Just like how he was victimized by his wife. All he did was drag her down the stairs by her neck, and then she goes out and takes custody of the kids.

Man, this is some tortured logic. Defending the DEGREE of an instance of slavery is not a defense of slavery itself, but accusing someone of defending slavery when really all they were doing is defending the severity of an instance of slavery is "beneath contempt," which is presumably worse than the concept of slavery itself. Did I get that right?

Homer, defending a horrible institution by talking about varying degrees is standing up for that institution. As a conservative he doesn't like looking at any negative parts of our history, so he wants to make slavery sound as fluffy as possible.

Cena, that's not quite right, though I agree with your conclusion.

Let us say that person A makes a claim X, and X is slightly overstated. Let us also say that there is a counter claim to X, call this counter claim Y. Well, person B, with the purpose of clarifying the discourse, can critique X for being overstated, without subscribing to or advocating for Y.

The point is one *could* critique Obama's claims on degree without necessarily supporting or advocating for the institution of slavery. Merely critiquing X isn't an endorsement of Y.

With that said, I think O'Reilly *is* supporting the institution of slavery insofar as he is, either maliciously or ignorantly, trying to make it appear less horrendous than it was and he is trying to do that as a way of disempowering our First Lady's position as a black woman in power.

Michelle Obama: "I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters, two beautiful & intelligent Black young women, play with their dog on the White House lawn.”

Bill O'Reilly: "Slaves that worked there were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor. So, Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House, but there were others working as well."

He is both trying to minimize the suffering of the slaves and diminish their role in the building of the White House. It is a snotty, wormy and spineless thing to say. He said it to insult Black people everywhere and to delight hateful White people.

And now he wants to play martyr because people called him out for being shitty.

Fuck him.

And fuck anyone who wants to defend him. By defending him, you're saying it's okay for him to be shitty.

I have never heard the story of how O'Reilly beat up his wife before. Holy shit.

Also, out of all the things to respond to, Michelle Obama's speech? It was literally the least provocative of anything that came out of the DNC.

Saying that an orange is an apple, and saying that oranges should not be called 'oranges', out of respect for other objects that are orange-colored, are two different kinds of statement entirely. The first is a falsifiable statement about the objective properties of an object; the second is a statement about emotional or social sensitivity.

What are you even getting at Burns?

It's weird that you use that example. Like EH poorly tried to explain, one of those things is a subjective political stance dealing with people's feelings... the other is carefully constructed propaganda terminology designed to make fearful dipshits lose their fucking minds and does not represent objective fact.

You okay, Cena? I'm experiencing a genuine moment of concern for you here.

Did you need to lie down? Did you need to call an ambulance?

Five for Mr. Loofa.

They already are dead, Yet they walk the earth still. Their shambling, mindless mouths spewing a lifetime's worth of undigested filth.

Really, it just comes down to someone needs to bury them, whether they're ready for it or not.

It's not as if the up and coming generations are any less hate-filled trash though.

Um, how old is old? Because I might qualify in that category now.

If he has a point, it is not at all valid. To say that the prisoners of the Nazis who had operations performed on them with no anesthetic were given comfortable beds would not in any way minimize the horror of the situation.

To attempt to in any way ameliorate the horror of slavery by saying, "Well, at least they were well fed" (a completely baseless statement in any case) is beneath contempt.

You are a tool, and not even a very useless one.

Dammit! *useful*

I mean, how stultifyingly stunningly fucking stupid are you? OF COURSE the farmer feeds his pack animals, and gives them basic care. If he didn't, he'd lose his investment in valuable property.

Does this somehow lessen anybody's revulsion at the concept of one human being owning another one? Apparently for you it does.

You disgust me.

Am I the only one who thinks Bill was picturing Michelle in the kitchen in slave days when he said that?

People who defend O'Reilly (or don't see anything wrong with what he said) are kind of astounding to me. Here's a summation:

Michelle: "Slaves built the White House."
O'Reilly: "The slaves were given food and shelter."

Whether or not what O'Reilly said is true or not is wildly besides the point. People don't just list off facts, and since they're facts, well, whatever! People have reasons for saying the things they do. They have points. So what was O'Reilly's point here, responding to the comment that slaves built the White House that those slaves were, in fact, fed and housed? It doesn't contradict or respond directly to anything Michelle Obama said. There are a huge number of facts about building the White House that we could name. Why didn't he mention the average age of the slaves, or how long each day the slaves worked, or what the temperature was during construction, or how they were punished, or if the slaves had families, just to name a few facts he didn't illuminate on? We're just listing random facts, after all.

Or we could show the most basic level of social understanding to realize that when O'Reilly brings up that they were "well fed" and given "decent lodgings," he's attempting to reframe the reality of slavery to make it seem like it wasn't that bad. I mean, it's basic that this is what he's up to. All this "I'm just talking facts" shit is the cover he knowingly engages in avoid being accountable for what he's doing and anyone that goes along with his particularly lame and transparent con is either despicable, a child, or truly incompetent.

He *did* defend the working conditions of slaves building the White House. And yet in this video he says USA Today was "lying" when describing it that way. Even if he did have a point -- and I don't think he had one worth making, but even if we allow that -- in this video he's just straight up lying.

It's unclear if you mean that Bill is correcting "historically inaccurate portrayal" by the First Lady or by news agencies reporting on his initial remarks. I take you to be saying the former and I take you to be wrong.

Here is the selection of the First Lady's speech that mentions slavery and the White House, and a little of the paragraph before for context:

--Begin Transcript Clip--
Leaders like Hillary Clinton, who has
the guts and the grace to keep coming back and putting
those cracks in that highest and hardest glass ceiling
until she finally breaks through, lifting all of us along
with her. (Applause.)

That is the story of this country, the story that has
brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations
of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of
servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on
striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so
that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was
built by slaves -- (applause) -- and I watch my daughters –
- two beautiful, intelligent, black young women –- playing
with their dogs on the White House lawn. (Applause.) And
because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters –- and all our
sons and daughters -– now take for granted that a woman can
be President of the United States. (Applause.)

--End--

In the speech, the First Lady is drawing a parallel between the Clinton's characters, which the First Lady takes to be determined, and the character of our country, which the First Lady characterizes as one that is determined to do right. The First Lady also is suggesting that Clinton's trajectory parallels her own and that such determination is what allows for success, i.e., African American's to now live in the White House, which was built with labor of enslaved African Americans.

Given this, I'm not sure how Bill or you can find some kind of historical inaccuracy in the First Lady's comments. Slave labor was used to build the White House. Of course slaves were fed and given a place to sleep; slaves in the South were also fed and given sleeping quarters. But they were still people forced to work. And furthermore, it was in the interest of the slave owners to feed the people they needed to do the work. (Humans can't work if they don't have food, FYI.)

I suggest you read Washington Post article I linked to above. Bill O'Reilly is not warranted to make the claims he has claims about the conditions slaves had when their forced labor was used to construct the White House. Without evidence that the enslaved African Americans were treated well during this project, it is unclear why one would presume an enslaved person would be offered better rather than worse treatment.

He knows nothing about American history. He proposes a scenario to his ghost writers, and they set about trying to prove it, at varying levels of success. His interpretation of the gospel of Jesus Christ boils down to "he told people not to pay taxes," which is not only textually false, but a wild misrepresentation of 2000 years of Christian belief.

The guy is a loofah-crazed monomaniac and calling him a historian is demonstrably false.

Yeah his history writing is so thorough and accurate that the National Park Service won't sell it in its bookstores for being TOO REAL AND RAW MAN

....no actually its because he gives no citations or sources and there are many factual inaccuracies

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/12/fords_theatre_flunks_oreillys_ lincoln_book/

He's a historian the same way tabloid writers are journalists