Fox News' Bill O'Reilly lashed out at "Law & Order" franchise creator/executive producer Dick Wolf Thursday night. The bombastic host, upset over how he was recently characterized on the long-running NBC drama, called the "far left" Wolf a "despicable human being" whose show is "out of control."
Sparking O'Reilly's ire was an episode of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" that aired earlier in the week, in which a crazed anti-immigration activist set out to murder the children of illegal immigrants. In one scene, a character named Randall Carver, played by veteran actor John Larroquette, is sitting on a park bench talking to Fin, the detective played by Ice-T. In defending the actions of the man who killed the immigrants’ children, Larroquette's character says, "Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, all of 'em, they are like a cancer spreading ignorance and hate...They've convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that fail to pay a living wage or a broken health care system..."
After playing the clip of the "defamatory and outrageous" scene, O'Reilly slammed Dick Wolf as a "coward" and a "liar" before playing a montage of clips demonstrating his past defenses of "poor people who only want a better life." O'Reilly went on to explain that his "beef" isn't with illegal immigrants themselves, but rather with the federal government for doing little to control immigration and the "violent aliens who wreak havoc once they get here." He concluded by chastising Wolf for "distorting and exploiting" the issue of illegal immigration.
The italics and boldness (?) above was added by me to point out someone in the media who actually had the balls to point out what the real problem is here. This whole "illegal immigration" thing boils down to corporations who don't want to pay Americans what they are worth. What the issue does, the way it's portrayed now, is allow everyone, who wants it, an excuse to hate anyone different from themselves. It's all permission to be xenophobic. That's the cancer the L&O character was talking about. Permission to Hate.
To be fair to Bill O'Reilly (!), he's right--The Big "O" isn't famous for badmouthing immigrants--he's famous for being an asshole in general. Dick Wolf is probably thinking of Lou Dobbs.
To be fair to Wolf, it's pretty easy to get O'Reilly and Dobbs mixed up--they're both doughy-white guys who talk out of their asses.
Most of us white folk do that from time-to-time (only those guys make a living at it).
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