Bill O'Reilly as Soul Food Restaurant Critic
We hope Frank Bruni won't feel threatened by Bill O'Reilly's stunning review of well-known Harlem restaurant Sylvia's. Take a listen, Frank. O'Reilly's willfully ignorant observations about African-American culture in general show just how uninformed he is about anything outside his own narrow set of experiences. O'Reilly was amazed that eating at Sylvia's was just like eating at an Italian restaurant. That is astonishing, Bill.
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4 Comments:
Anyone see Matt Lauer defend O'Reilly? It was really astonishing. O'Reilly's comment is one of the most blatantly racist things I've ever heard from a public figure, yet Lauer tried to spin it by arguing that O'Reilly was criticizing those who think a restaurant like Sylvia's would be different from a run of the mill Italian restaurant. Please.
rps at 10:02AM on 09/27/07
I think the point that Bill O'Reilly was doing such a poor job of making is that there's more to African-American culture than what's portrayed on the media. His narrow set of experiences gave him one set of expectations and reality presented something different. His visit to Sylvia's was part of his learning experience, and hopefully he learned something positive.
We all have pre-conceived notions about how things are. If we go to Chinese restaurants, don't we expect somewhat brusque service and accented English? If we instead got excellent service and perfectly spoken American English, wouldn't we be surprised? I know I would be!
But then again, maybe I'm just being willfully ignorant of how Chinese restaurants actually are in the United States because of how they're portrayed in the media...
gothamknight at 12:53PM on 09/27/07
Well, who can be surprised that Bill Oh Really doesn't have much of sense of reality beyond his own preconceptions? How dare they actually record his words and quote them back! And there was Juan Williams, famous Fox Noise tool, agreeing with him.
Stushi at 2:10PM on 09/27/07
lol indeed Stushi,
MsEbzCityButSouthern at 11:30PM on 11/05/07