Bill O'Reilly Demands What? Fox News Host Makes Outrageously Hypocritical Plea
Color me surprised: Bill O’Reilly has gone off the rails again.
Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock, who made headlines recently after an inflammatory interview with Roland Martin in which he referred to the NRA as the “new KKK,” declined a request to visit The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News. And he did it rather gloriously, explaining in a blog post why he would not be appearing:
“I’m a grown-ass man and it’s not 2012. I don’t have to shuffle off to the Big House when summoned. O’Reilly is not Boehner, Pelosi, or Obama. He’s a TV entertainer who has spent the weeks after the election crying about the end of the ‘white establishment’ America, the end of the days when an upstanding white man felt entitled to summon whomever he wanted whenever he wanted to the big house to dance. I don’t dance.”
O’Reilly unsurprisingly did not take this well at all, lashing back by devoting his Monday Talking Points section to Whitlock, claiming that “we are living in a country that is rapidly changing. Rules of civility are pretty much finished.” O’Reilly went on to call out proponents of gay marriage for calling anti-gay protesters “haters,” and implied that anyone who suggested any Obama opponent harbored racists beliefs were engaging in shockingly unacceptable discourse.
Really, Bill?
O’Reilly has made a career out of inflammatory remarks, insulting his guests, and generally being an unpleasant figure to interact with. A 2007 study by Indiana University researchers found that O’Reilly insulted a person or group an average of once every 6.8 seconds.
“The IU researchers found that O’Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.”
That’s not a typo, though it is vaguely sociopathic.
I could come up with a list of the most offensive things O’Reilly has said on the air, but I have to have time to eat, sleep, and breathe occasionally. The man is an insult factory who predates Glenn Beck as the original Fox News Screamer.
I challenge you to finish this quote with something inoffensive. I don’t think you can. “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama, unless…”
O’Reilly once dined at famous Harlem soul food restaurant called Sylvia’s in 2007, and subsequently went on air to proclaim, “I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship.” He then added, “There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.'”
In 2003, O’Reilly announced he wanted to “whack” the son of a 9/11 victim. And in 2008, an infamous clip of O’Reilly screaming obscenities at his staff from his days at Inside Edition surfaced.
O’Reilly has said so many terrible things that Googling “worst Bill O’Reilly quotes” comes up with 4,070,000 results. Comparatively, “worst Rush Limbaugh quotes” returns 1,530,000 results, and “worst Sean Hannity quotes” returns 1,020,000.
So much for civility, Bill.
In fact, this isn’t about “civility” at all. O’Reilly doesn’t want civility. He wants deference.
And when he doesn't get it, he wants people to shut up:
The truth of the matter is that Bill O’Reilly is a self-centered hypocrite who has built a career on dishing it out and whining when he finds out he can’t take it. You should try not to fall for this latest dose of Fox News claptrap.
The folks over at News Corpse sum it up:
