In the ping-pong match between Rachel Maddow and Bill O'Reilly over whether Fox News 'intentionally runs stories about 'scary black people' to frighten white folks into voting for conservatives,' the rightwing press has ponged the latest ping. In an article already being widely circulated in the conservative press, NewsBusters (which is a rightwing version of MediaMatters) claims that Rachel Maddow took Bill O'Reiily out of context by editing the "'Factor' Video to Make Bill O'Reilly Look Racist."
According to NewsBusters, the clip she played on her August 5 show did not make clear that Bill-O was referring to a Gallup poll when he made his statements. There's only one problem....
Here is the contested portion from O'Reilly's show, with the clips used by Rachel Maddow bolded:
A new Gallup poll says 88 percent of African-Americans continue to support President Obama, but just 38 percent of white Americans feel the president is doing a good job. That is a 50 point differential in the president's job approval rating, which is stunning. So what is going on?
Let's take the white situation first. According to the polls, most white Americans don't like the huge expansion of the federal government. They also oppose the big spending increases that the president has imposed. It's simple. White Americans fear government control. They don't want the Feds telling them what to do. And they don't want a bankrupt nation.
That attitude was on display in Missouri this week when 71 percent of the voters approved a state statute blocking the federal government from forcing them to buy health insurance. 71 percent said no to that. Since Obamacare is the centerpiece of the president's domestic strategy so far, you can see he's in some trouble.
But black America has a totally different view. For decades, African- Americans have supported a bigger federal government, so it can impose social justice. A vast majority of blacks want money spent to level the playing field, to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts, and to provide better education and health care at government expense. So the African-American voter generally loves what President Obama is doing.
[Note: I left in the third paragraph for completeness, though other sources have explained that the Missouri referendum on healthcare was heavily influenced by a competitive Republican primary turnout. In fact, the Kaiser Foundation just came out with a finding that nationwide, 50% now favor health reform, only 35% oppose.]
The problem with reaching the conclusion that Maddow took O'Reilly out of context is that the Gallup Poll cited did not poll for or reach any of O'Reilly's conclusions. The only conclusion Gallup makes is that blacks also favored Clinton at this level, and that in his second year, only 43% of whites favored Clinton.
In fact, these poll results have been widely circulated and O'Reilly is the first person I've come across to state these conclusions, which are about as racist as they come. Not that I don't doubt that others at Fox and elsewhere share them, which is exactly Rachel's point. Sometimes I wonder if Fox (and its media friends) do not have as their raison d'etre precisely to unleash among us these fearsome demons of our nature.