Bill O’Reilly is not just upset but furious over the smackdown he got – with distinctly racial tones – from African American FoxSports.com writer Jason Whitlock over an invitation to appear on The Factor. Whitlock didn’t just decline the invitation, he told O’Reilly in no uncertain terms “I don’t have to shuffle off” to “dance” before the Speaker of the Big House of Fox News. And more.
You may recall that Whitlock is the sportswriter quoted by Bob Costas in his now-famous commentary about gun control in the wake of the Jovan Belcher suicide/murder tragedy. O’Reilly has taken particular exception to Whitlock’s comments calling the NRA the “new KKK.”
O’Reilly opened his show tonight with a Talking Points commentary called, “Confronting Evil.” He was referring to hate speech. He said the left and right use “disgraceful tactics to demean those with whom they disagree.”
You mean like calling an abortion doctor, “Tiller, the baby killer?” Or attacking atheists as “fascists” because they disagree with you about putting Christmas trees on public property? Or implying that Sandra Fluke is a slut because she advocated for coverage of contraception in health insurance plans?
No, O’Reilly was only talking about the left. He went on to say that if you think that marriage should remain between a man and a woman, “you’re a hater, according to the haters.” If you “disagree” with President Obama, it’s because of race. Well, that’s only among “some fanatical far-left wingers.”
Then O’Reilly got to the heart of the matter, “a very vivid recent situation that is simply unacceptable.”
Guess what? It was all about him. Well, not immediately. He cited Whitlock’s claim that “unnamed forces in America want guns in the black communities so that people of color could destroy each other.” O’Reilly also reiterated Whitlock’s “new KKK” remark.
“That, of course, is insane,” O’Reilly said. “So we called this Whitlock guy and invited him on The Factor.”
Apparently, Whitlock was not much impressed by this invitation. O’Reilly read from Whitlock’s response:
"I was summoned to testify before Speaker of the Big House Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News entertainer… I don’t have to shuffle off to the Big House when summoned. O’Reilly is not Boehner, Pelosi or Obama. He’s a TV entertainer who has spent the weeks after the election crying about the end of the ‘white establishment’ America, the end of the days when an upstanding white man felt entitled to summon whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted to the Big House to dance. I don’t dance.”
See, I told you this was all about Bill.
“Now that is pure racism, nothing else… and he gets away with that kind of garbage. In fact, he gets paid to spout... Hate speech now happening all the time,” O’Reilly said. I guess it doesn’t count when his own guests speak hatefully about Nancy Pelosi or when Fox News spends segment after segment after segment giving credence to Donald Trump’s bogus suggestions President Obama is a secret African, and not American born. Or is it that only O'Reilly is allowed to make racially-tinged comments?
O’Reilly intoned, “There comes a point when all good people must say, ‘Enough.’ That point has now been reached in America. The Jason Whitlocks of the world deserve pity, but they also deserve to be exposed… They are abusing freedom of speech. This stuff has gotta stop.”
Has Jesse Watters started his stakeout to ambush Whitlock yet? Or does O’Reilly have some other plan in store? Whatever is in the offing for Whitlock, I’m sure he’s quaking in his boots, Bill.