Tag Archives: Bill O’Reilly

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Santorum defames Mandela’s struggle

I’ll admit I didn’t see this one coming.

On the heels of Nelson Mandela’s death this week in South Africa, we hear from a two-bit American politician who equates the great Mandela’s struggle against injustice and tyranny with Republicans’ effort to rid the United States of the Affordable Care Act.

Yep, according to former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., the two battles stand as moral equals. That’s what he told Bill O’Reilly. Have a listen.

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/12/07/santorum-mandelas-fight-for-freedom-like-the-fight-against-obamacare/

I don’t know which offends more: Santorum’s equating the two fights or O’Reilly’s failure to call him out on his ridiculous comparison.

I’ll stick with the original offense, which would be Santorum’s asinine assertion.

Say whatever you wish about the ACA or about its chief benefactor, President Barack Obama, what is going on now in the United States bears no resemblance, none, to what Nelson Mandela endured as he led the movement to rid South Africa of its apartheid policy.

You remember apartheid, yes? It was the policy that required separate societies within South Africa, one for the white minority that governed the country and the other for black residents who comprised the overwhelming majority of the country’s population. The black residents, though, didn’t have the right to vote or to have any voice at all in the policies that suppressed them.

This was the battle Mandela fought and which cost him 27 years of imprisonment on Robben Island.

For a one-time U.S. senator who may run for president yet again to compare his party’s struggle against the Affordable Care Act with what Nelson Mandela endured is offensive beyond all measure.

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Talking heads becoming the story

This is a big part of what I find distasteful about cable TV news: The talking heads have a habit of becoming part of the narrative they’re supposed to be covering.

The latest example is a feud that’s apparently brewing between lefty Al Sharpton and righty Bill O’Reilly. Sharpton is one of the hosts of MSBNC’s talk-show lineup; O’Reilly hosts his show on Fox.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/the-al-sharptonbill-oreilly-feud-marches-on_b190254

Allow me this brief commentary on both men.

Sharpton came to be known to many Americans when he ran interference for a young African-American woman, Tawana Brawley, who contended some white New York City police officers raped and beat her. Sharpton became Brawley’s voice in a heated exchange with the New York Police Department. He demanded justice for this poor girl and raised the volume to a fever pitch. One big problem emerged: Brawley’s story was fake. The cops ended up suing Brawley and Sharpton for slander and they won. Now, all these years later, Sharpton has lost a lot of weight, cleaned up his TV image and is known as a “leading civil rights activist.”

In my mind, he’s a charlatan.

O’Reilly has been a fixture at Fox for many years. He’s had other broadcast network gigs. He’s a simpleton, who makes simplistic arguments to cover complex issues. He fancies himself as an “independent,” but he’s nothing of the kind. He’s a card-carrying conservative who, when interviewing subjects on his show, delights in out-shouting them. He interrupts at will. O’Reilly even treated President Obama rudely while interviewing him during the 2012 presidential campaign; he’d ask a question and refuse to wait for an answer before butting in while the commander in chief of the most powerful military establishment in the history of the world was trying to answer.

O’Reilly is a gasbag.

Now these two clowns are fighting in public. They both see themselves as bigger than any story they cover for their respective networks. They disserve the craft they purport to practice when they engage in these televised tit-for-tats with each other.

I don’t care one damn bit what these guys think of each other. I care only what they say about the issues. Stick to your talking points, gents. If you want to insult each other, pick up the phone and do so in private.