Erik Wemple reports today that Bill O’Reilly becomes spokesman for white America.
Honestly, I had no idea. I’ve been white all my life, and no one even bothered to ask me. No SurveyMonkey, no paper questionnaire, not even an unscientific online poll…nothing. I had to read about it in Wemple’s blog.
There must be – simply must be – at least a few other whites who find O’Reilly’s selection surprising. A quick look at the latest Census data shows that over 70% of Americans are white, amounting to approximately 226,000,000 million people. Is Bill O’Reilly the best that we could do? (To get an idea of how repulsive O’Reilly is, he gave a defense in July 2016 of slavery – by his justification, some slaves were “well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.”)
America has produced some pretty darn noteworthy whites, among whom one finds more than ‘spokespeople’: Abraham Lincoln, Jonas Salk, Lou Gehrig, Sandra Day O’Connor, Bob Dylan, and (of course) the always-charming Betty White.
Now?
Bill O’Reilly’s somehow, in some way, our unrequested racial spokesperson.
Honest to goodness, so much for a holly jolly Christmas; it’s going to take more than one eggnog to turn this around.