At around 11:10 ET, I was flipping through the channels looking for the Daily Show when I noticed Bill O'Reilly was interviewing Al Sharpton on his show. Usually, I stay away from O'Reilly (my dorm walls are too thin for the level of profanity he tends to bring out), but I thought it would be interesting to see just how badly he was treating the Coretta Scott King funeral.
I only caught the very, very end of the interview. It went something like this:
Sharpton: Bill, if I'm ever asked to speak at your funeral, I'll have a couple of things to say about cable news guys and the No Spin Zone, and I hope that doesn't offend you.
O'Reilly: I'm going home right after the show and writing into my will that if Sharpton show's up at my funeral, he's to be put in chains.
Sharpton: I could say a few things about you wanting to see me in chains, but I won't.
O'Reilly: Well I... of course I didn't mean it like that...
I gotta say my jaw dropped. Is my racism meter set a too much of a hair-trigger? Cause I gotta say, telling a black man that you're going to arrange to have him put in chains strikes me as something you're not supposed to joke about.
On the other hand, it is O'Reilly. I suppose expecting him to be better than that is pretty futile.