Jon Stewart Rips O’Reilly, Fox’s ‘Selective Outrage Machine’ (VIDEO)

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Jon Stewart accused Bill O’Reilly and Fox News of having a blatant double standard in their outrage over the rapper Common’s performance at the White House, calling the network a, “selective outrage machine.”

Stewart appeared on the cable network Monday night to debate host Bill O’Reilly about President Obama’s decision to invite Common to a poetry slam at the White House. And right from the outset, it was clear the two would find little to agree on.

O’Reilly began the debate by laying out his argument, that Common had “openly sympathized” with cop killers, and was thus too controversial to be honored with an invitation to the White House. Common, O’Reilly said, had previously “celebrated” Assata Shakur, who was convicted of killing several police officers in the 1970s, and who then escaped and fled the country.

“When a president invites someone … the resume has to be put in front of them, and they have to select people who are almost unimpeachable,” O’Reilly said, “because they are getting that honor to go to the White House.”

Stewart shot back that O’Reilly was misconstruing Common’s words as being unabashedly supportive of killing police. Rather, Stewart said, he thought Common was merely raising questions about someone he felt had been wrongly convicted.

From that, Stewart then raised historical precedent, citing other artists who have written about people accused of murder. For one, he brought up Bob Dylan, who composed a famous song questioning the incarceration of boxer Hurricane Carter on murder charges. Dylan too had been invited to the White House in the past.

“Why are you drawing the line at Common?” Stewart asked. “There is a selective outrage machine here at Fox that pettifogs only when it suits the narrative that suits them.”

O’Reilly defended his position by saying that it wasn’t just that Common had spoken out about Assata Shakur, but that he had also visited her in Cuba.

“That’s enough for a sitting president to say, ‘You know what, this guy may be radioactive. I’m not doing it,”‘ O’Reilly said.

But Stewart wasn’t buying it, arguing that O’Reilly was just crafting an argument to defend his knee-jerk outrage.

“You’re putting yourself in a smaller and smaller box,” Stewart said.

“It’s a poetry slam. Who gives a crap,” he added.

As the interview came to a close, Stewart got in one last dig, reminding O’Reilly that lyrics shouldn’t be interpreted so literally as expressing the author’s personal beliefs.

“Songs aren’t literal, you know that right?” Stewart said. “When the Weather Girls sing It’s Raining Men, it’s not really a precipitation of males.”

Watch part one:

And part two:

Latest News
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: