O'Reilly: Maybe Blacks Should Wear 'Don't Get Pregnant At 14' Shirts

Bill O’Reilly remains a fool on a soap box and this time he decided to throw respectability politics, racist stereotypes and what I’m sure he’ll dismiss as “humor” at the son of Martin Luther King Jr. Instead of “I Can’t Breathe” shirts, O’Reilly said protestors should wear “Don’t Get Pregnant at 14” shirts. Because he’s Bill O’Reilly, and of course he said that.

On The O’Reilly Factor, the host told King that he “doesn’t mind” if President Obama applauds Lebron James’ “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirt, worn in solidarity with the national police brutality protests, but the POTUS should then lay out a plan.

First of all, President Obama doesn’t care whether O’Reilly “doesn’t mind” his co-sign of James’ “I Can’t Breathe” shirt, taken from the last words Eric Garner said as NYPD choked him to death on camera. But his statement very much betrays his Bill O’Reilly-ness in thinking that Obama, or minorities in general, should care what he thinks from his Fox News perch.

Second, there are a systematic ways black and brown neighborhoods are under-funded in America and it has little to do with the people who live there, as Jon Stewart pointed out when he handed O’Reilly his ass earlier this year. O’Reilly knows better but still chose to rile up his audience with racist tropes.

Third, he says protestors should wear “Don’t get pregnant at 14” on their t-shirts, despite hard numbers showing that teen pregnancy across America is down 51 percent from its peak in 1990. So what could possibly be his reasoning for making that statement to the son of Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Look, I don’t care what O’Reilly thinks but I do hope Americans realize that this kind of thinking, this diet racism (I say diet because he’s not burning a cross on my lawn or hanging me from a tree) but O’Reilly is one of those guys who’s continually stoking the fires on which racism burns. With thick-headed idiocy constantly falling out of his mouth, his whole job is to give people who agree with him an echo that says ‘Yeah, those (insert whatever minority he’s targeting that night) need to leave us alone.’ The thing is, with people like O’Reilly, there’s always a new minority or a new group trying to usurp his power, that’s what happens with white privilege and racism. Subjugating people is clearly a full time job.