Larry and Bill



So here's all I have to say about Larry Craig: I'll happily agree with the ACLU et al that propositioning someone for sex should not be a crime. And I'll happily agree that there is a serious double standard at work, in the sense that propositioning someone of the same sex is much more likely to get you in trouble with Johnny Law than an opposite-gender proposition. And I'll even go so far as to agree that the charges of "hypocrisy" are perhaps misplaced, since one's politics don't have to gibe with one's personal behavior. (Actually, though, in Craig's case, I'm not sure I can go that far, but still. It's a valid point in general.) But. As a father, I'd like to think my young son can go into an airport bathroom and not, you know, encounter someone giving someone else a blow job. The particular genders of the giver and/or receiver do not concern me. I'd just like to think that bathroom is a blow job-free zone. And my understanding of the proposition Craig was making is that the sex was not going to take place off-site, as it were. And while I do understand the (serious) problems with the authorities making a determination that tapping a foot constitutes a crime, I'm not particularly sorry that the cops don't wait until actual sexual activity is taking place in a public restroom. Given the state from which he hails, I don't doubt that whoever is chosen to replace Craig in the Senate will be equally hideous, politically. But he still needs to go.

Now, Bill O'Reilly. This has bounced all around the Internet, I know, but here's what he said the other day:

"Black people in this country understand that they've had a very, very tough go of it, and some of them can get past that, and some of them cannot. I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country. So you've got to accept that as being the truth. People deal with that stuff in a variety of ways. Some get bitter. Some say, 'You call me that, I'm gonna be more successful.' OK, it depends on the personality.
"So it's there. It's there, and I think it's getting better. I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out: 'Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it.'
"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. 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. 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.
"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 USA. 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 nothin' to do with the color of anybody's skin."

And then, apparently, someone called into his show to complain about rap music, and O'Reilly says: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea,'" he explained. "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."

Really? Really?

I'll tell you what. This Jena Six story is disturbing--very disturbing--but at the very least some kid at school got the crap beaten out of him (the DA in the case offers his side of things here). The racism in that story is so stark, so overt, but still there's some context for the whole mess. But here's a very different deal. These folks are sitting in Sylvia's restaurant, and in walks Bill O'Reilly--someone who surely has had a fair degree of "life experience," who has been around, who has seen some things and been some places--and he "[can't] get over the fact" that these people in this restaurant were "no [different]." He "couldn't get over" that "fact"! Couldn't get over it! There wasn't even ONE person yelling "motherfucker" and this was, you see, a restaurant with black people in it! No craziness of any kind!

No, this racism should not be given a pass, should not go away. Jena Six gives us something to examine, to think about, to discuss. But O'Reilly's story is just daily life. And the point is not to single out O'Reilly, but to recognize how extremely common this kind of thinking would be among people whose skin color is like mine.

Posted: Thu - September 27, 2007 at 05:24 PM          

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