In case there’s any doubt whatsoever about Bill O’Reilly’s utter disdain and dislike of the African American community, then take a look at the nearly eight minutes of ranting, condescension and hostility that made up his Talking Points segment tonight. O’Reilly didn’t just join his Fox colleagues in using the upset feelings in the African American community as an opportunity to attack them, he took it a step further by suggesting that President Obama is deliberately enabling African American ills by pandering to them. Because, apparently, O’Reilly believes he has fooled at least some people into thinking that his hate-filled rant was an effort of tough love and a gesture of concern, instead of, say, pandering to his (predominantly) white viewers' worst prejudices.
O’Reilly’s hostility started early:
Many black Americans harbor at least some resentment for past injury.
Then O’Reilly tacked into a feint of balance and even-handedness:
Talking Points believes the president was correct in addressing the race issue and framing it with the Trayvon Martin case.
Having established his “fair-minded” bona fides, at least in his own mind, O’Reilly then let his rancor rip:
The sad truth is that, from the president on down, our leadership has no clue, no clue at all, about how to solve problems within the black community. And many are frightened to even broach the issue. That’s because race hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called conversation, turning any valid criticism of African-American culture into charges of racial bias.
Shorter O’Reilly: It’s black people’s fault we can’t talk about race the way I think we should.
So many in power simply walk away leaving millions of law-abiding African Americans to pretty much fend for themselves in violent neighborhoods. You want racism? That’s racism!
Yeah, Bill, I’m sure you’ve won over hearts and minds of African Americans across the nation with this touching interest in their welfare.
It was wrong for Zimmerman to confront Martin based on his appearance. But the culture that we have in this country does lead to criminal profiling because young black American men are so often involved in crime. The statistics – overwhelming!
But here’s the headline: Young black men commit homicides at a rate 10 times greater than whites and Hispanics combined. Presented with damning evidence like that, and like the many Holocausts in Chicago, where hundreds of African Americans are murdered each year, the civil rights industry looks the other way or makes excuses.
O’Reilly’s voice began dripping with disdain:
They blame guns, poor education, lack of jobs. Rarely do they define the problem accurately. So here it is: The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African American family. Right now, about 73% of all black babies are born out of wedlock. That drives poverty and the lack of involved fathers leads to young boys crowing up resentful and unsupervised. When was the last time you saw a public service ad telling young black girls to avoid becoming pregnant? Has President Obama done such an ad?
I don’t know about PSA’s, but had O’Reilly bothered to research the topic before bloviating, he would have found that President Obama has something called the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. And there’s that mandatory contraception coverage in Obamacare that O’Reilly didn’t just disagree with but maliciously mocked as some kind of call to licentiousness. And if it’s PSA’s Bill wants, there are plenty to be found with a simple Google search, including one from a group called, the Center for Black Women’s Wellness and another by the Chicago Department of Public Health.
If O’Reilly thinks that the only solution is President Obama standing in front of a camera and lecturing black teens not to have premarital sex – well, good luck with that.
But O’Reilly’s behavior suggests he’s far more interested in maligning African Americans than in helping them to avoid teen pregnancies or any other troubles. Rather than reporting on any real programs that work or the causes of teen pregnancies (other than throwing out not-so-subtle hints that it’s something lacking in their character), O’Reilly kept making it about demonizing Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus. I’m sure that spoke to the black community – but almost certainly not in the way O’Reilly purported to want.
“How about Jackson or Sharpton?” O’Reilly thundered self-righteously, thereby ignoring how Jackson has long spoken out against drug use and teen pregnancy. But O’Reilly wasn’t done with his scapegoating. “Has the Congressional Black Caucus demanded an ad like that? How about the PC pundits who work for NBC News? White people don’t force black people to have babies out of wedlock. That’s a personal decision. A decision that has devastated millions of children and led to disaster both socially and economically."
Oh, yeah, he went after the entertainment industry, too.
So, raised without much structure, young black men often reject education and gravitate towards the street culture, drugs, hustling, gangs. Nobody forces them to do that. Again, it is a personal decision. But the entertainment encourages the irresponsibility by marketing a gangsta culture, hip-hop moves, trashy TV shows to impressionable children. In fact, President Obama has welcomed some of the worst offenders in that cesspool to the White House when he should be condemning what these weasels are doing.
…What do the race hustlers and limousine liberals yell about? The number of black men in prison for selling drugs. (O’Reilly started yelling now) Oh, it’s so unfair! It’s a non-violent crime. And blacks are targeted! (He started jabbing his finger) That is one of the biggest lies in the history of this country!
O’Reilly concluded this with his prescription for African Americans, sans any actual facts or reporting to back up his pronouncements from his podium of white privilege:
The solution to the epidemic of violent crime in poor, black neighborhoods is to actively discourage pregnancies out of marriage, to impose strict discipline in the public schools, including mandatory student uniforms, and to create a zero tolerance policy for gun and drug crimes imposing harsh mandatory prison time on the offenders.
…It is now time for the African American leadership, including President Obama, to stop the nonsense. Walk away from the world of victimization and grievance. And lead the way out of this mess.
As I have previously said about other Fox News attempts to use the killing of Trayvon Martin as an excuse to smear the African American community, it is not just tone deaf, it’s deliberately mean spirited and hateful. And yes, bigoted.