Post columnist accuses O'Reilly of casual racism David Edwards and Nick Juliano

Published: Thursday February 21, 2008



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Print This Email This Bill O'Reilly's recent musings about joining a "lynching party" against prospective First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrate the Fox News host's low-grade racism regardless of what defenders will try to say, an African American columnist said Wednesday. "By tomorrow morning, some defender will come out and say, 'I know Bill O'Reilly and he's no racist,'" Eugene Robinson told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Tuesday. "My response is, 'I don't care.' ... All you can go by is his words and his actions. He keeps saying these things that sound pretty darn racist to me." Olbermann and Robinson, who writes for the Washington Post, recalled O'Reilly's earlier shock that people acted civilized in a Harlem restaurant. His latest comments further show the host's casually racist attitudes, they said. On his radio show this week, O'Reilly and a caller were discussing Michelle Obama's recent comments to Newsweek and on the campaign trail, and the caller accused Obama of being a "militant woman." O'Reilly stopped the caller there and tried to defend the candidate's wife. He said: You know, I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle Obama, for Bill Clinton, for all of these people. Bill Clinton, I have sympathy for him, because they're thrown into a hopper where everybody is waiting for them to make a mistake, so that they can just go and bludgeon them. And, you know, Bill Clinton and I don't agree on a lot of things, and I think I've made that clear over the years, but he's trying to stick up for his wife, and every time the guy turns around, there's another demagogue or another ideologue in his face trying to humiliate him because they're rooting for Obama. That's wrong. And I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit. We'll track it down. Olbermann seemed to encourage viewers to contact Fox News and Westwood One, which syndicates O'Reilly's radio show to get him booted from the airwaves. "He's not going to apologize, he's not going to stop, because the moment he'd do that then he has to admit he was wrong; there was a reason for him to stop," Olbermann said. "Do people have to then ... talk to people who are keeping him on the air? Call Westwood One ... or the advertisers and say, 'Get rid of the guy. Suspend him, or give up being accepted in 21st century America, where this is not tolerated anymore'?"



The MSNBC host noted that a Golf Channel anchor was suspended and apologized for saying young players who hoped to top Tiger Woods should "lynch him in a back alley." However, it seems unlikely that O'Reilly will face a similar fate, and his bosses are taking a hard line against criticism. Executive producer David Tabacoff told Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici that O'Reilly shouldn't have to apologize for defending Obama. "What Bill said was an obvious repudiation of anyone attacking Michelle Obama," [Tabacoff] said, via email. "As he has said more than ten times, he is giving her the benefit of the doubt." Critics say lynching analogies are inappropriate because of the practice's history as a tool of racial intimidation. Other political figures who drew condemnation include former Sen. Zell Miller, who before switching parties, invoked the term to protest against fellow Democrats blocking a conservative judge's nomination and Karl Rove accusing the Senate of "judicial lynching" in its blocking another nominee. Author Linda Monk criticized Rove's comments at the time, and provided a reminder of lynching's violent past. Heres how my hometown paper, the Vicksburg Evening Post, described a 1904 lynching of Luther Holbert and his wife, accused of killing Holberts employer: When the two Negroes were captured, they were tied to trees and while the funeral pyres were being prepared, they were forced to suffer the most fiendish tortures. The blacks were forced to hold out their hands while one finger at a time was chopped off. The fingers were distributed as souvenirs. The ears of the murderers were cut off. Holbert was beaten severely, his skull was fractured and one of his eyes, knocked out with a stick, hung by a shred from the socket The most excruciating form of punishment consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the mob. This instrument was bored into the flesh of the man and woman, in the arms, legs and body, and then pulled out, the spirals tearing out big pieces of raw, quivering flesh every time it was withdrawn. [...] [Conservative judicial nominee Charles] Pickering should be the first to admit that he was in no way lynched. Its important to remember what a real lynching is. This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast February 20, 2008.







