Granted, “saying grace” may mean a chant of “Ave Satani,” and “eating” mean “sucking the life-blood from mewling innocents,” but the important thing is that we’re beginning to build bridges, and start a meaningful dialogue.
[QUOTE=BJMoose]
From the link in the OP:
Rut-row. Looks like Reverend Al may be fixing to plant a big old kiss of death on Bilge.
Bill-O-the-wisp is on a roll. Tonight he was two of Olbermann’s Worst Persons in the World. Hang in there, big guy; you’ll hit the Trifecta yet!
[/QUOTE]
Oh, he’s done it at least once before.
According to America: The Book, it was the early colonists who were described by the third Dutchess of Kent as “some tea-drinking motherfuckers”. “Motherfuckers love that motherfuckin’ tea,” she’d often say.
Now I’m getting hungry for soul food. Do they have oxtail soup at Sylvia’s? Of course, we’ve got some good stuff here in Atlanta, but everybody I know from New York thinks it’s the only town for restaurants.
I’m also trying to imagine sitting between Bill O’Reilly and Al Sharpton, with both of them telling me what’s wrong with the world. Jesus wept.
Minor hijack: I hate when anybody talks about retaliating against idiot restaurant customers by tampering with their order. (We had a doper once who, because he was a total asshole, was proud of having done just that.) If you don’t want to serve someone, don’t; if they’re being a problem, kick them out; but once you take a food order, it’s a sacred trust.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
What I want to know is whether or not they were articulate. I hear there are a few articulate Black people out there.
[/QUOTE]
Well, yeah, but they’re not *really *Black, if you know what I mean.
I can’t get all that worked up about this. Yes, his statement was ignorant, but let’s be real about this…I’ll bet that the majority of white Americans, especially suburban types, would have a similar reaction going to Sylvia’s, albeit without being quoted and plastered all over the news. O’Reilly is just the ugly tip of the iceberg.
Heck, I had a kind of strange experience going to a “soul kitchen” in DC right after I moved here…I thought that it was going to be a different experience, but upon looking at the menu, and especially after eating, I found that, being a country boy from Arkansas, the food was exactly the same as what I grew up on in my lily-white family. At first I was surprised, then after a few minutes, I was all :smack: . Duh! Soul food = Southern food.
[QUOTE=Hung Mung]
Well, he got what he really wanted. We’re talking about it along with a million other people right now.
This is how the industry often works. He says something outrageous to get folks all a-twitter thus increasing his audience because people will tune in, irrespective of their opinions of him, to see what he’ll say next. If his behavior results in increased ratings, then it also results in more valuable and profitable commodity for its ownership.
If his behavior and opinions fall vaguely within the spectrum of the ownership’s ideology, then so much the better.
I suspect O’Reilly, behind the showbiz facade, doesn’t really give a damn one way or another about the opinions he espouses. He’s a scarcely charismatic yet forcefully outspoken person with an inflated ego and little actual power. Considering this man a serious, insightful pundit is like believing Tom Cruise can really fly a fighter jet and Hugh Laurie is capable of successfully diagnosing uncooperative patients with conflicting symptoms. It’s a role he plays to pay the bills, I think.
Or maybe he’s an ignorant jerkass with a microphone.
[/QUOTE]
Bingo. On both counts.
[QUOTE=Revtim]
I ate there the next day and the negroes were shitting in their hands and throwing it at each other. Maybe it depends on the day of the week you go?
[/QUOTE]
Too funny! 
Does anyone know if he mentioned the incident on his show last night, and if so how he spun it? I luckily forgot to watch.
Talk about damning with faint praise, BillyO! That was precious.
I think it would be overestimating O’Reilly’s intelligence to say that his comments were premeditated to generate buzz. He probably thought he was showing himself to be the very epitome of open-mindedness and graciousness. What black-owned establishment wouldn’t want to receive such a rave review, to be told that they are just as good as the white places, with customers that don’t talk those gangsta rappers on MTV? He wasn’t saying anything derogatory, in his mind.
Which makes him extra dumbassy.
[QUOTE=monstro]
Don’t know Twista, but if Ludacris and Snoop Dogg are the only images of black culture that America has, then why should people expect black people to act wild in a restaurant? These guys are probably the most laid-back of the hip hop offering.
[/quote]
The only person I know who would say “Gimme some motherfucking tea!” is Samuel L. Jackson. Don’t know about anyone else, but I’d pay to have him come to my restaurant and say that shit.
Maybe O’Reilly was disappointed that Samuel L. wasn’t there.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
This isn’t the first time Bildo has spouted racist crap. Here’s a nice selection of of his greatest, White Power hits.
the guy is a mental midget who is not only a racist piece of shit but a sexist and homophobic one as well./QUOTE]
Thanks for the link- very informative. Now the question is why Imus was fired and asshat Bill is still on the air? Why didn’t Sharpton go after Billdo like he did Imus?
[QUOTE=An Arky]
I can’t get all that worked up about this. Yes, his statement was ignorant, but let’s be real about this…I’ll bet that the majority of white Americans, especially suburban types, would have a similar reaction going to Sylvia’s, albeit without being quoted and plastered all over the news. O’Reilly is just the ugly tip of the iceberg.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe so, though I hate to think so. I guess what’s annoying is that he’s gotten so fucking rich from spouting and writing such banal, ignorant nonsense. It’s not like he’s a brilliant writer whose opinions I disagree with; he’s just a not overly-bright bully who’s inexplicably paid for being a jerk. (Though I guess the really baffling career is Sean Hannity’s.)
