ADDED: This, of course, make O'Reilly look very rude, but I didn't watch the interview and I don't know how rude it actually was. To some extent, I like interruptions. I like the back and forth of overlapping conversation with someone who does it well and isn't actually trying to dominate. Overtalking can be an important component of flowing conversations. It's no good when one person holds forth and the other one, instead of listening, is distracted thinking about when it's going to be his turn.
That said, an interview of the President is different. He commands respect. But he can abuse that. Obama could have pursued the strategy of running out the clock, blathering tediously and preventing good pointed probing by the interviewer he perceived as an opponent (if not an enemy). He'd have played O'Reilly, I suspect, if O'Reilly hadn't broken in with questions. The YouTube montage is effective at making O'Reilly look brutish, but that's not necessarily so, and if O'Reilly had patiently waited for Obama to bring each meandering answer in for a landing, it would not have been possible to make a YouTube montage that would show Obama's running out the clock to avoid serious questions.
The Juan Williams moment, prompted by Bill O'Reilly, who just a few days earlier, had this immensely more dramatic-looking moment on "The View":
I got to the Juan Williams video via Donald Sensing (via Instapundit). Sensing has old quotes from Jesse Jackson and Susan Estrich, who both conceded that black men make them anxious in some situations. Jackson's painful admission was that he feels "relieved" when he's walking down the street, hears someone behind him, and looks back and sees that they're white. Estrich said:
Every woman I know, black, white, green or yellow, gets a little bit nervous, if she’s being honest, when she sees an 18-25 year-old black guy dressed in gang attire, walking behind her on the street. I’m not afraid of old black men. I’m not afraid of old white men.
She purports to speak for all women, but limits the nervousness to encounters with "an 18-25 year-old black guy dressed in gang attire, walking behind her on the street." It's funny to see those 2 quotes together. Jackson describes the realistic situation of hearing someone behind you and looking back to see who it is. Estrich too has the person walking behind her, but somehow the nervousness is restricted to the young black man in gang clothes. Her political correctness made her layer in extra details, but if the guy is behind you, you don't see him yet. Were you not nervous just to have someone following you? The supposed revelation of feelings doesn't really add up, which makes the phrase "if she’s being honest" particularly telling.
Now, if Jackson and Estrich could say that, how was Williams different? Actually, there are a lot of differences. I won't try to list them all. But I don't assume that Jackson and Estrich got a free pass for saying what they said. And Williams has gotten a ton of support. It's not all about treating Muslims with more delicacy than black people receive. One thing about Williams is that he made himself available to Bill O'Reilly and gave him support and comfort. I think many people wanted to use that "View" fracas to demonize O'Reilly for good. And then Williams sat down on camera to shine a glow of humanity on the man the good people would have us see as monstrous. And so it became necessary to demonize Williams too.
Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”
Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.
He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.
NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
Williams managed to be a commentator on both NPR and Fox for quite a while, but I guess it was just too much to see him feeding red meat to O'Reilly just a few days after O'Reilly enraged Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg over the very same subject. These news media — Fox and NPR — want the image they want, and Williams did a great job, fitting into both templates for as long as he did.
I suspect the powers-that-be at NPR pretty much think what Juan thinks. But the standards of political correctness must be maintained. Pressure groups speaking for allegedly offended Muslims must be propitiated. And so Juan had to go.
Williams' trite attempt to glorify his bigotry as anti-P.C. Speaking of the Truth is inane, as his remarks were suffused with falsehoods...
Whether these latest comments were merely the opportunity they [NPR] were looking for to terminate their relationship with him, or whether it was caused solely by these disgusting comments, is unclear. But what is clear is that the anti-Muslim bigotry he spewed is both the proximate and cited cause....
And so on.
Williams is now free of the need to preserve his relationship with NPR. I'm pretty interested to hear what he'll say now that he's shaken off the chains of PC-radio. Talk to us, Juan!
French McDonald’s running gay-themed ads for … no apparent reason
More specifically: This isn’t an ad about how awesome the burgers are, with a gay protagonist singing the praises of Le Big Mac. That wouldn’t be a “gay-themed ad” so much as a “food-themed ad” with a gay pitchman.This is a true gay-themed ad, with the product almost wholly incidental to young Jacques experiencing l’amour fou with a guy while papa blathers on ironically about being a ladies’ man. Why’d McDonald’s do it? Er … no one seems to know. Apparently there was no anti-gay incident at McD’s over there that they’re trying to atone for. The obvious explanation is “controversy for controversy’s sake,” but I can’t believe French viewers will bat an eye. Maybe they hired a director who fancies himself an aspiring Godard and he simply decided to indulge his inner auteur, burgers be damned? All theories welcome!
Actually, maybe the “controversy” theory does make sense. Below you’ll find O’Reilly making an offhand comparison to Al Qaeda, which was enough to provide Media Matters with hours of content. It’s great when everyone wins, my friends.
As stated at the end of the O'Reilly clip, the ad is part of a series, showing different characters. I haven't looked at the other examples, but it's easy for me to understand the ad. Like many American ads I've seen over the last few decades, the viewer is drawn in by something other than the product itself. We're shown characters that interest us for some reason, and the product is woven in subtly in way that feels positive. In this example, we see a young man and understand something about him — he's gay — and then we see his father doesn't really get that, but they love each other and spend time with each other... at McDonald's. They don't share everything, but they can share a meal at McDonald's. It's really a typical McDonald's ad, showing the restaurant as an easy, comforting family place. It's not about controversy at all. It's about commonality. We're different in a lot of ways, but we can all agree that it will be good to eat at McDonald's. The ad is well-done, charming, and sweet, and it creates a good feeling about McDonald's.
