Oops! It looks like Bill O'Reilly and Jesse Watters went a little bit too far in their little "satirical" look at Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan.
During the segment Watters pulled his usual frat boy attitude routine, making light of the Muslim community in Michigan. It caused some real problems for them.
“I don’t think it really was satire,” said Walid, the executive director for the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Especially when you have people making comments about ‘honor killings,’ and you go on your Facebook page, Bill — and it’s not your fault. But because of that story, people are talking about ‘Bomb Dearborn.'”
Both Walid and Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly — no relation to the Factor host — criticized Watters’ segment on Wednesday in which he asked Muslim residents questions such as “Do you like Christmas?” and “Which way is Mecca?”
The segment also featured a local man calling the city’s Muslim community “bad” and describing it as unfriendly, as well as an allegation that there was an “honor killing” in Dearborn last year.
Transcript via Media Matters:
BILL O'REILLY: So what's the beef, Mr. Walid?
DAWUD WALID: Well the show that you had Bill, just really shows old, tired, and really bigoted frameworks about the community here in Michigan and Dearborn in particular. And there were a number of factual errors that were in the story. For instance, the mentioning that the police chief was a Muslim when in fact Chief Ron Haddad is a Lebanese Christian.
O'REILLY: But that was corrected though. I corrected that fairly quickly.
WALID: OK, but then also [there] was misinformation put out saying that there was a Muslim woman who was killed simply for having condoms. That never happened. There was no honor killing or anyone getting stoned to death in Dearborn. It hasn't happened. And there are no honor killings taking place.
O'REILLY: OK, and I think those are legitimate points that should have been clarified by Watters and weren't. So I will cede that those things should have had clarification there. Was a condom killing in Germany. And Watters didn't say that. That was said by some guy who didn't know what he was talking about. However, have you ever seen Watters' World before?
WALID: I've only seen it about one or two times.
O'REILLY: All right. How would you describe it?
WALID: Oh, well how I'd describe it is it goes into particular communities and in some ways it makes fun of people or communities. But also, it reinforces or plays into stereotypes that people have about certain communities.
[...]
O'REILLY: However, your points about honor killings and stonings and things like that, that's my fault as an editor. I probably... probably, I should have said you know what, if we can't back this up -- and believe me, I'm glad you contacted us because it won't happen again. That if there's any kind of accusation of violence or something like that, we'll check it out. And if it doesn't check, we'll cut it. But overall it was a gentle piece and you know it was gentle. Why are you so upset?
It wasn't gentle if people are blowing out death threats and saying an entire community should be bombed, Bill-O. Get a damned clue.
