As I’m sure you all know, Bill “Some of My Best Friends are Colored People” O’Reilly has been getting some criticism just because he mentioned his amazement over the fact that black-owned restaurants are NO DIFFERENT than other dining places, such as Italian-owned restaurants. Sure, every now and then you’re gonna have a mob-hit or a gang shoot-out in either establishment, but hey, they both have tables and serve food and such, and that’s what makes America great.
Well, Bill said it better than I could:
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 we went to Sylvia’s, a very famous restaurant in Harlem.
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.
Now does that sound racist to you? (Don’t answer, as your thoughts were no doubt paid for by George Soros and his evil minions at Media Matters.)
Anyway, Bill is now fighting back, claiming that CNN has “gone to the dark side” and joined his vast army of enemies, which now includes virtually every person in the world with an IQ above 90.
But the best part of Bill’s defense is his explanation of how a transcript of his own words was once again smearing him: see, it’s all his dead, racist grandmother’s fault.
Here’s Bill, explaining how his radio remarks came to be:
We had you [black person Juan Williams] on because your book, Enough, which is now out in paperback, is a very intelligent discussion about racism in America, and to set up your appearance, I told l people about my grandmother and how she feared blacks even though she didn’t know any blacks.
And then I proceeded to tell the audience how ridiculous the fear was by recounting a story about me going to Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem with Al Sharpton.
So, Bill’s astonishment over the fact that one can have a quiet meal in a black-owned restaurant was meant as a stern rebuke to dead grandma, and everybody else is the racist for not seeing that Bill is the good guy here.
And the media is missing the point that this whole mess is grandma’s fault for fearing black people, even though there weren’t any of them in the squalid, poverty-stricken upper-middleclass neighborhood where Bill’s family lived. Also, the smearers failed to pick up on the fact that all Bill was doing was telling dead Grandma that he had actually broken bread with a black person, and how wonderful it was to learn that they don’t practice cannibalism these days.
Anyway, I hope Dead Grandma feels properly put in her place by Bill’s story about his lunch with Al Sharpton, and I hope everybody else now realizes that Bill isn’t a racist. I also hope that we all learned a valuable lesson from Bill about how black people are just PEOPLE, and how one can eat in a black-owned restaurant and live to tell the tale.
Wow, Bill-O must be one pretty brave chap, eating in a restaurant full of… well-behaved black people.
Guess he doesn’t get down to Washington, D.C., often! Last time I dined at The Palm, in our group were several black executives, and at the next table were eight beautifully dressed people of color. All had impeccable table manners and treated the waitstaff and parking valets with courtesy. No iced tea was ordered with the MF word; the black diners conversed knowledgeably with the sommeliers over their choices of wine.
Bill-O, had he been there, would have called it a fluke.
Left by Mrs. Tarquin Biscuitbarrel on September 26th, 2007