Since Bill O’Reilly can’t think of anything Donald Trump has ever done "that's racial," I suppose it’s to be expected O'Reilly wouldn’t find anything objectionable in Trump’s “I love Hispanics” taco bowl tweet.
In case you missed it, here’s the tweet from Thursday, May 5, in which Trump was eating a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo and declaring, “I love Hispanics!”
As I’ve previously noted, the internet pounced, with just the kind of mockery Trump deserved.
But O’Reilly joined the Fox & Friends hosts and Neil Cavuto in the Trump racial rehab. O’Reilly’s version was to attack a Hispanic woman who found the tweet offensive.
O’REILLY: Almost immediately, the president of the militant organization La Raza tweeted out, “Eating a taco or wearing a sombrero doesn’t cut it with our community in 2016. Trump is clueless, offensive and self promoting.”
So eating a taco on Cinco De Mayo is now offensive? That’s like saying eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, and saying you love the Irish is offensive. That’s how insane American culture has become.
O’Reilly’s not a stupid man. But you have to wonder how someone could so completely miss the point of both tweets.
Well, here’s a hint, Bill: It’s the phoniness and the condescension, stupid. Trump has proven himself quite hostile to Hispanics and Mexicans in particular. As Democrat Robert Zimmerman said on Fox, “It’s like the Iranian ayatollah having matzoh ball soup and claiming he loves Jews.” And as for the tweet by La Raza president and CEO Janet Murguía, I don’t believe she was saying it was the taco eating per se that was offensive but the insulting suggestion that Hispanics should think that eating a taco bowl was a genuine indication of appreciation of them.
Even guest Kirsten Powers, normally sensitive and sensible on these matters, said, “I don’t get it.” She meant she didn’t understand why people were offended by Trump’s tweet.
For good totally-not-racist measure, O’Reilly started smearing Marguía.
O’REILLY: Do you believe that the president of La Raza, who, by the way, that’s an organization, by the way, that believes that Texas and New Mexico and southern California belong to Mexico, that we illegally seized it. Do you believe that that person understands how crazy this sounds?
POWERS: I’m gonna speculate that this person doesn’t like Donald Trump and he has said some offensive things about Mexicans, in particular, and so I suppose that, you know, anything he does, I don’t think this person is going to like it.
O’REILLY: That’s fine, you can not like Donald Trump and do it in an educated way but saying that he’s a bigot for eating a taco on the Cinco de Mayo. My question to you is, could any rational person believe that saying that makes them and their organization look good?
Again, it’s not the eating the taco on Cinco de Mayo, it’s the attempt to make people think that’s a sign of true love for Hispanics.
But, really, I think this falls into the category of, “If you don’t see what’s wrong with this, there’s no point in trying to explain it to you.”
Watch it below, from the April 6 The O’Reilly Factor.
As for O’Reilly’s support for Trump, that’s par for the course at Fox News at the moment. I will acknowledge that O’Reilly did grudgingly state in another segment that Hillary Clinton is currently ahead of Trump in the polling. But O’Reilly, like the rest of Fox News and right wing radio, is openly hoping for a massive criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton, so as to get her out of Trump’s way. It also appears that O’Reilly and the others are trying to pave the way to condemn the Justice Dept if they don’t do what the right wing so desperately wants.
F**k Kirsten and the [circus] elephant she rode to O’Reilly’s set. ;^)
Now to the point. As Ellen rightly points out, there’s nothing offense with eating faux, Americanized Mexican food per se. It’s the clownish notion a taco bowl (not a taco) is a part of Hispanic heritage. Hard shell tacos (of which the taco bowl is an unnatural evolution) are a completely American spin on traditional Mexican cuisine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taco. This episode in The Donald’s minority outreach campaign is akin to him eating fried chicken to celebrate Black History Month.
But even if Trump, say, dressed like some Hollywood central casting Mexican from a ‘60s Western with a sombrero and colorful poncho it’s still offensive. The core point is The Donald mocking Mexicans to appeal to his white bigot supporters using insulting ethnic stereotyping.
There’s no doubt in my mind Der Furor intentionally meant to be insulting knowing he’d get a reaction this reaction from the left so he could play his favorite political correctness card.
If O’Reilly hadn’t picked useful idiot Kirsten Powers to debate this but an actual liberal – much preferably a Hispanic proud of their heritage, history, and culture – this obvious, simple point might have been made. I suspect FOX News had trouble finding a Hispanic in their Rolodex willing to play along with O’Reilly’s stupidity.
Peace brother.
While we will all still keep an eye on what is happening here as well as at Wonkette, Media Matters, Huffington and the rest, the real fascination is going to be watching the internecine throat-slashing at all the right wing sites. I’ve been taking particular interest (not to mention utter glee) in RedState and FuxNation, but TownHall, ordinary Fux News and American Stinker are also well worth a visit.
Even if we’re not here quite as often, dear Ellen&Friends, rest assured we all still luv ya, babies, and we will be back full-time after the Glorious Bloodbath of November.
There are more than two races, dear idiot, and many of them are subject to that crazy little thing called racism. Like, duh.
I’m sure that Priebus is just happy that black history month and MLKs birthday are over with.
I can see why O’Reilly is friends with the Donald. They have a lot in common.
