On Tuesday's All In show, MSNBC's Chris Hayes attacked FNC's Bill O'Reilly for what he called a "super racist rant" because of a commentary the FNC host gave on Monday's The O'Reilly Factor about racial issues.
Hayes charged that such commentary from O'Reilly gives a "cheap, crack-like high" to FNC's "old, fearful white audience." Hayes:
The real reason Bill O'Reilly peddles this stuff is because it gives a cheap, crack-like high to the old, fearful white audience that watches Bill O'Reilly and gives Fox News its power, also known as the Republican base. These are the folks Bill O'Reilly is feeding when he laments not being able to criticize black culture.
The MSNBC host ended up tying in a debunked smear against O'Reilly from 2007 in which the left mischaracterized the FNC host as shocked that African-American patrons of the predominantly black Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem were civilized when O'Reilly dined there. After playing clips from O'Reilly's radio show from 2007, Hayes responded:
Further proof that Bill O'Reilly has, let's say, a limited view of African-American culture. "Oh, look, they're eating with utensils." But it's also proof that if Bill O'Reilly is representative of white culture, with his stereotyping and his victim blaming and his domineering tone, then I'm pretty sure we need to start having a national conversation about the problems with white culture.
Below is a complete transcript of the segment from the Tuesday, July 23, All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC:
CHRIS HAYES: Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Tonight on All In: Our national conversation on race, another county is heard from. Bill O'Reilly delivers the angry white man position, and it is a rant that requires a response. That is coming up.
(...)
HAYES, BEFORE A COMMERCIAL BREAK: Coming up next, if you missed Bill O`Reilly's racist rant last night -- and I really hope you did -- we're going to break it down for you and tell you what he has in common with New York city Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. That's ahead.
(...)
HAYES: And now, the other side of the race conversation. The side not interested in understanding the causes of racial tension, resentments and frustrations in this country. A side that doesn't want to hear about history because history was yesterday and it's annoying to have to think about. You probably missed Bill O'Reilly's super racist rant last night, and here are some choice bits that give you an overall sense of the full seven-minute, 35-second screed.
BILL O'REILLY, FNC, CLIP #1: Young black men commit homicides at a rate ten times greater than whites and Hispanics combined.
O'REILLY CLIP #2: Right now, about 73 percent of all black babies are born out of wedlock.
O'REILLY CLIP #3: White people don't force black people to have babies out of wedlock-
O'REILLY CLIP #4: -but the entertainment industry encourages the irresponsibility by marketing a gangsta culture-
O'REILLY CLIP #5: When was the last time you heard the congressional black caucus say that? How about Jackson and Sharpton? How about President Obama?
O'REILLY CLIP #6: You want a conversation? You got it. You want a better situation for blacks? Give them a chance to revive their neighborhoods and culture.
HAYES: So, amidst all that vitriol, Bill O'Reilly only wants to create a better situation for blacks. But, according to him, its liberals, people like you and me, who are ignoring the problems facing African-Americans.
O'REILLY: Go to Detroit and ask anyone living on the south side of the eight-mile road what destroyed their city. They will tell you narcotics. They know addiction leads to crime and debasement. But, what do the race hustlers and limousine liberals yell about? The number of black men in prison for selling drugs. Oh, it's so unfair. It's a nonviolent crime and blacks are targeted. That is one of the biggest lies in the history of this country.
HAYES: Just so we're all clear on this, that is not a lie. It's something tangible, knowable. In fact, it's something we know. White people and black people use drugs at virtually the same rate. In fact, I'm sure Bill O'Reilly knows white people who use drugs. Maybe Bill O'Reilly uses drugs for all I know. But here is the thing. Black people go to prison for something as simple as marijuana possession more than four times as much as white people. That is a true thing about the world. Full stop.
And if you want further proof about the real cause of long-term harm to urban youth that Bill O'Reilly seems so concerned about, you need to look at the result of a jaw-dropping two-decade-long study begun in 1989, the peak of the crack cocaine epidemic in Philadelphia. Researchers tracked literal crack babies from birth to adulthood to see if exposure to drugs in utero harmed their development. The years of tracking kids have led researcher to a conclusion that she did not see coming. Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner city children than gestational exposure to cocaine.
In other words, poverty is worse for kids than crack. I don't know if Bill O'Reilly is aware that everything he's saying is easily debunked with about 20 minutes of Googling, but that's not really the point.
The real reason Bill O'Reilly peddles this stuff is because it gives a cheap, crack-like high to the old, fearful white audience that watches Bill O'Reilly and gives Fox News its power, also known as the Republican base. These are the folks Bill O'Reilly is feeding when he laments not being able to criticize black culture.
O'REILLY: That's because race hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called conversation, turning any valid criticism of African-American culture into charges of racial bias.
HAYES: I am not entirely sure of what the singular African-American culture is. Bill O'Reilly is very sure. In fact, he's so sure when he encounters African-Americans who don't conform to his vision of their culture, he is amazed. Listen to how he described a trip to a soul food restaurant in Harlem.
O'REILLY: There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming M-Fer, I want more iced tea.
JUAN WILLIAMS, FNC CONTRIBUTOR: Please.
O'REILLY: You know? I mean, everybody was, it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb, in a sense of people were sitting there and they were ordering and having fun and there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.
HAYES: Further proof that Bill O'Reilly has, let's say, a limited view of African-American culture. "Oh, look, they're eating with utensils." But it's also proof that if Bill O'Reilly is representative of white culture, with his stereotyping and his victim blaming and his domineering tone, then I'm pretty sure we need to start having a national conversation about the problems with white culture.
-- Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center