Bill O'Reilly: Victim or Ventriloquist?

Yesterday's post about Media Matters got me thinking about Bill O'Reilly. If he's not a racist -- and while Bill and I disagree about a few things, I think he believes in the American ideal of racial equality -- then how can it be "newsworthy" when he says condescending things about black people? Was it unfair to make such a big deal of a soliloquy that, however stupidly phrased, was intended as a defense of the black community?

Actually, I think O'Reilly got what he deserved, and here's why.

Anyone who has seen Outfoxed, Robert Greenwald's documentary about Fox News Channel, knows about the "some say" canard. Desiring to air an opinion but have it play as "straight" reporting, a Fox anchor will preface it, "Some say...," turning whatever follows into a discussion of a position, rather than an advocacy of it.

This is more or less what O'Reilly was trying to do in his ill-fated discourse on Sylvia's, the Harlem soul-food restaurant. "[W]hat White America doesn't know," he claimed, is that a lot of black people go to nice restaurants, and have table manners, and wear appropriate attire. "They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg."

Of course, "they" is really "I." "White America" is a sock-puppet. It's the prop O'Reilly uses to voice regressive attitudes he holds or once held, allowing him to cast his inner conflict as a sort of Socratic dialogue between Bill O'Reilly, Champion of Enlightened Values, and unspecified Forces of Intolerance.

It's worked for him dozens of times in the past, but this time, that voice coming out of the sock was a little too familiar. Some might say O'Reilly should be more careful what words he tries to put in other people's mouths, lest he wind up looking like a schmuck again.

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