Bill O’Reilly is ready to give the mostly African American residents of Ferguson, Missouri a good scolding over the looting and rioting there following the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American youth, by the police. But O’Reilly was temporarily thwarted in his whitesplaining by a report that some of those residents went out of their way to do the right thing.
Of course, O’Reilly glossed over the reason for the unrest in the community by saying the FBI is looking into the shooting as well as the “liberal” Attorney General, Eric Holder. O’Reilly didn’t have the time or interest to go into the conditions that must have been seething just under the surface: what St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Aisha Sultan called, “A powder keg of unemployment and poverty, of neglect and frustration, and those willing to exploit a tragedy for personal gain.”
No, O’Reilly was too busy getting ready to lecture African Americans about their bad behavior. Again.
The guest, local radio show host McGraw Milhaven, seemed prepared for O’Reilly’s enmity. Milhaven told O’Reilly the looters are outsiders. He further noted that while Ferguson is a very diverse community, it’s also very close knit. “So many of those people who were out looting came into the area to try and take advantage of the situation,” he said.
O’Reilly honed in on the race factor instead of, say, the police brutality factor. “Ferguson primarily a black town, I understand? 60, 65% black - is that true?” He sounded belligerent.
Milhaven described the community as “two thirds African America, one third white. It’s about 20,000 people. It’s a working class neighborhood.” He added, “They just elected a white Republican mayor not too long ago.”
“Interesting,” O’Reilly said. But he had other things in mind to focus on. He continued, “Some of the businesses, of course, were black owned that got burned and got destroyed and looted, correct?” It wasn’t hard to see where he was headed.
But Milhaven had another avenue in mind. He told O'Reilly:
One of the stories I think that is important to take away from this is that yes, there were small, black-owned businesses just getting out, just starting – you know, that difficult 5, 6, 7, 8-month period that is now totally destroyed.
There’s also stories developing here where there was a car dealer, a transmission place, Zisser, where the community went to the store and took keys of the cars that were there and took a lot of the tires off the wall, took them home and protected them from the looters and then the following morning, this morning, came back and brought the keys and the tires back to the place for safekeeping.
Milhaven didn't directly say that the rescuers were black but it was certainly implied.
“Oh, good!” O’Reilly exclaimed. “I thought you were going to say the exact opposite and I’m very glad to hear that some in the community were as appalled as I think most Americans are, that you don’t take the shooting death of a young man and break the law. You don’t do that. Again, we have a system in place.”
But you’re not off the O’Reilly Factor hook yet, African Americans. Later on Fox, there was a teaser for tomorrow night’s show. This was the first item in it:
Will black America speak out against the looting in St. Louis? We’ll have a special report on that.
Early in this discussion, local Fox reporter George Sells told O’Reilly that Michael Brown's family had called for peace and calm as had the local NAACP.
But I’m willing to bet that that will not be enough to satisfy O’Reilly’s racial demands.
Watch the thinly-veiled contempt for African Americans below.
Oh, wait- The only reason he doesn’t collect DVDs of that is that they take up space that could be getting filled with porn.
I guess none of us should be taken aback that BOR would seem pleasantly surprised that African-Americans acted civil/kept others from looting. After all, this is the same guy who “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship. There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ’M-Fer, I want more iced tea.”
O’Reilly: … "and I;m very glad to hear that some in the community (meaning 2 or 3 out of 13,000 of African Americans) were as appalled as I think most Americans (meaning the Traditional White Americans) are.