Billo’s narrative about a recent trip to Harlem offers keen insight into the rightwing’s inner monologue on race:
You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he’s made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there.
Note the adverb: He actually had dinner with Sharpton, which translates as “believe it or not, I had dinner with a liberal, and an African-American liberal, at that.” But the takeaway point: Bill paid for dinner.
And we went to Sylvia’s, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful.
Not just some dive nobody’s heard of. Bill went to one of the most famous restaurants in the African American universe.
They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.
Bill would have us believe that Sylvia’s was packed with Fox News watchers, but what he probably couldn’t imagine is that black people have cable television and may have seen him in his almost nightly presentation as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World,” or in any number of other shows where he is mocked and lampooned.
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. It was the same, and that’s really what this society’s all about now here in the U.S.A. There’s no difference. There’s no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment — people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you’re gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody’s skin.
Is Bill O’Reilly truly as unsophisticated as he comes off here, or is this part of his everyman shtick? If he’s reporting his true impressions here, it appears he experienced more than a little trepidation in advance of his visit.
What is truly revelatory here is the fact that O’Reilly is so out of tune with his own prejudices that he would broadcast them to his audience without a trace of irony or self-deprecation.
I’ll bet he was scared shitless the whole time, one hand on his wallet.
“Even though” it was run by blacks??? Please, please don’t anybody ever tell me that racism is confined to the South. Good Lord.
My experience has been that wherever there are Republicans, there are racists.
Bill’s Dinner selection for that evening:
A tasty dish of humble pie and crow.
Why, some of my best friends are black.
I wonder if he brought the Faux Police with him. I hope the chef spat in his food.
The most troubling thing is someone like this who is clearly out of touch with reality has been given a forum. It’s sad that so many people actually look up to this guy. What a sad state we are in!