Hey, Bungling Bill . . .

Bill O'Reilly asks who's looking out for me.  He certainly isn't.

I can never make any sense of Bill O'Reilly.  I've actually listened to his radio show, and he sounds a lot more reasonable on radio than he does on television.  Sometimes he takes liberal positions that make him sound all the more reasonable.  But when he goes fill-tilt conservative in front of a television camera, he embarrasses himself.  And he embarrasses himself most when he brings up a topic that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. 

Maybe it's the lure of the camera?

Anyway . . ..  O'Reilly had Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in his show to discuss President Obama's "My Brother's Keeper" program to help young men of color stay on the straight and narrow, and O'Reilly started talking about how rappers like Shawn Carter (alias Jay-Z; I've decided not to refer to rappers by their stage names when talking about them) and Kanye West (his real name) are encouraging misanthropic behavior among their young male fans and ought to cut it out.  My jaw dropped.  

Don't get me wrong.  I'm no fan of rap, as I've made acidly clear on this blog.  I am especially ticked off at Kanye West for his comments about rap being the new rock and roll, which suggested that rock and roll itself is pretty much over and done with (even though what he said may in fact be true).  But what the hell was O'Reilly thinking by bringing up his own distaste for rap when rap had nothing to do with the subject at hand?  His bitching about hip-hop was completely irrelevant; he should have been talking about helping black men rather than bashing their tastes in entertainment.  And, truth be told, Carter and West owe their success to large numbers of white fans.  Needless to say, MSNBC's Joy Reid - who can't help but sound smug while discussing rap's commercial success and who also sounds as if she's glad that electric-guitar rock is on the way out - looked like the cat who swallowed the canary after showing the clip from O'Reilly's show on her own program.

Bill O'Reilly is completely unqualified to bash rap, and he doesn't do rap-haters like myself any favors by "looking out" for us.  This is the same guy who ate at a soul food restaurant in Harlem and was surprised to find that black people eat with knives and forks.  Anything Bill says about rap is thus bound to have a racist subtext.  Bill thinks he's speaking for other rap-haters, and he's likely going to try to speak for us again.  Bill - please don't!  You're making it harder for us to defend rock at a time when rock needs defending.

At least O'Reilly doesn't pass himself off as a cultured sophisticate - he wouldn't have an audience otherwise, would he? - and talk about how better off we'd be if we were more into forms of classical music, like opera.  Because operas are no less filled with bloodlust and violence than rap records are. Rap is just more profitable.  That's why the New York City Opera folded in 2013.  (And if you're one of those culture vultures who digs opera, you have to admit - if the most culturally endowed city in America can't support two opera companies, how can we expect places like Cincinnati and Kansas City to support even one?)