Bill O'Reilly apparently decided that he should just throw out all of the dog whistles and just bring in the racist bullhorns instead during this interview with former general and Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell this Tuesday night. I'm no fan of Powell for his part in helping to mislead the country into believing that our invasion of Iraq was somehow justified, but given the current breed of right wing mouth breathers who are the majority of the Republicans that we're treated to on the air these days, the man looks downright sane.
O'Reilly went after Powell for stating the obvious, which is that John Sununu, who was a Romney surrogate, constantly threw out racist dog whistles to their base just about every time he was allowed in the air. Sadly Powell did not just call Sununu out for what he is and let O'Reilly brow beat him into saying that the man that was not a racist -- something which is not true and that was made completely obvious to anyone who spent more than a few minutes watching his ugly rants during the presidential campaign.
He also went after him for saying anything mean about Sarah Palin, even though O'Reilly's own network has now thrown her under the bus as well by not renewing her contract.
O'Reilly wrapped things up by saying that Powell "put himself in a category of intolerance by backing Obama's entitlement culture." Powell should have told O'Reilly that his language and questions like that one during this interview are exactly the type of thing he was criticizing Sununu for, but we didn't get that from him either.
He didn't take kindly to O'Reilly's attacks on "entitlements" but rather than hitting back hard at his nonsense, he responded the way we'd expect any other "Third Way," DLC corporate-crat, excuse for what we call "centrist" these days would have, and was pushing for things like the really dumb idea of means testing, or in other words turning earned benefits into a welfare program so we can assure Republicans will have an excuse to destroy them later and there's no constituency left with an ounce of political clout to keep them in place.
I didn't expect much better out of him since he is, after all, still a Republican and a member of the 1 percent, even if his own party and the likes of O'Reilly and company are doing their best to disown him. O'Reilly spent the next segment on his show with Crowley and Colmes trying to do just that.
