That's the headline, as The Battle of Bill heats up.
Bill O'Reilly is under fire from those weasels at Media Matters, and the rest of the Left is joining in, piling on.
Now Juan Williams has joined in on O'Reilly's side, joining with such other strong African-American figures as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. In this powerful piece in Time magazine, Williams puts the controversy in a larger context.
Wiliams starts by knocking down "the suggestion...that O'Reilly had racist preconceptions." Williams dismisses this notion as a "twisted assumption," recalling that those false allegations "led me to say publicly that the attacks on O'Reilly amounted to an effort to take what he said totally out of context in an attempt to brand him a racist by a liberal group that disagrees with much of his politics." That liberal group, of course, is Media Matters.
Then Juan continues:
But the out-of-context attacks on O'Reilly picked up speed and ended up on CNN, where one commentator branded me a "Happy Negro" for allowing O'Reilly to get by with making racist comments without objection.
This is so far from the truth of the conversation on the radio that it is beyond a matter of words being taken out of context. This is a pathetic cowardly, personal attack against me intended to damage my credibility and invalidate any support I offer to O'Reilly against the charges that he is a racist.
And just so that we don't forget, who is Juan Williams? What does he know about race and racial issues?
For the record, I am a black man who lives in a black neighborhood in a mostly black city, and is married to a black woman. I am also the author of several books and documentaries on the civil rights movement. And any viewer of the O'Reilly TV show knows that O'Reilly and I respect, even like, each other but are frequently at loud, finger-pointing odds over politics and people.
And then Juan really spells things out:
But this is an attempt to take down O'Reilly and dismiss anyone offering him support — me. This is along the lines of telling anyone who calls attention to the excesses of hip-hop culture a "self-hating" black man and skewering anyone who dares to say there is a crisis in black America because of the high dropout rates, high crime rates and high out-of-wedlock birth rates.That is what happened to another well-known Bill, Bill Cosby, after he spoke out about the self-destructive images and behavior in the black community.
The critics want to shut up Cosby, O'Reilly, me and anyone else who points out the crisis in black America. They want anyone who dares to speak publicly about problems in black America to fear being called a racist, if they are white, or a "Happy Negro" if they are black. They want silence so they can continue to make money by distorting black life and allowing black on black murder rates to climb along with the black dropout rate and the black poverty rate.
The critics want to paralyze efforts to help those locked in poverty and too often in a criminal culture where acceptance of drug use and violence becomes acceptable. They don't want black people to be known as Americans with a long distinguished history of patriotism, reverence for education and a willingness to fight for America's ideals — justice for all — despite the harsh facts of slavery and legal segregation.
They prefer to bash anyone who points out their tragic, mindless willingness to sell out the history and pride of black people to make a buck. But take this from the "Happy Negro." The critics are some Sad People.
In other words, the real fight here is over the future of Black America. No wonder Juan cares--because the next step in the civil rights struggle is not school integration, it is economic integration, and that can only happen after the cultures find common ground--American common ground.
Still, it's hard for this Cable Gamer, operating from comfortable remove from the Beltway Battles, to imagine the kind of assault that Williams is destined to endure from liberals and bloggers, all because he was willing to stand up and tell the truth. They will come after him. As I said, he's a courageous man.
Meanwhile, Johnny Dollar comes through, as he always does, with some clutch a/v on the tiff, this from another brave fellow, LaShawn Barber.
