Knucklehead wannabe gangsters Bill O'Reilly
and Geraldo Rivera risk being shot for their
wardrobe choice at a 2007 Mets' game.
Geraldo Rivera
kicked up some
dust last week when he remarked "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was." The response has been almost uniformly negative. Even Geraldo's son said dad was off-base with his victim-blaming. At a demonstration in New York City and in rallies and churches across the nation, Americans have shown up in hoodies as expressions of solidarity with Martin's family and pushback against the stereotype of what kind of person wears a practical garment that can be found in millions of closets from coast to coast, including Geraldo's.
But on "The Factor," another hoodie wearer, Bill O'Reilly, came to the aid of his Foxaganda colleague:
“If you dress like a wannabe gangster, some knucklehead is going to take you at your word and a tragedy is going to result.”
If Bill-O really cared about the effects of hoodies, he would stop raking in the cash
from selling them. But hypocrisy is Bill-O's No. 1 product, so no surprise there. More importantly, this isn't the first time he has flipped the bird at victims.
In 2006, he said of Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old who was raped and murdered in New York City:
She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning.
Of Shawn Hornbeck, who was abducted at the age of 11, held for four years and repeatedly raped by the guy who took him before he was discovered by police in 2007, Bill-O
said:
"[T]here was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" [...] "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted."
Asking for it. In the twisted mind of the no-spin man, that's what all these kids had in common. So, y'know, they kinda, like, deserve to have what happened to them happen. Sort of the way a multi-million-dollar-a-year TV personality deserves to be mugged for wearing expensive suits on the street. Just asking for it. Secretly thrilling in it.