I don’t really understand his comment in the first place— why would a black-run business be expected to be problematic? You’d figure black people smart enough to run a business are obviously going to be among the “good ones.”
It’s the restaurants where black customers hang out where you’d expect the rowdiness, bad behavior, “gimme some motherfuckin’ tea!” and a high likelihood of knife or gun violence, but that’s really independent of the race of the proprietors. So let’s be completely fair here.
And how stupid are these “other people” Bill knows, to equate the actions they see of young rich rapstars on MTV with the actions of adult blacks with regular jobs, houses, families, etc?
From what I can understand of these lyrics, it sounds like a highway rant about slow drivers. Forgive me if I fail to be shocked. I used to play in a death metal band. We did songs about murder, necrophilia, cannibalism and some really depraved stuff too. It’s just song lyrics, man. Hyperbole and theater are part of artistic expression. O’Reilly, on the other hand, seriously and sincerely advocates illegal wars. Plus, he’s a sexual predator. It’s inane for him to moralize about rap lyrics.
I think what’s telling about O’Reilley’s remarks is that he threw out random rapper names as if to say it doesn’t matter what those people actually do or say, they are all bad and poor role-models. Because they’re RAPPERS!!!
I mean, seriously, what did Twista ever do to anybody?
About as stupid as the people that evaluated me as a baby-killer when I wore the USMC uniform, or the ones that told me I was a stupid redneck since I came from the South, or the ones one this board that make comments about all Christians based on Falwell.
[Blazing Saddles] You know…morons[/blazing saddles]
No, there are a lot of places in the United States where the black population is next to nothing. Expecting people who live in these areas to have ANY image of blacks other than that portrayed in the media makes you the retard in this case.
Nope. I spent a large number of years in North Dakota. That’s as white as it gets. Although there is a modest white supremacist movement up there, the vast majority of people – many of whom have never known a black person – still do not think that all black people go around acting like stereotypes from rap videos. They do have television and the internet.
We’ve heard or read what Bill said. He’s not exactly a stranger to us. But when we formed opinions, he said we were told that we were taking his comment out of context. So, we read or heard them in context and listened to his explainations and listened to those who attempted to misrepresent them. But in the end, he really was talking about his own reaction:
“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.”
As an English teacher, I would suggest that those sentences are exclamatory and need exclamation marks in the transcript, but I don’t blame the transcribers for trying to tone it down.
Whether or not you would have trouble “getting over it” in 2007 would depend largely on whether you’ve been in the minority in their presence before. Their behaving “the same” is nothing new. The difference is that Bill showed up.
Wouldn’t it be great if he stopped fighting CNN and ABC and talked about the relevance of this new insight?
My first Odd thought, on this topic, was that O’Reilly is trying to engineer an Imus-like scenario about racist statement, and getting banned from the airwaves, to stir it up. Because, his radio show is tanking anyway, ratings-wise. I am going from listening to the Stephanie Miller Show: they’ve said Bill’s radio show is going down the tubes lately. Yeah, they hate him, but tend to always pay attention to some sort of truth.
What better way to garner attention than to spew a stupid racist comment and get called/banned from it on the airwaves when you are tanking anyway, based on the Imus model? Plus, well, Al Sharpton, check. Well, yeah, it Is stupid, but I see a certain sort of idiotic dimming mind thinking that it might be a Good Move, due to the supposed chuckleheads in the background nodding all the way to the polls.
Surely the O’Reilly apologetics in this thread can’t have been offered sincerely, can they? Please tell me they were tongue in cheek! I mean, no one can be seriously defending this cretinous yahoo or his cretinous remarks, which included such delightful bon mots as saying that blacks are “starting to think for themselves”, can they? In the Year of Our Lord, 2007?
On the other hard, perhaps An Arky and Evil One, et. al., would join O’Reilly in giving the black, male patrons emergency blow jobs so as to escape Sylvia’s into safety…
I wonder what Bill would say if he was told that his standard bearer for blacks, Will Smith, used to be, yes indeed, a rappper! Albeit one who didn’t swear.
The notion of some Americans knowing blacks only from TV is bulljive, but for shits and giggles lets assume its true- do these mountain folk only get MTV? Do they not also watch, oh, Cosby show reruns? Any number of sitcoms on the UPN? Commericals with blacks? News shows with blacks? The O’Reilly show itself which often has black people in suits speaking well? No, only MTV? Check. Joe Mountain Klansman is sitting at home, watch Yo MTV Raps, and has never once in years channel surfing seen any other representation of black people on TV.
I’m convinced you could have tape of Billdo or of one his ilk saying “Al Sharpton is a dumb nigger” and his apologists would have an excuse- he was kidding, he was practicing his role as a racist in an upcoming movie, rappers say it why can’t he, etc.
There is no spin, here. In the midst of his paternalistic spiel, unremarkable for its repition of old material, he explicitly said that HE was surprised at the civility in an upscale restaurant, simply because the operators were black.
In some ways, I would agree that it has been blown out of proportion, simply because O’Reilly spouts similar nonsense on a daily basis and this is more an indictment of his own stupidity than some sort of attack on blacks. However, there is no “spin” in pointing out that it was a stupid remark based on racist assumptions.