It's one thing to punk Fox long distance on his own show - but yesterday Jon Stewart did to in O'Reilly's Face by giving example after example of their selective outrage in reaction to the invitation of Common to the White House Poetry Reading.
This is a beautiful thing to see.
Now O'Reilly's big bugaboo this time is that Common wrote a song about Assata Shakur who was convicted of shooting a New Jersey Police Officer. He ignores of course that Shakur was a member of the Black Panthers and that all convictions of them should be suspect because of J. Edgar Hoover COINTELPRO program which also destroyed the cases against The Weathermen.
Via the UK Guardian
That the US government admits it had a programme to "neutralise" the Black Panther leadership? That J Edgar Hoover confessed that this was not because the Panthers were committing any crimes, but because they were feeding children? That medical experts testified that Assata Shakur could not have shot the New Jersey policeman for whose death she went to jail?
Like Geronimo Pratt, whose murder conviction the courts overturned after 27 years, when evidence emerged that the government had framed Pratt to remove him from the Panthers' leadership, the US government wanted Assata Shakur because she dared to say that she has the right to defend her kin against murderers, such as the white policeman who shot a black 16 yearold in the back in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Oh by the way, Assata happens to be Tupac's Step Aunt - so in many ways she's a legend within Hip Hop.
So the question falls if you're going to be outraged about Common being invited to the White House, are you also going to be outraged about Bono (whose written songs supporting the innocence of convicted FBI shooter Leonard Peltier) or Bob Dylan (who wrote the song Hurricane about eventually exonerated boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter).
And so on and so forth.
Yeah, it's not like the police, FBI and DOJ ever have any wrongful convictions right Billy? Just ask Scooter Libby!
Excerpts from A Song for Assata by Common.
In the Spirit of God.
In the Spirit of the Ancestors.
In the Spirit of the Black Panthers.
In the Spirit of Assata Shakur.
We make this movement towards freedom
for all those who have been oppressed, and all those in the struggle.
Yeah. yo, check it-
There were lights and sirens, gunshots firin
Cover your eyes as I describe a scene so violent
Seemed like a bad dream, she laid in a blood puddle
Blood bubbled in her chest, cold air brushed against open flesh
No room to rest, pain consumed each breath
Shot twice wit her hands up
Police questioned but shot before she answered
One Panther lost his life, the other ran for his
Scandalous the police were as they kicked and beat her
Comprehension she was beyond, tryna hold on
to life. She thought she'd live with no arm
that's what it felt like, got to the hospital, eyes held tight
They moved her room to room-she could tell by the light
Handcuffed tight to the bed, through her skin it bit
Put guns to her head, every word she got hit
'Who shot the trooper?' they asked her
Put mace in her eyes, threatened to blast her
Her mind raced till things got still
I really don't think he's making an argument here that says she's guilty and should be honored for committing murder, he's describing the police attempting to coerce a confession using torture from her.
Over the past 20 years the Innocence Project has used DNA to exonerate 271 people convicted of murder and/or rape in the U.S. The lists the primary reasons or wrongful convictions as these:
Eyewitness Misidentification
Unvalidated or Improper Forensic Science
False Confessions / Admissions
Government Misconduct
Informants or Snitches
Bad Lawyering
Under Government Misconduct they mention:
Common forms of misconduct by law enforcement officials include:
• Employing suggestion when conducting identification procedures
• Coercing false confessions
• Lying or intentionally misleading jurors about their observations
• Failing to turn over exculpatory evidence to prosecutors
• Providing incentives to secure unreliable evidence from informants
Common forms of misconduct by prosecutors include:
• Withholding exculpatory evidence from defense
• Deliberately mishandling, mistreating or destroying evidence
• Allowing witnesses they know or should know are not truthful to testify
• Pressuring defense witnesses not to testify
• Relying on fraudulent forensic experts
• Making misleading arguments that overstate the probative value of testimony
People like O'Reilly really should get familiar with this list because it happens to be exactly the same governmental failures that led us wrongfully into the Iraq War!
