Quote of the week

“I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”

-Bill O’Reilly on his radio show yesterday, talking about Michelle Obama’s “proud” comments

One question that I often wonder about: is there anything – anything – that people like O’Reilly could say that would have any consequences? Others, from Don Imus to Michael “Weiner” Savage, have felt at least some consequences for outrageous comments. But people like O’Reilly and Coulter seem to feed on these situations, like vampires bathing in the blood of virgins.

Great quote from William K. Wolfram of WorldGolf.com:

For Fox News and O’Reilly, however, this type of inflammatory, racist language is something they do embrace. And obviously, so do a majority of their viewers and listeners. Because in the end, O’Reilly and Fox News won’t get so much as a slap on the hand and won`t consider apologizing. Kelly Tilghman, making a stupid joke about a man she knows, gets a suspension and a huge speed bump for her career. Bill O’Reilly makes a non-joke about a lynching party forming to get the wife of a prominent politician, just adds to his legend as someone who “speaks for the people,” which apparently is the Fox News code for “unrepentant racist.”

UPDATE: For those crapweasels out there who don’t think O’Reilly’s comment was racist, I offer this story from the much-missed Molly Ivins:

I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about 10 every morning at the Chat’n'Chew Cafe to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their members is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener. He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, “I think Rush is right. Racism in this country is dead. I don’t know what the niggers will find to gripe about now.”

UPDATE II: Here are some choice words from the Idiot Son, during his Black History Month comments:

“The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history. The noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice. Displaying one is not a harmless prank. And lynching is not a word to be mentioned in jest. As a civil society, we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive. They are wrong. And they have no place in America today.”

UPDATE III: I promise I’ll stop at some point. :-) Here are some great lines from Clerks II.

Randal: Since when did porch monkey become a racial slur?
Dante: When ignorant racists started saying it a hundred years ago!
Randal: Oh, bullshit! My grandmother used to call me a porch monkey all the time when I was a kid because I’d sit on the porch and stare at my neighbors!
Dante: Despite the fact that your grandmother used it as a term of endearment for you, it’s still a racial slur! It’d be like your grandmother calling you a little kike!
Randal: Oh, it is not. My grandmother had the utmost respect for the Jewish community. When I was a kid she told me to always treat the Jewish kids well, or they’d put the sheeny curse on me.