As proof that there’s little to no racism in America, Bill O’Reilly cited his black assistant who has worked for him for 25 years.
O’Reilly was on quite the racial roll last night. First, he accused Democrats of “caving in to propaganda put out by radical groups like Black Lives Matter.” Then, he questioned Donald Trump’s ability to improve employment among African Americans when so many are "ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads."
Then, in a discussion with Ken Burns about his new documentary on Jackie Robinson, O’Reilly all but declared racism a thing of the past. Burns has explicitly tied Robinson to #BlackLivesMatter but he downplayed that with O’Reilly.
O’REILLY: There’s a poll out today that says 35% of Americans, in a Gallup survey, say they are extremely worried about the state of race relations. That’s up from 28 percent in 2015. In one year. And President Obama, obviously, has not brought the country together. You think it’s that bad?
BURNS: I think it's pretty bad, I think it’s always been pretty bad. I think people have been divided by race in this country since the very, very beginning. You know, we’d like to think that our better angels are called at every occasion, and often they are. Remember when the president sang at the Charleston memorial, Amazing Grace? That was written by an ex-slaver who had gone blind - we think of that. Also, some of these old guilts also metastasize into anger and distrust of other people, and I think that’s sort of come to the fore recently—
O’REILLY: Yeah, see, I don’t see that in my world. And my world is a fairly expansive one. I don’t know any racists. I don’t know anybody, on either black or white people, who don’t like - like our staff here is integrated, and my assistant is black, she’s been with me 25 years. I just never see this.
Really, Bill? You must have missed Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle nodding and smiling as regular, Kevin Jackson, announced that America needs a white president and Baltimore needs a white mayor. Or when Crystal Wright helped Fox kick off Black History Month by accusing African Americans of being too stupid to vote Republican. And just last week, on The O'Reilly Factor, Bernard McGuirk, who was fired from a previous gig over racist comments, called it “fantastic” that Donald Trump offered to pay the legal bills of a white guy who sucker punched a black protester and later said, “The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”
Burns was there to promote his documentary, airing on PBS, and so was not in a position to tell O’Reilly he had just unloaded a truckload of horse manure.
However, Burns did try to politely disagree, He said he gets a lot of hate mail with racist comments, such as calling him an “n-word lover.”
Again, O’Reilly seemed determined to make sure his viewers don’t get the idea that racism might be alive and well. “But isn’t that a very small sliver of craziness?” he “asked.”
“I don’t think so,” Burns first said. Then, he seemed to change his mind and agreed that “The majority of Americans are not that way.” That majority is who he makes his films for, he added.
But Burns also said, “You can’t deal with American history, as I’ve tried to do, do deep dives in American history without coming up against race. Because we were founded under the idea that all men are created equal. The guy who wrote that sentence owned more than a hundred human beings.”
O’Reilly interrupted again. “I just think that America gets a bad rap in 2016. I think the vast majority of Americans are accepting of races and we try to help each other because we’re Americans.”
Yeah, except for the fact that Fox News spends almost every minute on the air trying to turn us against each other.
Watch it below, from the April 11 The O’Reilly Factor.
We could probably also disprove poverty, most crimes and many diseases in this fashion. Thanks for your contribution to humanity, Bill, you racist moron.
Physicists describe a bubble within a bubble sometimes. It applies here.
BillO, your “fairly expansive” world consists of your Fox News studio/bubble, your house on Manhasset, LI (provided Maureen hasn’t taken it in the divorce settlement), and the back seat of your limo . . .
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