In the “how insensitive can you be” department, you might put Bill O’Reilly’s attempt to smear an African American mother - who wrongly left her kids in a hot car while she went to a job interview - by comparing her to Donald Sterling.
Two nights ago, O’Reilly followed up on a story that has had him hopping mad: 35 year-old Shanesha Taylor, who was arrested in Arizona and, as O’Reilly explained, “charged with two felony child-abuse counts after leaving her six-month old son and her two-year old son alone in a very hot SUV for 40 minutes.”
O’Reilly added, “The kicker here is that Ms. Taylor was going for a job interview and that has engendered some sympathy for her.” As a result, an online fund established for her has raised “more than $100,000” for her defense.
“I feel terrible for that woman,” O’Reilly insisted. And I won’t second guess that. But I will question why, when her lawyer acknowledged she had made a mistake but felt it should not make her unfit to get her children back, O’Reilly called that “a huge mistake. That’s a Donald Sterling mistake.”
Really? O’Reilly really thinks that a woman’s ignorant, foolish and dangerous decision (probably born out of desperation) is comparable to a disgusting racist rant by a basketball team owner with a lengthy history of racism? And isn’t it even worse to say that about a black woman?
O’Reilly went on to ask “why on earth” the mother didn’t take the children to her job interview and “just say, ‘Listen, I couldn’t get a babysitter but I need the job and I wanted to be here so here are my children and what do you want to know about me?’” Which strikes me as just about as ludicrous as the Sterling comparison. Does O'Reilly really think that showing up at a job interview with a baby and a toddler would not almost certainly have ruled out Taylor on the spot?
O’Reilly did allow as he wasn’t sure the mother deserved to have a felony on her record and he reiterated that he feels sorry for her. “I urge compassion,” her said. But he also asked, “Where’s the Dad… Is there a Dad, though, in play? Is there a father in play at all?” I think we all know what O’Reilly was getting at here: his “concern,” almost always couched in hostility, over the breakdown of African American families. It was about as subtle as asking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the next night, "Do you respect your country? Do you love your country?" as O'Reilly did the next night.
"I feel terrible," O'Reilly said again about Taylor. "But I want everybody in the world watching tonight to know you can’t leave a baby alone. You can’t.”
O’Reilly is right that no children should ever be left alone in a car. And I’ll give him props for repeatedly expressing his sympathy for the woman. But he could have done a report on the larger issue of kids getting left in cars and the dangers, rather than singling out one unfortunate woman and making her the poster child for mothers who endanger their kids.
Furthermore, far more kids die of accidental shootings than of heat stroke in a car. But I don’t remember any cases of parents leaving unsecured guns around the house being singled out anywhere on Fox. Do you?
FNC will never equate murder by SUV with murder by firearmes. Only the former is dead wrong by them. Same reasoning for misdeads committed by people of different hues. Those truths are so true as to be carved in stone.
Oh, you mean like when Nancy Lanza left a locked and loaded automatic weapon on her bed with her desperate, and dangerously mentally ill son?
Oh, wait- The Fox News line on that was that future school shootings could be resolved by re-mandating Christian Prayer, and putting armed patrols around school grounds. I don’t think I saw one segment on Fox where someone brought up Lanza’s criminal level of irresponsibility, and was allowed to keep talking. And I am including the hosts who were fair to the debate overall, like Smith and Wallace.
Now, why was that, Tom? We saw that Fox could be hard on people who were irresponsible with their guns, was it coincidence that the people they were making examples of in all those segments were black? And that they only seemed to care about how responsible those black people were with their guns during the Trayvon Martin trial, while ignoring noteworthy examples of white people who were poor gun owners, or abusers of SYG laws?
Yeah- Try again.
It’s funny how you don’t hear O’Reilly’s “making examples” when it’s WHITE women endangering their children. Why do you suppose that is, Tom?
“But he could have done a report on the larger issue of kids getting left in cars and the dangers, rather than singling out one unfortunate woman and making her the poster child for mothers who endanger their kids.”
Bill made an example of her. I think people relate more to an real life event than just lecturing.
Comparing this to donald sterling, sheesh.
