Who better to discuss issues of importance to the African-American community than Bill O'Reilly! During Friday night's Factor, he skillfully interwove his disdain concern for black culture into the context of how, because he supports the president's initiative directed towards young black men, he's looking out for the black community. During the show, O'Reilly, who is amazed that blacks have table manners, used his bully pulpit, once again, to inveigh against the evils of rap music. The topic came up during his "Pinhead of the Week" segment which ended with the bestowing of a "pinhead" title on an African-American Princeton professor. And in so doing, O'Reilly loudly blew that "welfare" dog whistle. Black folks would do so much better if they only listened to O'Reilly's sage advice. Ya think!
O'Reilly's pinhead panel consisted of his pals Gretchen Carlson, who once suggested that tennis star Serena Williams' tennis court outburst might have "racial undertones" and Bernard McGuirk whose past race baiting remarks include a reference to Rutgers women's basketball players as "nappy headed hos." The gang said CNN anchor Carol Costello is a pinhead because of her admiration for the "sexy" Jesus character in the movie "Son of God." In speculating on the handsomeness of the Jesus actor, Bernard McGuirk opined that Jesus *"wasn't a short, buck-toothed shrimp or people wouldn't have followed him around." Carlson nominated, as a pinheads, the New Mexico State basketball player who started a brawl and those who brawled. O'Reilly then showed his racial sensitivity by bestowing the honor of pinhead to Eddie Glaude, Jr., a Princeton professor who is head of the Princeton Center for African-American Studies.
Bill noted that everybody knows "because I'm making a big deal about it, this hip-hop culture, I believe, is hurting children at risk and I told that to the President, blah, blah, blah..." The reason for the "pinhead" designation became clear with Bill's complaint that "the professor disagrees with me." He played video of Glaude talking about how the solution for problems, in the black community, should come from the public side because he wasn't convinced that a combined private/public effort "and address the crisis at all of its levels."
After he whitesplained that Glaude "wants more government spending," Bill, in mocking the man's name, quipped that he never had a college teacher named Eddie. For the benefit of his barcalounger brigade, who hate those darkies on welfare, Bill claimed that Glaude "wants the government to control and how has that worked over the last hundred years."
Stop right here: One hundred years ago, we still had Jim Crow. Public Assistance programs, for minority communities, are the result of legislation done after the Civil Rights Act in the mid-sixties.
Bernard McGuirk, neither African-American nor a sociologist said "not at all" in response to Bill's question and praised Bill's commentary about the "insidious" influence of rap music. O'Reilly responded that it "promotes a culture of cynicism" and warned that if blacks keep listening to rap music, they're "going to be poor and commit crimes." Carlson warned about college professors who teach hip-hop. McGuirk said that people would be "shocked" by rap lyrics. (As were those who heard his nappy-headed ho comment).
O'Reilly didn't buy Carlson's attempt to say that white kids listen to rap because, according to Bill, the black kids have single mothers who don't discipline them. In channeling his abusive father, O'Reilly claimed that two-parent [ read white] families say "knock it off."
Glaude also said this: "The presumption that a private-public partnership could actually address the depths of the social misery confronting this population is, at best, misguided. That's not to say it's not needed. But it's the equivalent of a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. We have babies who are starving, and families who can't keep roofs over their heads, and workers who can't find jobs, and our conception of government is so anemic that we can't muster the resources to respond." But context is unimportant when there's an agenda and in this case, a racially skewed agenda.
The problems in the black community are a result of many factors among them a racially biased justice system. But for Bill O'Reilly and his racist wingman, who do see color, it's all about rap music. So for his aging white audience, who want their country back, O'Reilly keeps it simple.
*Based on regional genetics, scientists have reconstructed what the face of Jesus could have looked like. Hardly a white, Germanic hunk. They also speculate that, in keeping with the regional body structures, Jesus would have been about 5'1'' and weighed around 110 pounds.
slanted little piece, are doing the thing that they do;
shading their racist views in the fascism-padded
world that they live in…..the GREAT thing is, though,
that enough people have paid heavy prices, so that
they can be the sluggos that they are; something,
incidentally, that they would NEVER do for someone
who doesn’t embrace their sloped viewpoints.
Bildo’s blatant racebaiting, thinly disguised as concern, is strictly pandering to the old white Barcalounger brigade.
Interesting. I don’t really get why Costello should be deemed a “pinhead” because she thinks the current movie Jesus is “sexy.” (Didn’t Jim Caviezel—who played the J-man in Mel Gibson’s little Christian torture porn film a decade ago—get more than just a little appreciation for his attractiveness?) Is she being deemed a “pinhead” because she’s “surprised” that a Jesus could be “sexy?” And McGuirk might want to take a look at a number of other men* who had others following him around before suggesting that Jesus couldn’t have been “a short buck-toothed shrimp.” Look at Gandhi. Not exactly the most attractive or tallest of men but he had lots of people following him around. And Napoleon? Pretty much the epitome of a “shrimp” who had people willingly follow him (and not just because he was their general and emperor). And the Civil Rights leaders? None of them were exactly “leading-man” types (okay, Malcolm X—maybe). And, not wanting to go all Godwin’s law, but Hitler? Has McGuirk seen pictures of Hitler? And what about Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh? Does McGuirk think either of those men could be remotely considered “sexy?” (Okay—O’Reilly might get the “women over 75 with cataracts” demographic and Limbaugh might win the “Dominican boys under 21” demographic but I doubt their looks have anything to do with their appeal, such as it is.)
*I’m sure there are a lot of women who wouldn’t be considered “sexy” but managed to have a lot of followers but since McGuirk decided to pull the gender card here, I’m sticking just with decidedly UNsexy men.