This Thursday on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill-O got an earful from Kirsten Powers when he pulled his usual number and blamed the Lane murder on a "cultural collapse" of our society.
August 21, 2013

Well... almost everything. O'Reilly isn't too hip about ever taking any kind of honest look at the underlying problems like the root causes of poverty and how much that contributes to violent crime in the United States as well. This Thursday on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill-O got an earful from Kirsten Powers when he pulled his usual number and blamed the Lane murder on a "cultural collapse among some distinct groups" of our society. Gee... I wonder who those "groups" could be?

And whatever you do, don't dare blame easy access to guns for anyone getting shot in the United States: Kirsten Powers Challenges Bill O’Reilly Over Chris Lane: ‘If Those Kids Didn’t Have a Gun…’:

Calling the murder a “terrible tragedy,” Powers confronted O’Reilly on his opening monologue, saying, “I don’t quite understand the expectation that the president would be speaking about it or any other groups because, unlike the Trayvon Martin case, the attackers were immediately arrested.”

“I don’t think there is a racial overtone to this,” O’Reilly clarified. “However, I think the question is legitimate, you know, if you are going to weigh in on one, you weigh in on the other.”

Obenshain accused Obama and others of “jumping at the chance to weigh in when a horror would further their political goals, and that’s a horrible thing.” She said, “when it served the president’s agenda to sort of stir up racial animosity, he compares Trayvon Martin to what his son would look like.”

That was one step too far for O’Reilly who said Obama’s comments on the Martin case was a “political move” and nothing more. He then led into the discussion of “gang culture” and guns, which turned into a contentious back and forth with Powers.

When O’Reilly suggested that Obama doesn’t believe we have a serious problem with violence in this country, Powers shot back, “On what planet does the president not believe we have a problem, Bill?” She said that like the president, she believes “our gun culture is what is behind this. Trust me if those kids didn’t have a gun, that guy would be alive.”

O’Reilly said it was time for Powers to “accept” the “historical situation” in the country that has led to “100 million guns on the street of America.” He added, “When the country was settled, everybody had a gun.”

When he returned to the “corruption of certain groups,” Powers appeared to call him out on his racial implications. “What do you mean certain groups?” she asked. “There are plenty of white people who use guns to go in and kill people, like children in elementary schools in fact when i think of it it. Suddenly it’s just black people who have a problem with guns?”

Amato's right about the real reason the right-wing media has glommed onto this story at all, which is to play the false equivalency game with the Trayvon Martin shooting and pretend there was no reason for anyone to have been outraged about that case. As Powers attempted to explain to O'Reilly here as well, these kids involved in this shooting were arrested immediately, so there is no comparison.

O'Reilly just used this as another excuse to beat up on poor people and people of color and to blame them for all the woes of our society.

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