September 27, 2007
Juan Williams: Bill O'Reilly Not A Racist
UPDATED.
We meant to go up with something on the Bill O'Reilly controversy du jour on Tuesday, but more pressing news did not permit. The Lede beat us to it: "Mr. Reilly [sic] is guilty of being sheltered, old-fashioned and possibly exhibiting a casual racism." Maybe. We decided to put the question to his sparring partner in the now-infamous interview, NPR's Juan Williams.
Williams, a prominent political journalist who is also black, is the liberal counterpoint on "FOX News Sunday." We reached him by phone on Tuesday, and asked if he thought O'Reilly was a racist. His answer was, "No."
On the Sept. 19 airing of his radio talk show (listen to the full interview here), O'Reilly chatted about O.J. Simpson's legal troubles and dining at a famous soul food restaurant in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Liberal media watchdog Media Matters caught the program, and posted this summary of O'Reilly's remarks last Friday:
Discussing his recent dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's, Bill O'Reilly reported that he "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, primarily black patronship." O'Reilly added: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.'"
On Monday, O'Reilly insisted that "there was no racial intent in what I said," and told CNN's Matt Sanchez that Media Matters' Sept. 21 reporting was "a hatchet job." According to Williams, there's good reason to believe that at least some if not all of O'Reilly's comments were taken out of context.
Williams told this Gater that the interview in which O'Reilly talked up his visit to Sylvia's was conducted in August, and apparently re-broadcast last week. "They replayed it with a new lead-in," Williams said. "My sense is that people don't understand the context."
Part of what's generating excitement over this story is what O'Reilly said earlier in the program, when he was still talking about O.J. and before he cut into his interview with Williams. "I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the [Jesse] Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture."
Preceding those remarks, O'Reilly had said, "I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country. So you've got to accept that as being the truth. People deal with that stuff in a variety of ways. Some get bitter. Some say, [unintelligible] 'You call me that, I'm gonna be more successful.' OK, it depends on the personality."
Most of the bloggers pouncing on Media Matters' initial report left that segment out.
O'Reilly was trying to explain why a new O.J. trial wouldn't be as divisive as the first one. Williams, who was covering a speech by Bill Cosby at Howard University yesterday, said he hadn't heard the entire program yet. At the time of the interview, he was still promoting his book "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It."
"Originally when I went on, it was a conversation sparked by the fact that McDonald's had hired a rapper by the name of Twista as a corporate spokesman," Williams said. Explicit rap lyrics are a favorite topic of O'Reilly's, and is also a subject in Williams' book. (A sample of Twista's musical stylings: "If a nigga come at you like a lame or big slander your name/Nigga you better go check that hoe, you better go check that hoe.")
"This is the kind of thing O'Reilly gets up and waves the banner about. Why are these corporations embracing these negative role models? I couldn't agree more," Williams said. (Under pressure from a local billboard campaign, McDonald's dropped the Chicago-based rapper from its 10-city youth-oriented live music tour in late July.)
Rival network CNN replayed clips from the radio interview Tuesday and Wednesday, and anchors asked repeatedly whether this was O'Reilly's "Imus moment." No doubt his liberal critics, who descended on FOX's New York headquarters during the 2004 Republican National Convention to protest him specifically, wish it was.
But this flap raises an important question: Is O'Reilly a racist, or is he just not allowed to talk about race?
Because of the "perception that O'Reilly is a conservative, he is somehow more suspect on race issues than other white people," Williams said.
In fact, it can be argued that O'Reilly isn't a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. While he shares a conservative world view on foreign relations and matters like terrorism, O'Reilly is known to be pro-choice and anti-death penalty -- arguably a libertarian in his social views.
"This is the kind of reactionary thinking that shuts down meaningful dialogue on race in society," Williams continued. "It's OK if somebody else, like Jesse Jackson, says he gets nervous when he's walking down the street and sees a young black man behind him. The fact is, people get nervous and they get nervous for a reason. We need to talk about that in this country."
As we noted previously, both men share a payroll, though that hasn't stopped Williams from taking on William Kristol most Sundays. And Williams knows what O'Reilly is experiencing firsthand, because it's happened to him, too. Like Cosby, he also has criticized aspects of modern black culture, rap in particular, and for the crime, poverty and under-education that still plagues black communities. Cosby and Williams were in turn lambasted for their "righteous posturing" and for airing their community's "dirty laundry."
O'Reilly seconds Cosby's and Williams' critique of Sharpton and Jackson as perpetuators of victimhood. The perception that there is a vacuum of leadership in the black community is pretty mainstream, and it appears that's what he was referring to when he said black people were "starting to think more and more for themselves."
With blacks still lagging in key social markers, this seems like a necessary conversation to have. But should whites be excluded?
"Instead of having meaningful conversation, they have to hold it in and can only talk about it with other whites, and blacks can only talk about it with other blacks," Williams said. "When Cosby spoke out on just this issue, he was attacked as a self-hater. They tried to shut him up. Cosby's given millions of dollars to historically black colleges, he's been a celebrity for progressive issues. What chance does Bill O'Reilly have in that environment?"
This is what O'Reilly said after commenting that Sylvia's was just like every other restaurant: "That's really what this society is all about now, here in the USA. There's no difference. There's no difference. People may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy and you're going to get that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin."
O'Reilly then went on to talk about his grandmother, who was "old-school, not well educated," and a racist. Opining that her prejudice was based on fear, O'Reilly continued, "That fear is breaking down, I think, in most parts of the country. But it's replaced by other misunderstandings. Cultural rap music stuff. You know, most white people don't like that."
He continued, "They don't like all this language, glorification of drugs and alcohol, and prostitution. They don't like it, and they can't understand why this is being embraced by a subculture. But you know what? I don't think most black people like it either.... I think most black Americans are appalled by Snoop Dogg, Nas, all this crazy stuff. I do. Maybe I'm wrong."
O'Reilly's point when he attacks rap music is that it should not be representative of black Americans, and yet it appears to be. There are plenty of black people who share that view, as well as those who believe rap is a convenient way to speak discriminatingly of blacks. O'Reilly's argument that mostly white corporations peddle rap culture, which you'll also find in the program, is a comment on white exploitation.
By the way, as a former FOX employee, this Gater's closest experience with O'Reilly was him sneering at her on his twice-daily jaunts past her desk. (Probably all those New Yorker cartoons on the wall.) Liberal critic Ken Tucker, who wrote a book that praised O'Reilly, said of the bloviator in an NPR interview, "Jerk of the first rank." But, "I think he's a really good broadcaster. I'm always surprised at people who can't separate his politics from what he does as a performer."
Emphasis on performer. It's pretty easy to poke fun at O'Reilly (see "The Colbert Report"), and many do so with abandon. But aren't there bigger issues for the media to worry about? Williams thinks so.
"The demographic makeup of the country has something to do with the fact that we've never had an Obama before. We live in a mostly white world," Williams said. "It is a sad reality that people are asking, 'Is he black enough? Is he taking the official black position?' My God, shouldn't we all be extraordinarily proud of him?"
MSNBC's Miki Turner argues that it's too early to indict O'Reilly just yet, and Huffington Post's Earl Ofari Hutchinson says the media pile-on is "disingenuous and self-serving." Diners at Sylvia's don't seem to buy O'Reilly's defense. Sharpton appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" last night; you can view the segment here.
(This post was originally published on Wednesday.)
Posted at 9:00 AM
Posted to:
Don Imus, Economy, FOX News, Media, Race
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