, air-conditioning, and cars. Not only was it debunked, but Steven Colbert provided some appropriate skewering.
The authors (Robert Rector, Rachel Sheffield) of the first study released a second report ("Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor") in 2011 - a study that O'Reilly glommed onto. As Media Matters points out, in a 2011 conversation with Lou Dobbs (a great humanitarian!) O'Reilly asked "how can you be poor and have all this stuff?" Despite his claim to be fair & balanced, O'Reilly, in his zeal to attack the poor, seems to have ignored the countering arguments to the Heritage claim
Last year, Rector and Sheffield trippled down with yet another report ("The War on Poverty After 50 Years") which regurgitated their same old talking points about how the poor are doing just fine. Again, there was criticism of the premise. The Los Angeles Times describes how Heritage's "insidious technique is to play off its own audience's conception of real poverty as something akin to a medieval condition, and imply that because America's poor don't live in filth" - a technique now being utilized by O'Reilly.
So now it's 2015 and Bill O'Reilly is still saying blessed are the poor for they shall have free stuff. (Or is it f--k the poor?) And if the Heritage Foundation says so, it must be true, right?
Attached are the Colbert and Stewart take-downs of the Heritage and Fox News poor shamers.
;^)