On Wednesday, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly highlighted a reporter who tried to cover a Black Lives Matter protest in Chicago but was told to turn off his camera by activists. O’Reilly somehow linked that to black-on-black crime, the condemnation of white people and himself as the reporter giving the most coverage to the Black Lives Matter movement. Also: Nazis.
While he’s smart for trolling America on a nightly basis, in this case, Bill O’Reilly isn’t funny, he’s dangerous. As countless black people die at the hands of police and random white people like Dylann Roof feel empowered to murder churchgoers, O’Reilly still thinks race baiting is a timely joke. It’s not.
Last night during O’Reilly’s chat with Andrea Tantaros and Jehmu Greene, Tantaros speculated that the Black Lives Matter movement will protest outside of the Republican National Convention next year but was somehow befuddled as to why they wouldn’t protest outside of the Democratic National Convention.
On the other side, as Greene tried to explain that she understood the anger exhibited by the protestors captured on tape but didn’t agree with their demand to turn the reporter’s camera off, O’Reilly cut her off and compared the activists to … the Nazis.
“Their message means nothing if they do these gestapo tactics, they lose all credibility,” he said. “Their message will only fall on ears sympathetic to them.”
I get O’Reilly’s schtick, he draws on the basest emotions to elicit a reaction and it works. I mean, when he was doing this performance art with Cam’ron back in the early aughts it was hilarious and I love it when he and The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart go at it. But now, now in a time where all black people are looking over their shoulders wondering if today’s the day they get shot or hung in a cell while cops say they committed suicide, his performance art is tap dancing on the corpses of dead people of color. It’s a threat to my very humanity as a black woman because O’Reilly doesn’t think it’s worth the pause it takes to ask himself ‘Is this a good or bad joke? Will I fuel someone into killing someone else that doesn’t look like me and is that worth shutting the fuck up tonight?’ And if he does, his answer is clearly no, every single night.
Contact the author at Hillary@jezebel.com.