June 25, 2007

Turn Off Fox News Channel

Bill O'Reilly's show is a surreal-enough experience just on a typical night. But last Thursday, he aired what may be the most bizarre segment in the history of the Factor. At least, the most bizarre since the night during the 2000 campaign when did a hard-hitting interview with a European "nude model" who he described as "one of Al Gore's biggest supporters."

Back to that Thursday segment (I can't find a YouTube, but here's the transcript.) Leading with the "cavuto mark" of "Did the Media Ignore Violent Incidents in Three Cities?", the segment had as its guests the left-leaning African American radio host Opio Sokoni, and the right-leaning author Tammy Bruce.

Starting with the question of whether the media turns a blind eye when black people commit violent crimes (see any Philadelphia newspaper in the past five years for a quick answer: no.) Bruce argued that the violence taking place at Juneteenth parades in three major cities should have been more widely covered, while Sokoni argued that "there are no small amount of negative media images against African-Americans."

But then the conversation took a weird turn, with the combatants abruptly switching sides: Sokoni argued that we don't hear nearly enough about what goes on at gay pride parades- such incidents as "people exposing themselves to children." Then Bruce, the conservative who is also openly lesbian, immediately turned around and denied that she's ever seen anyone expose themselves to children at a gay pride event, adding that "I think I've been to a few more [parades] than you or your other guest." At which point Sokoni, the supposed leftist, responded that if we're going to talk about violence in the black community, "we're not supposed to talk about pedophilia in the gay community? Not supposed to talk about pedophilia?"

Sokoni then, apropos of nothing, started screaming "Turn off Channel Zero!," which is, we learn from Google, the title of a documentary Sokoni directed which is aimed at addressing Viacom's negative images of African-Americans, through MTV, VH1, and BET. The film stars Professor Griff, the guy who was kicked out of Public Enemy in 1989 for saying "Jews are responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world." I look forward to a right-wing Jew coming on O'Reilly's show to debate Sokoni on the issues of the day, until the conversation abruptly reverses field halfway through the segment.

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 25, 2007 05:23 PM
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