I don’t think the average garden variety racist would be surprised that black people are able to congregate in a restaurant and eat without yelling, cursing or dancing or whatever- maybe the hardcore KKK guys would, at most. And actually, black people do this daily in lesser restaurants as well- its not like Sylvia’s is the only place where this miracle occurs, otherwise you would now have tours of the place-“come see the civilized balck people” 
I was in fact in Taco Bell yesterday and everyone was eating with manners and talking quitely.
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
I was in fact in Taco Bell yesterday and everyone was eating with manners and talking quitely.
[/QUOTE]
Well, yeah. It was Taco Bell. Show some reverence.
[QUOTE=An Arky]
Heck, I had a kind of strange experience going to a “soul kitchen” in DC right after I moved here…I thought that it was going to be a different experience, but upon looking at the menu, and especially after eating, I found that, being a country boy from Arkansas, the food was exactly the same as what I grew up on in my lily-white family. At first I was surprised, then after a few minutes, I was all :smack: . Duh! Soul food = Southern food.
[/QUOTE]
I’m glad you’re acting so glib about that revelation; it’s really not as “duh” to most people as it should be, though. “Soul food” is just one of the many BS racial concepts to come out of the post-Civil Rights era.
In some strange way, this may truly be an honest compliment to the staff and owners and patrons at Sylvia’s.
Because there is no way that man could come in to any restaurant that I was in and not hear the word “motherfucker”.
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
Does anyone know if he mentioned the incident on his show last night, and if so how he spun it?
[/QUOTE]
He “spun it” by pointing out that CNN and others have reacted to three sentences within a much larger conversation that were cherry picked and taken out of context. His guest was Juan Williams of NPR with whom he had the conversation on his radio program. Williams was much more animated than O’Reilly about how Media Matters and CNN have taken the conversation out of context. It seemed to me that Williams was offended that people he generally agrees with have been caught with their ideological pants down.
O’Rielly has posted the entire conversation here.
You now have two choices. Listen and decide for yourself or continue to wallow in the comfort of your preconceived notions.
I can’t watch the video now, but I’ve read much of it online.
He would have a point if white Americans had no contact at all with real live balck people and knew them only from rap videos. Maybe. But unless you live in a cave in the hills of West Virginia, you probably see black people every day, in the grocery, gas station, school, work, all acting just like white people, and if you have a brain you know that what you see on MTV is not representative of all black culture. Maybe a segment of young black culture, but his implication that you would expect a 50-year old black couple to act in public like a 20-year old rap star is asinine and insulting to whites.
It was a gutless jab, no question, hidden in the guise of “what other people think”- no different than Imus having his stooge trash blacks, and then its like- oh I don’t think that way, that’s what this guy thinks.
And if this one incident has be spun against poor Bill, what about the several others in Dio’s link above? He used wetback because he was using the jargon- isn’t that what one of Michael Richards’ excuses was? Why then hasn’t Billdo ever used nigger- its similar to wetback, right? Because he’s an ass, but he’s not stupid. He did this to get a rise, Like what fatso Rush does every now and then to get attention. What about the stealing hubcaps joke? And how is that different than Imus’ woodpile joke?
[QUOTE=John Mace]
I hear there are a few articulate Black people out there.
[/QUOTE]
Clean, too.
[QUOTE=Evil One]
He “spun it” by pointing out that CNN and others have reacted to three sentences within a much larger conversation that were cherry picked and taken out of context. His guest was Juan Williams of NPR with whom he had the conversation on his radio program. Williams was much more animated than O’Reilly about how Media Matters and CNN have taken the conversation out of context. It seemed to me that Williams was offended that people he generally agrees with have been caught with their ideological pants down.
O’Rielly has posted the entire conversation here.
You now have two choices. Listen and decide for yourself or continue to wallow in the comfort of your preconceived notions.
[/QUOTE]
I listened to it. There’s a lot of garbage to sit through. There’s a lot of lamenting about “the hip hop and the rap” and patronizing comments about how black people should try to be more like Cliff Huxtable, then Bill tells his story about Sylvia’s The comments “in context” are an attempt to address or rebut what O’Reilly imagines are “white” perceptions about black people. He says that “White America” thinks that black people are all like Twister (whoever that is) and thinks they would all be as amazed as he obviously was about the lack of “craziness” he encountered at a Harlem restaraunt.. Juan Williams comes across as same the toadying Uncle Tom he plays on Fox.
The tone of the entire conversation is the usual, white Republican clucking and head shaking about how awful rap music is and what a terrible influence it has on the black kids. There is actually a comment in there which may be more offensive than the Sylvia comments in which he says that he knows white kids listen to hip hop, but that they grow out of it and “move on” and aren’t affected by it, while black kids take it to heart and try to live it.
O’Reilly’s strategy to deny, blame the “liberal media,” and claim he was “taken out of context” (he wasn’t) are SOP for him. He probably actually thinks he isn’t racist. He’s the kind of paternalistic racist who thinks that he’s giving black people the sound advice they need when he tells them to act more like Will Smith.