In Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone, only white men and Christians are oppressed. African Americans just need to suck it up, realize how great they have it and stop complaining!
That was the message from O’Reilly’s Talking Points commentary last night.
Just as one of our readers warned in a comment, O’Reilly lashed out at New York Times columnist Charles Blow for the sin of criticizing O’Reilly’s white-man grievance.
Blow had singled out O’Reilly’s claim, “If you’re a Christian or a white man in the U.S.A., it’s open season on you” along with the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre saying about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, “Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.”
Blow wrote:
And yet, this faux oppression makes a mockery of very real oppression. Aside from the hilarity of the incongruous spectacle of two incredibly powerful white men grousing about the lowly plight of white men in general is the utter ridiculousness of the idea itself.
Ooh, those were fighting words to O’Reilly!
He called Blow, “a man who has never seen an alleged grievance he didn’t try to exploit.” O’Reilly sneered, “His agenda is to convince his readers that white people actively suppress black people and other minorities. That is the general theme of the far left.”
Perhaps to disabuse anyone of the notion that O’Reilly’s beef with Blow was personal, he also singled out Michael Eric Dyson for writing about the “slow terrors” of racism that are less visible than the “fast terror” of an unarmed black man being shot and killed by the police.
O’REILLY: Today in the New York Times, race baiter Michael Eric Dyson wrote “Americans are bad at viewing race in real time; we prefer rose-tinted lenses and slow-motion replays in which we can control the narrative and minimize our complicity in the horrors of our history.”
Our complicity? Apparently, Dyson believes the slave trade continues to define America. Therefore, all white people are complicit.
Actually, I think you’d have to have a racial chip on your shoulder to see Dyson’s editorial that way. The next sentence after the snippet O’Reilly read, said, “The racial present is messy, and upends bland racial optimism about how far we’ve come.” If Dyson thought slavery "defines" African American viewpoints, there would be nothing “messy” about the racial present.
Nonetheless, O’Reilly declared Dyson’s column “complete bull.”
OK, O’Reilly doesn’t like what either Dyson or Blow had to say and resorted to personal attacks in response. We’re used to that. But what made this O’Reilly grump session downright hilarious was his attempt to suggest that the only truly oppressed people are white guys like himself.
O’REILLY: I’m a big fan of John Quincy Adams and throughout my life I have donated money to help suffering minorities in this country and all over the world.
Mr. Dyson doesn’t care about that. The fact that I am white and in a powerful position makes me the enemy.
Here’s the truth: our traditional values in America are under siege. We’re seeing dramatic changes in the definition of human beings on the abortion front and the definition of marriage and in the definition of capitalism, among other things. Anyone who denies that is a dishonest idiot.
O’Reilly seemed to think that because Blow (who, O’Reilly said, is “afraid to debate me”) and Dyson have very good jobs, that’s all the proof anyone could need that there’s no such thing as white suppression or white privilege.
O’REILLY: Historically, minorities and women did not, did not have the same advantages as white men. And in some places, that’s still true. But not in most places.
No society is perfect. …But there is no organized white suppression and our system gives all men and women the chance to succeed in life if they do what is necessary to compete. And that’s the truth.
Watch it above, from last night’s The O’Reilly Factor, and get out your violins for him.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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