"Phony" quotes

During last night’s Talking Points segment Bill O’Reilly said that the reason people have taken offense at his comment about being surprised that a black restaurant he attended was normal is because they’ve heard the fake quote Media Matters came up with to smear him.

The New York Times and other papers ran up to Harlem and fed bogus Media Matters quotes to blacks who had no idea what I actually said on the radio. Of course they didn't like the phony quotes! And they said bad things about me.

But I don't blame the folks who did that. They believe what the reporters told them. Now ladies and gentlemen, this is blatantly dishonest, blatantly dishonest, and exploitative in the worst possible way. No American deserves to be fed propaganda by the press.

Wow. Feeding phony quotes to people - that is dishonest. So in the sake of fairness and honesty here is what O'Reilly actually said.

And 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, primarily black patronship.

And here is the totally dishonest phony quote from Media Matters

And 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, primarily black patronship.

Whoah! It doesn't get anymore deceitful than that. I think its pretty obvious that he has a cut-and-dry case for a defamation suit.

Seriously, is it possible that O’Reilly has some kind of disorder where he thinks he’s saying something but a different statement comes out, yet he hears what he thought he was saying? And that when he reads the transcript of what he said he also somehow still sees what he was thinking but didn’t actually say?

When Jesse Jackson pointed out to O’Reilly that underestimating the civility of the black people in Sylvia’s restaurant is insulting, O’Reilly asked incredulously who did that. Again, here is what O’Reilly said

There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea." ... You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.

Later in the program Juan Williams was on and he said that all O’Reilly was trying to do was deflate stereotypes. Well, yes, I suppose that’s true. But its beside the point, because what is at issue is the offensive nature of O’Reilly assuming in the first place that the restaurant would be anything other than normal.

O’Reilly and every guest that he has brought on to agree with him have repeatedly reiterated that you can’t have an honest discussion about race without the “far left” smearing you. O’Reilly told Jane Hall that white Americans aren’t going to talk honestly about race anymore because they’re going to be afraid of getting attacked.

Rubbish.

You want to have an honest discussion about race? An honest discussion about race would start with O’Reilly admitting that the stereotype he was deflating was his own personal prejudice instead of the passive aggressive technique of claiming to be speaking for “white America.” It would entail acknowledging that he said something ignorant that people have taken offense at. It would mean making an attempt to understand why his comments are insulting and then engaging in some introspection. That would be an honest discussion about race.

And a word about Bernie Goldberg: pathetic.

That’s the word that comes to mind when watching him. In a show about racial stereotypes, it’s ironic to have on a guy that comes across as a living epitome of the stereotypical angry old white conservative. After saying that Jesse Jackson wasn’t going to let “whitey” off the hook, he then said that Martin Luther King Jr. would be turning in his grave if he were alive today. I suspect that MLK would be more troubled with being turned into a prop for the conservative movement which demonized him as a communist traitor while he was alive. Goldberg then said that CNN allowing a black guest to call Juan Williams a “happy Negro” for being an apologist for O’Reilly’s comments was an example of paternalistic liberal racism (against blacks) motivated by their sense of white guilt.

Goldberg is a one trick pony – a hack. Fox brings him on about any given issue and he sees liberal bias. That’s it, that’s what his career is. It doesn’t matter that his claim to fame book is full of anecdotal evidence about his petty personal animus with former CBS colleagues or that the only empirical claim in the book was demonstrated by linguist Geoffrey Nunberg to be the opposite of the truth or that Goldberg was embarrassed on national tv by Al Franken who pointed out that another claim in the book was totally misleading. Nope, none of that phases him. He just keep moving forward with the “liberals are out to get us” schtick (and by “us” I mean other angry old white conservatives).

One other thing. During the segment featuring Hall and Goldberg both O’Reilly and Goldberg treated Hall disrespectfully. They interrupted her, spoke down to her, and raised their voices at her while overall just being generally demeaning to her. Par for the course for those two jackasses.