Criticizing the government, particularly when it's wrong isn't disloyalty, it's part of all of our 1st Amendment Right as well as our responsibility as Americans. There are times when someone has to grab the wheel and yank it to turn us away from the cliff. Very often artists are the first to do this.
Like in this U2 song about Peltier, "Native Son", which was eventually re-written into the hit "Vertigo".
Rage Against the Machine's First Video "Freedom" was about the same Subject.
While you're on the outrage wagon you might as well have Robert Redford banned from the White House because he narrated a movie about Leonard Peltier called incident at Ogalala, which was used extensively in the RATM video.
Also, as I diaried on Friday, two of the girl contestants on American Idol danced and wriggled in hot pants as they sang a song about getting ready to Murder your boyfriend with a Shotgun ("Gunpowder and Lead" originally recorded by Miranda Lambert) and we hear not a peep from the outrage police at Fox about it.
I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun
Wait by the door and light a cigarette
If he wants a fight well now he's got one
And he ain't seen me crazy yet
His fist is big but my gun's bigger
He'll find out when I pull the trigger
So is the rule: You can sing a song about gun murder (Johnny Cash: "I shot a man just to watch him die") or supporting a cop killer (U2 - Dylan) and still get invited to the White House as long as you look good in a skirt or you happen to be - White?
Just imagine if an R&B singer like Monica or rapper like Lil Kim had done the exact same song as those girls? It would be pandemonium, just like it was one Bob Marley sang "I shot the Sherrif", but not when Eric Clapton did it.
And I don't just make that connection idly - the link between panicked outrage and black people with guns is something that we see in the arts all the time. Right now you can see giant billboards of Johnny Depp firing a pair of flintlock pistols.
It's a pose that looks a lot like this:
Yet this billboard featuring 50 Cent had to be taken down due to the hue and cry that it was too Violent, even though he does have a gun in one hand, he has a microphone in the other. The handgun that was a center of the plot from Tupac's first movie "Juice" had to be removed from this poster because it was just too scary.
(See the dark spot near his hand - it originally held a revolver). Not anymore.
But no one had any problem with this poster (Special note: Common is actually in this movie as "The Gunsmith" for a band of assassins called "The Fraternity"- he just isn't on the poster because obviously that would be Horrifying!)
Over and over again we are shown that White People with Guns - even when they happen to be a pack of murdering assassins - is perfectly "ok", but black people with guns or talking about defending themselves from corrupt cops is just something that Can't Be Tolerated!
There are plenty of other examples of this which I noted in my diary "The Exploding Fear of a Black President" two years ago.
But back to O'Reilly, who doesn't even realize he's been massively body slammed he wriggles on by arguing that Common is somehow worse than Dylan and Bono because he dared to Visit Shakur... wait for it... in CUBA! So basically his problem is that Common actually meant what he said in his song and wasn't just saying something that would pander to a radical anti-government audience? Imagine the Integrity!
Here O'Reilly attempts to continue saying that inviting Common to the White House is part of a pattern of the President associating with radicals from Bill Ayers to Reverend Wright. As if the President should say, "gee I already have enough people who've been falsely accused by Fox in my life - I better not RISK having one more even if that person happens to be someone like Common who attends the same Church (with Reverend Wright and Oprah) that the President and his family used to in Chicago.
It's like saying he should never associate with anyone from his home town that Fox News Might throw some Mud at. Should the President let Fox Vet his approved Visitors List?
Forget that noise. Their hypocrisy is so thick you could butter your bread with it.
It's not like hardcore Fox Viewers are Ever going to vote for a Democrat, let alone this Democratic President. Not hardly. If they want to bunch up their boxers and run them up a flag pole every five minutes if the President gives a Terrorist High-Five to one of his staffers - SO. BE. It.
But they shouldn't cry while the rest of take out a metaphorical pellet gun and shoot those boxers of faux outrage into ribbins - because that exactly what they deserve.
And it's exactly what they'll get - every time.
Vyan