Watch Out: Bill O'Reilly Has Declared War
Even by the standards of fury Bill O’Reilly unleashes routinely on The O’Reilly Factor, the thunderbolts he’s hurtled over the past two nights on Fox News have been especially impressive. One night after shouting over one of the channel’s house-liberals, Kirsten Powers, on the subject of systemic racism in America, O’Reilly bellowed a challenge to his perceived foes on Wednesday evening. “You want a war? You got a war!” said O’Reilly, his earthy baritone raising in volume like that of a great opera singer. What would this war be about, you ask?
O’Reilly’s lead-off segment, his patented “Talking Points Memo,” was titled “Demonizing America as a Racist Nation.” In it, he said he believes some on the "far left” — O’Reilly never says “left”; it’s always the “far left,” as opposed to regular guest Bernard Goldberg, who calls liberals “the hard left” — are promoting the idea that “white Americans are actively trying to keep black Americans down."
In the wake of recent events such as the murderous massacre that occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, and the riots in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, O’Reilly has commented more frequently on this notion that, as he put it on Wednesday, "far-left smear merchants have the nerve to say that America is a white supremacist nation."
The crux of O’Reilly’s argument seems to be, as he said to Powers in one of those faux-hostile exchanges that characterizes many of O’Reilly’s encounters, that "we don’t have a system where racism is acceptable at all.” And because, as he said Wednesday night, “The American Congress has passed law after law after law to ensure that all Americans have equal opportunity to pursue happiness,” well, then everybody should just shut up and be happy.
(I should also add that O’Reilly took a brief slap at Yahoo News, contending, “Last night on my computer, the Yahoo News service carried anti-Fox defamation from all kinds of crazy left websites. It was brutal, Yahoo just throwing this garbage out there with no balance whatsoever, giving these smear merchants a platform.” He gave no examples of what he was talking about, so my best guess is that perhaps there may have been comments by readers appended to some articles Yahoo News published — like every place else on the Internet, Yahoo receives reader comments from readers of all political persuasions.)
On Wednesday, O’Reilly said, “The truth is there is no organized effort to harm black people by white people.” And to anyone who says there is (can we see your hands, please? anyone? anyone?), know this: Bill O’Reilly is “not going to sit here and take this garbage any longer. People who lie, who run their country down, who are racist themselves, are going to be called out on The Factor.” I think I detect a new running theme, just as, about a year ago, O’Reilly began regular bashings of Beyoncé for what he perceived as her sexually suggestive videos and her failure to be a cultural role model of the sort O’Reilly could admire.
I’m still not sure exactly who Bill O’Reilly is going to war with now, but he’s going at it with increased gusto that’s making for some exciting television. The squabbles over in the Big Brother house, which premiered at the same time on CBS Wednesday night, had nothing on O’Reilly for anarchic drama.
The O’Reilly Factor airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on Fox News.
