O’REILLY COULD BE A BIG PART OF WHY FOX IS HEADED DOWN HILL

…This is how the original White House that was built by slaves looked.

 

According the bogus Fox-historian, Bill O’Reilly, “Slaves were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.”

 

It has been well known for some years that the sons of Rupert Murdoch: James Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch, were destined to eventually assume the management of Rupert’s Fox Network.  Up to now, the brothers have resented the way that the recently resigned Fox News Chief, Roger Ailes ran Fox News.  One of the reason for this resentment is that many of the statements made by Fox News anchors and their pundits are continually made without offering any supporting evidence or documentation.  This has been a long-time common problem on many Fox News programs.  It also why, that out of all the national news organizations, Fox continually receives the highest number of Four Pinocchio’s false statements from the nation's Fact Checkers.

 

Well, recently, right after Mr. Ailes had departed, one of “Fox’s Finest”, the ole blow-hard Bill O’Reilly, just had to take to the network’s airwaves to attempt to defend his recent comments.  The comments were regarding first lady Michelle Obama’s Monday night speech at the Democratic National Convention.  Michelle had said in part, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, intelligent, black young women… playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

 

O’Reilly had said about that statement, slaves did assist in the construction of the White House, alongside free black and white laborers. But for some reason, O’Reilly felt compelled to add that slaves were “well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.” For that, he then got hammered on this blog, among many other major slams.

 

The next night on his Fox program, O’Reilly called all of his White House slave critics “smear merchants”.  Now this latest name calling statement appears to be a promotion from his term “far left loons”, that he had offered in an earlier Tweet. 

 

 

Per O’Reilly, “The rank tabloid New York Daily News wrote, quote, ‘O’Reilly defends use of White House slaves.’ That is a lie! I defended nothing! The publisher of the Daily News Mort Zuckerman allows that kind of stuff on a daily basis. It is despicable! USA Today did the same thing! ‘Bill O’Reilly defended the working conditions slaves faced while building the White House.’ Another lie.”

 

Settle down Bill!

 

Bill tried to cover himself when he followed all this with a statement that the horror of slavery is a “given”.  “As any honest historian knows in order to keep slaves and free laborers strong, the Washington administration provided meat, bread and other staples, also decent lodging on the grounds of the new presidential building,” said O’Reilly. “That is a fact. Not a justification, not a defense of slavery. Just a fact.”

 

Really Bill, sounds like you saw it all with your own eyes….are you really that old?

 

But once again, O’Reilly offered nothing to substantiate his claim that: “slaves were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government”, or that, “the Washington administration provided meat, bread and other staples.”

 

Jesse J. Holland, who wrote the well-known book on slaves and the building of the White House, noted that yes, the slaves were housed in a barn and were provided with some level of food. But there’s a big gap between that fact and what O’Reilly alleged that they were “well fed” and resided in “decent lodgings.”

 

“Those aren’t facts; they’re judgments”.  Holland has researched this matter extensively, and he found major limitations. “Writing about slavery is difficult because there is so little that we know for a fact because so little was written about their lives during their lives.” If it weren’t for the records of payments to slave owners, says Holland, historians might still be arguing about whether slaves actually even worked on the White House.

 

The author Holland then wrote the following in his Blog: “There is no doubt that slaves were provided food and shelter while they were working to build the White House. That is a fact. However, we don’t know the quality of either because there are no historical records that support that judgment. What is undeniable is that slaves were not given a choice on what they ate or where they lived. They were at the mercy of their masters, and dependent on the whims of people who considered them property, not human beings.”

 

Information availability notwithstanding, O’Reilly defiantly stands by his conclusions about "well-fed-decent-lodgings". At this point, it’s incumbent on O’Reilly to substantiate these judgments or concede that he’s making them without supporting documentation.  As stated, once again, the common problem under Ailes on the Fox News programs. 

 

 

A smaller point pertains to O’Reilly’s complete faith in the ability of government to provide sustenance and accommodations for its people. Why does this guy, a serious supporter of smaller government, all of a sudden O’Reilly now thinks that the American public sector of the 1800’s could perform such programs with such efficiency?  Really Bill?

 

“He does not understand the nature of the servitude of slavery,” said Ralph Dawson, a 67-year-old Democratic delegate on the DNC convention floor.  Duni Hebron, a black delegate from Houston, said of O’Reilly’s comments: “It hurts deep down.”

 

But, right after asserting his “rightness”, O’Reilly invited his Fox Newies: Geraldo Rivera and Eric Bolling to discuss his “rightness”.  Citing a run-in that his personal attack reporter had on the floor of the Democratic convention, O’Reilly told Bolling, “Our reporters can’t go out on the floor? Jesse Watters goes on the floor of the Democratic Convention, and some photographer comes up and starts swearing at him and cursing at him right in his face? This is provocation. These people are doing this. They want me [O’Reilly] dead, Bolling, literally dead.”

 

Fox News was asked whether there’s any evidence that anyone wants O’Reilly dead. Those asking are still awaiting an answer.

 

O’Reilly has reached new extremes in this. His latest comment: “I think the time has come now where this whole network is going to have to band together — all of us — and we are going to have to call out the people who are actively trying to destroy this network by using lies and deception and propaganda. We’re going to have to start to call them out by name because that’s how bad it’s become.”

 

Of course, O’Reilly failed to mention what the sexual harassment scandal of his former boss, Roger Ailes, is doing today, which is far more to destroy Fox News than could any potential outside critic.

 

Nuff said.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016