Obviously, it is also true that the ad won't work on people who get riled when they see gay people presented as regular people who are part of ordinary life. I'm sure, back in 1980, some people didn't like to see a little white boy give his Coke to the black football player Mean Joe Green in the famous Super Bowl ad. And Coke might have thought about that. This will alienate some people who are not ready to see black and white people sharing a simple intimacy. But Coke chose to do the ad and take advantage of the good feeling it would give a lot of people, a feeling that would halo around the product. They were right, too.
When O'Reilly jokes about McDonald's doing an ad in this series showing a member of Al Qaeda, he's revealing that he thinks gay people are a group that most people view with justified hostility. McDonald's, operating in France, hasn't analyzed things that way. That's their judgment call, and I hope it's a good one.
Some people say that gay people should keep their sexuality private: Why does anyone need to hear about what anyone else does in bed? But the reaction to this ad shows how obtuse that is. This young man is looking at a photograph and talking to another male on the phone in a way that lets us know he's in love. It isn't at all leering or overtly sexual. It's mild and innocent. It doesn't make any sense to say that's something that belongs only in the bedroom. The idea that expression like this should be kept hidden only makes sense if you actually believe homosexuality is shameful.
Sorry, I had the wrong video before. I did not want to link to the video that way, at TNR, precisely because TNR displayed a Media Matters video without the embedding code. I hate when websites do that. They take video MM collected and use it in a way designed to force the link that I have now given them. I would have been happy to link to them, because that's where I found the video, if they had been properly generous to Media Matters and shown the embedding code. So I went to Media Matters to find the code myself... and found the wrong video, which made me write a post that didn't make a whole lot of sense. You have no idea how irritating that is to me.
ADDED: At that TNR link, Jonathan Chait not only has the video without embedding code, he also says "watch this fantastic video from HuffPo's Ben Craw (via Media Matters)" without any links to Ben Craw or Media Matters. It's easy enough to retaliate against TNR by dispensing with the usual "via" links when blogging about something you've found through them.
Yes, it's almost as if the real point of the videos was to provoke a lawsuit that would open ACORN to the legal intrusions of discovery. And of course, Giles and O'Keefe will get even more publicity, and it shouldn't be hard for them to attract aggressive legal counsel and a hefty litigation fund.
"But now so does Governor Sebelius. She is not fit to serve. Nor is any Kansas politician who supports Tiller's business of destruction. I wouldn't want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day. I just -- you know ... Kansas is a great state, but this is a disgrace upon everyone who lives in Kansas. Is it not?"
This characterization of Tiller fits exactly into ancient conservative, paranoid stories: a decadent, permissive and callous elite tolerates moral monstrosities that every common-sense citizen just knows to be awful. Conspiring against our folk wisdom, O'Reilly says, the sophisticates have shielded Tiller from the appropriate, legal consequences for his deeds. It's left to "judgment day" to give him what's coming.
So now that Tiller has been murdered, does O'Reilly have blood on his hands?
This does not mean there is a cause and effect between O’Reilly’s rhetoric and Tiller’s murder...
But... the over the top, demonizing rhetoric that has become the rage in 21st century America could have serious consequences....
Vigorous, heated discussion isn’t the same as demonization. And demonization has become the way to garner huge viewerships and readerships. But if issues are framed in terms of good versus evil some people could act.
I think Joe is saying that O'Reilly has blood on his hands.... although Joe avoids using the "demonizing" rhetoric that in his calculation is what makes you responsible for the actions your words inspire. Perhaps he means to invoke the First Amendment idea that lets us punish speech that creates a "clear and present danger." "Vigorous, heated debate" is important and protected. But there is a line that can be crossed, and Joe says it's "demonization." And O'Reilly demonized Tiller. So, Joe, could you spell it out? You meant to say that O'Reilly is morally responsible for Tiller's death, right?
O'Reilly demonized Tiller on 28 episodes of his show. I have no doubt his words wil be played endlessly on cable in some kind of hideous irony. This really could be the end to O'Reilly's dangerous, demonizing game.
What exactly does Sullivan mean? That O'Reilly should be shut down? That people should hold him responsible for murder and — what? — stop watching? I doubt if he means that O'Reilly will see the light and, on his own, decide to tone his routine down.
Is there now to be an argument that decent people who are anti-abortion cannot make strongly passionate statements in support of their cause — that they are linked to murder if they do? I don't think that's fair.
[G]ive credit to George Tiller for being a courageous man and making an important contribution to human welfare. Abortion is a crucially important social asset as well as a legal right in American society. The fact that women are not forced to carry pregnancies to term has helped open up tremendous new vistas of freedom for American women and has been an incalculable benefit to our society as a result.... Given that the material in a pregnant woman's uterus is a "fetus," a woman has as much right to control and/or dispose of that material as she has a right to contraception, regulating her periods, or anything else to do with gynecological health. As a result, there should be more abortions in this country rather than less....
George Tiller deserves a lot of credit for performing abortions at all.... But he especially deserves credit for continuing to perform abortions and late-term abortions after the first armed attack on him.... But he kept providing abortion services to women in Kansas despite the vigilante death sentence hanging over his head. It's significant that Tiller died while attending a Christian church, the Reformation Lutheran Church of Wichita, Kansas. Not unlike Jesus, he died for the benefit of others.
Caric's argument would be more effective without the extreme rhetoric about "that material" and Jesus. But, I assume, like O'Reilly he wants us to pay attention to him. And I just have.
