Why Is Bill O'Reilly In "The Jesse Jackson Protection Racket?"

Betsy Newmark writes that she’s “rather disgusted at Bill O’Reilly’s unctuous defense of himself for not revealing that Jackson had used the n-word in his little rant”:

I haven’t ever thought much of Bill O’Reilly, but this story exposed him for an even bigger buffoon than I’d thought he was before. Note how he had a different reaction about people who criticized Don Imus for his riff on the Rutgers basketball team. At that time, with guest host Michelle Malkin interviewing him, he pretended that he was going to be all fearless in exposing those who criticized Imus but then used racist language themselves.

MALKIN: Well, I guess the rehabilitation of Don Imus will begin. But, I mean, how optimistic are you that the rehabilitation of all of the other hate-mongers and hate-tolerators is going to take place?

O’REILLY: Another excellent question.

I don’t care whether their rehabilitation takes place at all. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to spotlight them now. And I think other people will, too, that, when they get back into this groove of hate, we’re going to lay it out there, that we’re going to layout there the gangster rappers, who they work for, who is paying them.

I wouldn’t want to be Snoopy Dogg right now.

(LAUGHTER)

O’REILLY: And I wouldn’t want to be Ludacris or 50 Cent, because every move they make is going to be on “The Factor.”

I guess that that was just some self-promoting spin because Jesse Jackson was one of the biggest mouths out there protesting against Don Imus. But when Bill O’Reilly had an exclusive video shot of the sanctimonious Reverend using the n-word, he tried to bury the tape.

Maybe Bill’s trying to stay on Al Sharpton’s good side, lest he wind up in the same star chamber that Imus did. In any case, as Betsy writes, “O’Reilly may bluster all he wants, but he’s proven that his zone has quite a good deal of spin.”