If Bill O'Reilly Got Caught Robbing a Bank, He'd Say It Was Taken Out of Context

Posted by TRex at 5:56 AM on September 27, 2007.

This post, written by TRex, originally appeared on FireDogLake

"If Bill O'Reilly was caught robbing a bank, he would say he was taken out of context." Paul Waldman, Media Matters.

It looks like Asst. Principal O'Reilly has really, really stepped in it this time. Everybody's talking about his ill-considered, condescending remarks about his dinner at Sylvia's in Harlem with Rev. Al Sharpton.

And I mean, everybody.

On the Today Show yesterday morning, Matt Lauer was trying to spin it all as an unfortunate misunderstanding, with the help of black Republican activist Joe Watkins. Watkins sounds like Edina from AbFab when Patsy burned Safi with her cigarette, "She's just trying to be nice!"

Watkins insists that O'Reilly was trying to pay black people "a compliment" by saying that, "we're all the same". Except that no-one is shocked and amazed like Bill when white people can run a nice restaurant and say please and thank-you. It's one of those compliments like, "You sure don't sweat much for a fat girl!" O'Reilly is basically saying, "For a bunch of ignorant darkies, the folks at Sylvia's do a real good imitation of a white restaurant."

With compliments like that, who needs insults?

The ladies of "The View" have weighed in.

Sherri Shepherd: First just let me say to Bill O'Reilly, have you never been around black people, that you think we don't know how to eat, that we don't know how to cook? We don't know how to order food? We don't know how to think for ourselves? What is this?

Oh, but Bill claims that all this fuss is really CNN's fault, that they've gone over to "The Dark Side" and joined forces with Media Matters in an effort to pillory him by quoting his own words back to him, god forbid. What could be more cruel than that? It is, in his words, "a hatchet job by Media Matters".

Sure, Bill, except that you provided the hatchet and swung it yourself. But otherwise, you're right on target.

And don't get distracted by Bill's claims that this is just business as usual,, nothing to see here. His phone call with Rick Sanchez from CNN yesterday was apparently pretty explosive. He's in full meltdown mode.

From CNN's "Out in the Open":

O'REILLY (video clip): Now, I talked to CNN last night before that program. It was obvious they didn't listen to The Radio Factor, so I explained the deal. They went ahead with the racist angle anyway. This is dishonest and dangerous.

SANCHEZ: Maybe untrue as well, because we went and we checked the transcript. The word "racist" was never mentioned during our show, certainly not by me. Never once did we utter the word "racist" in relation to Bill O'Reilly. Not by me, even not by our guest, Roland Martin, who was here at the time.

One other thing: He talks about calling us and talking to us. In actuality, he called and screamed at the top of his lungs for a very long period of time. We've invited Bill O'Reilly, by the way, to come and talk to us. We'll be right back.

Nice people skills, there, Bill. You will almost certainly get your way in this professional crisis by calling up other journalists and screaming at them like you did Geraldo when you lost your shit on the air that time. I recommend that you call up as many people as you can and scream at them as loud as you can until you lose your voice. Bullying people will surely get you the results you're after. Good plan, good plan.

You know, a couple of weeks ago we here at FDL Central Command received an email from a reader who claimed to be a voodoo priest in New Orleans. Said voodoo priest was planning on placing a heavy-duty hex on O'Reilly on the full equinox moon, which is tonight. I wish I'd saved the email, but at the time I just shrugged and thought, "Gee, maybe that'll work."

Maybe it's already started to work, and this will end up being O'Reilly's Imus Moment, when his deep-seated racism is laid bare for all the world and the world, in turn, discovers its collective gag reflex. We live in hope.

Tagged as: race, o'reilly, racism, fox news, african americans, sharpton

TRex is a regular blogger for FireDogLake.