O'Reilly is perhaps the least charismatic person on the face of the earth. Despite studying O'Reilly for decades, to this day I'm still trying to determine just what the question is that the self-proclaimed "culture warrior" sees himself as the answer to. At this point, the best I can come up with is:
"Who best epitomizes the worst in what today passes for real journalism."
By nature, journalists should be human sponges who soak up the most pertinent details and relevant information required to render an accurate, objective news story or a thoughtful, facts-based opinion piece. At WNEV-TV, which introduced tabloid-style TV news to Boston in the 80s, the portentous O'Reilly was more a human bagpipe -- nothing subtle, just a whole lot of tacky, loud, yet indiscernible noise. In other words, perfect for tabloid television thus perfect as the face of Fox where, through The O'Reilly Factor, he provides viewers a contemporary version of the same element of tasteless ignorance delivered by 80's "Trash TV" pioneer Morton Downey, Jr.
"A book salesman with a TV show" is how his boss Roger Ailes describes O'Reilly.
Regarding African-Americans, O'Reilly carries the racially condescending disposition of someone with "pre-emancipation" mentality. Who can forget "antebellum" Bill's compellingly ignorant remarks about his dining experience with Rev. Al Sharpton at Sylvia's, a Harlem soul-food restaurant? Later, just after Obama's re-election, came O'Reilly's artless "analysis" of black culture where -- in a wholly deplorable expression of sour grapes -- O'Reilly rationalized that African-Americans rejected Mitt Romney because Obama would give blacks "more (free) things."
"Black voters," O'Reilly declared, "don't believe in self-reliance."
It's an adherence to such enabling falsehoods that helps the O'Reillys of the world keep their world view intact. But is this mindset all that surprising for a person who came of age in the manner of O'Reilly? As noted in Charles Postel's 2012 Reuters article, "The End of White Affirmative Action," O'Reilly grew up in Levittown, New York -- a specifically "whites-only" locale by covenant, which today is just 3 percent non-white. The home in which he lived was acquired by his dad through a government-subsidized FHA loan. The college education acquired by O'Reilly's father, a veteran, was also obtained free of charge -- again largely through government largesse by way of the GI bill. Those government entitlements enabled Bill's father to become an accountant, which helped facilitate the family's escape from Levittown to Westbury, a pricier suburb, and helped pay for young Bill's private prep school and Marist College education.
O'Reilly lived out his boyhood in the relative comfort of those surroundings, which the family attained via direct government assistance handed them through the New Deal and the GI Bill. Meanwhile, as Ira Katznelson points out in his book "When Affirmative Action Was White," the benefits of those same entitlements were denied as a matter of public policy to African-Americans vets.
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