5 worst right-wing moments of the week -- Bill O'Reilly's cruelty knows no bounds

The Fox News pundit shames the homeless in humiliating fashion, while Geraldo blames blacks for racism (again)

Published July 6, 2015 11:05AM (EDT)

  (Reuters/Brendan Mcdermid)
(Reuters/Brendan Mcdermid)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet 1. Bill O’Reilly and colleague in cruelty humiliate homeless people to score political points. 

Bill O’Reilly does not like “ultra-liberal” New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, and this week he demonstrated that there is no low to which he will not go to make up bad shit about the mayor.

In a despicable segment, O’Reilly sent smarmy young reporter Jesse Watters to stroll around Penn Station, shove microphones into homeless people's faces and ask them where they slept and whether they had drinking problems. This was not about humanizing a population that needs help and kindness; it was about exposing them as the supposed con artists O’Reilly and Fox demand the public see them as.

After about five minutes of barraging various down-on-their-luck people with rude questions, Watters got some mostly white commuters to say how scary the homeless people are. He had to ask one little girl repeatedly, because at first she expressed some compassion for the homeless.

Watters returned to the studio to discuss his findings and how this is all de Blasio’s fault. Homeless people knew their place under Giuliani and Bloomberg, O'Reilly and Watters agreed.

“In Penn Station, you’re not allowed to loiter, sleep on the floor, or panhandle,” Watters said. “These violations should get you either kicked out, fined, or thrown in jail.”

O’Reilly agreed that criminalizing homeless people was an excellent use of cops’ time. People should not sleep in Penn Station, he reasoned, “because there are homeless shelters where people can go in New York City.”

Eager young disciple Watters agreed. “Why can’t they get these guys in really plush homeless shelters?” he asked.

He really said that. Plush. Homeless. Shelters.

Where do you find people who put words like that together in one sentence?

2. Geraldo Rivera finds yet another creative way to blame black people for racism.

Everyone on the Fox News program, "The Five," totally agreed that Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the BET Awards was not their cup of tea. Kimberly Guilfoyle was “not feeling it,” a criticism sure to make Lamar wail and rend his hair. “Personally, it doesn’t excite me, it doesn’t turn me on,” Guilfoyle continued, as if anyone in the entire world gives a crap about her views on hip hop.

Lamar had conjured up the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, by dancing atop a police cruiser and rapping, “We hate the po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho.”

Tsk tsk, Geraldo Rivera said, “not helpful, to say the least.” Then he seized the opportunity to advance his familiar and absurd theory that black people’s clothing styles and art forms are to blame for racism and police violence against unarmed African Americans. “This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years,” Rivera said. “This is exactly the wrong message.”

That’s a hell of a statement. Exactly how many unarmed African Americans have been killed by hip-hop, Geraldo? Got some stats on that?

Remember, kids, hoodies kill and so do sagging pants.

3. Megyn Kelly, “the sane, smart one at Fox,” cites Ann Coulter in support of Trump’s anti-immigrant racism.

So Donald Trump said a totally crazy, deeply offensive thing that is even hurting his own business success, and he immediately apologized and realized the error of his ways.

Oh. Hahahahahahahahaha.

Equally haha. Fox News repudiated the vulgar billlionaire’s racism. At least that reasonable, pretty, smart one, Megyn Kelly, did. Right?

Oh, you poor poor naive thing.

No, Trump continues to dig in, maniacally defending the indefensible. And Fox and various GOP candidates like Ted Cruz keep willfully misunderstanding Trump’s actual comments. Some of them even defend him.

Enter Megyn Kelly, who had the following dialogue with Howard Kurtz and Geraldo Rivera:

KURTZ: What a lot of people hear — even when Trump goes over the top— they like the fact that he doesn't apologize. They like the fact that he doesn't parse his words like most politicians. The average politician would have backed off and clarified many times by now. But Trump gets away with it because he strikes a chord.

KELLY: Well, I mean, Ann Coulter has got a whole book out right now that makes this point. Now granted, she's not running for president. But she —

RIVERA: Nor would she ever be elected with that point of view—

KELLY:  But she cites data that does support the fact that some, obvious, immigrants who come across the borders do turn out to be criminals, and that's —

RIVERA: I researched it tonight —

KELLY: None? No immigrants turn out to be criminals?

RIVERA: I never said that. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the citizen population of the United States.

You know you are in uncharted a-hole territory when Geraldo Rivera sounds way more reasonable than you do. (See above item.)

4. Fox Newsian argues — with a straight face— that overtime pay actually hurts workers. 

Despite the obvious fairness and decency of the Obama administration's proposal to extend overtime protections to five million workers this week, not everyone was celebrating.

As it stands now, only workers who make less than $23,660 are eligible for overtime pay. The new rules would extend those protections to workers making as much as $50,440 a year.

About time.

But Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt said this is a bad idea, because, personally she loved being exploited and not paid overtime. Or she did when she was younger.

“I was making 20-some-odd-thousand dollars with my first job as a reporter, and I always said yes to everything that they asked me to do,” she recalled on a trip down memory lane that no one invited her to take. She especially loved working until 2am. It’s what enabled her to climb the ladder of success!

Co-host Sandra Smith chimed in that former McDonald CEO Ed Rensi had told Fox News that “these jobs are not careers.”

And why would the McDonalds CEO have any interest in distorting the reality of his workforce, and the fact that many of them support families on their meager wages? Giving people raises will “encourage them to stay as an hourly employee flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s.” No one wants that. High turnover is what everyone wants.

Fox Business Network stocks editor Elisabeth MacDonald worried that paying overtime would create a “permanent minimum wage club” in America.

Bet you did not know it is a club. With really fun, really cheap outings and everything.

5. GOP rep. has quite possibly the most bizarre objection to SCOTUS same-sex marriage decision ever.

As we all know, a huge number of completely insane things have been said about the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the land. But one very creative GOP-er came up with another spin on that hysteria this week, that managed to stand out from the crowd.

Wisconsin Representative Glenn Grothman told a local radio host that the decision was an offense to those killed in the Civil War. How did he manage to connect those two things, you ask? One word: Christianity.

Turns out that contrary to what any historian has ever said, and contrary to history itself, the Civil War in this hose-bag’s mind was a religious war. “A strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery.”

Huh?

So, by that token, the Court’s reasoning, based as it was on the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, was an affront to the war dead.

We can’t, we just can’t.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Alternet Bill De Blasio Bill O'reilly Gerlado Rivera New York City