Jason Whitlock and Bill O'Reilly are engaged in the dumbest feud ever
Remember Bob Costas' halftime essay on the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide and guns? For a couple days last week that was seemingly all everybody in America was talking about. And then everyone moved on. Sure, there were a couple meaningful conversations about gun violence and domestic violence, especially within the context of the NFL, but for the most part we've all forgotten about it. Like we always do with any story in this new age of news.
In the dying embers of the frenzied gun control/culture debate though, one strange media feud has developed.
Fox News' Bill O'Reilly vs Fox Sports' Jason Whitlock.
If you'll remember, the comments Costas made that received such national attention were actually paraphrased from the outspoken Fox Sports columnist who's been known to put his foot in his mouth on more than one occasion. With Whitlock gaining increased notoriety because of his commentary on guns, he made the jawdropping comment that "The NRA is the new KKK." That statement caught the attention of Bill O'Reilly, who first excoriated Whitlock on his primetime show last week. O'Reilly said he invited Whitlock onto his show, but Whitlock was "hiding under his desk" because he couldn't defend that statement. Whitlock wrote a column apologizing and making excuses for the remark, but also took the time to hit back at O'Reilly:
"I’m a grown-ass man and it’s 2012. I don’t have to shuffle off to the Big House when summoned. O’Reilly is not Boehner, Pelosi or Obama. He’s a TV entertainer who has spent the weeks after the election crying about the end of “white establishment” America, the end of the days when an upstanding white man felt entitled to summon whomever he wanted whenever he wanted to the Big House to dance.
I don't dance."
While Whitlock refused to dance to the beat of O'Reilly's drum, he did offer Bill-O a chance to appear on his own podcast. Makes... sense? I guess?
"If O’Reilly wants to talk, he’s more than welcome at my little house. I’d love to tape a podcast with him discussing the Second Amendment, gun culture and his fears about the end of white establishment America."
The intra-Fox feud continued this week. O'Reilly launced another attack against Whitlock Tuesday in his opening Talking Points Soapbox under the headline "Confronting Evil." Seriously. He also tried to diminish Whitlock's importance by saying the only reason he's getting attention is thanks to Bob Costas. (Which is why O'Reilly has dedicated multiple days to attacking Whitlock... again, this totally makes sense, you guys.) O'Reilly even called it "way beyond disgraceful" that Whitlock gets paid to write what he does. I assume O'Reilly is talking about Fox writing those paychecks.
God bless you if you're still with me, because Whitlock threw yet another counterpunch after that O'Reilly essay. That was, after he asked someone on Twitter to tell him what O'Reilly said.
did anyone watch the o'reilly factor who can tell me what he said verbatim... shit, i can't wait for the re-air.need to know now.
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) December 12, 2012
Whitlock's response to O'Reilly's most recent attack was to record a 36 minute "Message to Bill O'Reilly" for his FoxSports.com podcast Tuesday. You can listen to the audio here if you want to voluntarily listen to 36 minutes of a Jason Whitlock monologue. The upshot of it all is that Whitlock still refuses to kiss the ring of Bill O'Reilly. He also accused O'Reilly of being afraid to have a real conversation and invited him onto his podcast again. There, I saved you 35 minutes and 30 seconds of your life. Go plant a tree or something.
So where do we go from here? Obviously, Bill O'Reilly and Jason Whitlock will continue to trade shots across the bow and throw out words like "disgrace" and "evil" and "racist" and "Big House" because for better or for worse, that's what these guys do for a living. Apparently, neither man is really that interested in having this debate because if they were it would have happened by now.
The amazing, reality-defying takeaway from this madness is that a Sunday Night Football essay from NBC's Bob Costas has developed into a feud between Fox News' highest profile cable host and Fox Sports' highest profile columnist. (You can make a judgement as to what that says about Fox as a whole on your own.)
It completely baffles me though that a network with the visionary history of Fox can't see the mutual benefit a Whitlock v O'Reilly tete a tete would offer both Fox Sports and Fox News. Let's just skip this childish contest of these two shouting "mine's bigger! no mine's bigger!" and do Whitlock v O'Reilly live!
How is it job dropping to compare the NRA to the KKK? The NRA killed 31 people this week in Oregon and Connecticut, how many did the KKK kill?
@Doug7 Pitbulls are banned in cities in some states, not even a majority of the states mind you, so if you want a pit bull then go buy one. Guns are inanimate objectst that require human interaction to function properly. So one could argue that an animal could just snap on someone for doing nothing and are technically more dangerous. A human can cause more damage with a gun then a pitbull could do on their own but again it requires the shooter to work, which brings me back to my original point, don't blame the boogie man blame the person who pulls the trigger.
Pitbulls are banned in most of the country I think you are brainwashed guns are the only thing that are designed to kill that we don't try to control, guns are so much more dangerous than pitbulls but guns have a lobby the NRA that wants everyone to have guns@dawgs2477
@Doug7 you know what though, people have killed other people with knifes before and other sharp objects. I think that the knife was the preferred weapon of Jack the Ripper. So should we also ban knives because one sick person went on a killing spree with them? also there are plenty of responsible gun users who use their guns everyday without killing anyone. Again if you want to place blame on someone it is the shooter that you should be mad at, not the "boogie man" that is the NRA. Now saying this I don't own a gun nor am I am a member of the NRA but this whole blame them is a bunch of crap.
In China there was a knife attack the same day, no one died. The shooters mom took the shooter for target practice even though he had mental issues, why? Because of a sick gun culture, he took her guns and killed 20 kids, I am tired of these shootings, the NRA has blood on it's hands@dawgs2477
@Doug7 yes really. I didn't realize that the NRA an organazation went into a school on Friday and killed a bunch of kids or went to the mall earlier and shot people. Of course you will state that they are the reason we have guns, and if we didn't have the NRA there would be no more gun violence correct? Now you know that arguement is false but you will push it anyway. So yes really. If you want to place blame, place the blame where it goes on the shooters in both of those situations not some boogie man organization that you don't agree with.
O'Reilly is just one of the talking heads guarding the inhabitants of Bullsh*t Mountain from rejoining the world of the sane. Fox News is a propaganda machine which dumbs down America by the day through disinformation and their slanted agendas. See their anchors spewing forth feces from their mouths in my visual homage to the network on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fox-news-scylla-guardian-of-bullsht.html
Thank you for sparing of my life of 30 minutes of Jason Whitlock. I stopped listening to his idiocy years ago. Just like i never listened to Bill O'Reilly.
