In a previous post, I noted the silliness of Bill O'Reilly's amazement to learn that black people, when they eat in restaurants, tend to behave like everybody else who engages in that activity.
Specifically, O'Reilly was delighted to discover that, when black people gather in restaurants, there is no "craziness," and that we don't routinely use profanity when we place our orders.
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.In the days to follow the story spread through the blogosphere, and today, it made the network news. NBC's "Today" show went to Harlem to speak with patrons of Sylvia's, the restaurant where O'Reilly made his groundbreaking discovery about the dining habits of black folk.
[...]
O'REILLY: That's right. That's right. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."
[...]
O'REILLY: 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.
True to form, O'Reilly characterizes the ridicule he has received as a "smear" initiated by Media Matters, which was first to catch his statement and place it on the web.
Typical Bill-O. Play his own words back to him, and you're "smearing" him. It hasn't occurred to him that his words, and the ideas behind them, are ridiculous, thus the ridicule.
Some people never learn.
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