At Your Black World, we had a strong and powerful protest of Fox News and the racist Bill O'Reilly. Shortly after our protest, I started to notice protests by other websites, such as ColorofChange.org, Moveon.org and others. I love the fact that groups are working hard to challenge Fox News for what they are doing to this election.
However, I am concerned that we in the blogosphere are starting to actually believe that getting petitions and having people sign them is going to actually change something. I spoke with the people at Color of Change, whom I respect for their amazing campaigning ability. When I asked what they planned to do with their petitions, I was told that they plan to present the signatures to Fox News when they reach 100,000. Fine idea, but I think that more might be required.
You see, Fox News can be like the devil: The devil enjoys when you pour grease on a grease fire. Fox enjoys the protests, they enjoy the petitions. They will receive the stack of signatures and likely throw them in the garbage. These individuals are intelligent enough to realize that controversy means ratings, and that the more liberals hate them, the more their conservative (sometimes highly racist) base loves them.
When it comes to Bill O'Reilly and others, you have to hit them where it hurts.
Corporate sponsors are a bit different from highly charged, Jerry Springer-like media outlets such as Fox. They are truly CONSERVATIVE (and not in a cutting-edge, insanely racist, Michelle Malkin- Ann Coulter sort of way...more like the "we don't like rocking the boat" kind of way). They don't like the controversy, because it puts their corporate brand at risk. Shaking their foundation makes the board members nervous and they take away their sponsorship of Fox News. That's how you hit em hard. Well, that's at least how you can marginalize them a bit more than they've already marginalized themselves.
Also, good old fashioned protest works as well. I agree with Rev. Jesse Jackson, who explained that bloggers do a lot of writing, but we don't actually get out there and get it done. I recommend forming protests and having people with picket signs, standing in front of Fox News' top 2 or 3 corporate sponsors.
That might be more effective than a list reminding Fox that 100,000 people hate their guts. To be honest, I think they already know that.
I have alot of respect for Keith Murphy, host of The Urban Journal on XM Satellite Power 169. Keith has been there with me since the very beginning, when no one wanted to hear anything I had to say. He has the perfect radio voice, the kind of deep voice that I wish I had. It seems that women like that kind of thing. Instead, I was stuck with a voice that might work for a cartoon character.
At any rate, the topic of discussion was Liz Trotta, the woman on Fox News who publicly wished death on Senator Barack Osama....I mean Obama. Yeah, she got his name wrong too, and it just so happened that she confused it with the most notorious terrorist in the world. We also talked a bit about Hillary Clinton, the 2008 Presidential election, and my experience at Syracuse University. Some people don't like this, but I am honest in all my interviews. It takes too much effort to lie, mislead or spin things in a certain way. So, everything you hear from me is real. So, when Keith asked me about how Syracuse University has responded to my work, I've been quite honest about it. The truth is that I have been almost completely ignored and disregarded by central campus. I send emails to them, they rarely email me back. I request to be involved in their inner city initiatives with black students, but I am considered "too radical" to be involved with black kids. This is sad because these kids come from the inner city and they need me to motivate them toward educational achievement. The kids, like many kids in inner city schools, are not responding to the individuals being sent by the university because they have nothing in common with them. Myself, on the other hand, not only grew up around these kids, but I specialize in motivating black kids to want to go to college. So, you can imagine my disappointment when the woman responsible for sending faculty to talk to the kids was told that because I am radical, she should keep away from me. I actually saw these words written in an email, I was a little bit shocked.
What is sad is that I am honestly not that radical. I was made fun of as a kid for "talking white" and "acting white" (whatever that means). I love my students, 99% of whom are white. But as Malcolm X discusses so eloquently, whenever a black man stands firmly and strongly for something, America wants to paint him as radical. Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Bernard Goldberg and others can be as indignant and angry as they want to be. But if I were to be equally angry, I would be labeled as an "angry black man." Such labels are unfortunate, for they undermine the rights of African Americans to honestly share their frustrations with our country. Jeremiah Wright, for example, is a patriot who put his life on the line for our country (unlike many of the right wing pundits who criticize him), yet he has been painted as radical and unpatriotic. This should make any American upset.
If I didn't have such a strong sense of self, this double standard would confuse me. I would never have been able to imagine how a black person can be kind, honest and supportive of other human beings, yet be labeled as radical and dangerous. I am neither a liberal, nor a conservative. I am certainly not a radical person, but rather, I rely on common sense and a basic commitment to human decency.
Some fallaciously assume that uplifting black people means oppressing white people. They think that black love equals white hate. I love and uplift, I do not hate and oppress. I reject these confused notions and have no fear of such irrational labeling. Such labels are used to mute the voices of oppressed people around the world, and I refuse to be oppressed. Anyone who doesn't get it is encouraged to go take a black history class to help them understand exactly why their anger toward me is similar to the mob mentality that has plagued our country for 400 years. I don't get angry at people who respond in this way, because the response is nothing more than a reflection of the fact that our country does not properly teach racial history. In other words, some of our minds have been poisoned and miseducated, including my own. The desire to learn the truth and educate yourself must come from inside and must be a lifelong process. It is a journey I embrace every day of my life.
At any rate, please click the image below to watch the interview. Keith Murphy is a damn good interviewer, so I expect you will enjoy it.
As you know, Liz Trotta, a Fox News Analyst, made a joke about her desire to see Senator Barack Obama killed. This is no joke, this is serious. I don't think I ever thought, in my lifetime, that a major news network would have an analyst joking about killing the possible future President of the United States.
Senator Barack Obama is already getting threats from domestic terrorists who want him dead. Even my death threats are being taken very seriously by the police, so I can't imagine what Senator Obama must be feeling. The fact is that we must deal with the reality that Liz Trotta's words were a CRIME. The federal authorities should investigate this and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. The mere suggestion by a leader in media that someone should be killed is REAL. When Bill O'Reilly attacks me, his thousands of minions take his words overboard, calling my house all hours of the night, threatening to do terrible things to me. So, whether it is Bill O'Reilly, Liz Trotta, Sean Hannity or some other bigot on national television, the fact is that this kind of activity CANNOT go on ignored.
I don't ask my friends when Bill O'Reilly talks about me. Most of my friends don't watch Bill's show, and have little respect for him. But even as I continue to ignore this little man like an angry 4 year old, he continues to put his little disciples on the job. I give it up to Bill, he's got his cyborgs in check. When he says "Get that negro!" His followers get right on the job. Perhaps my actions have qualified me for the "lynching party" he wanted to put on Michelle Obama. Such a comment clearly implies that Bill O'Reilly hates our great nation. Discussion of lynching the possible first lady, putting her in a concentration camp or any other kind of crazy hate speech has no place in our country.
The chart above shows the spike in traffic to my homepage that occurred on an otherwise boring Friday night on Memorial Day Weekend. My personal webpage usually has about 1,000 visitors a day, and YourBlackWorld has another 6,000 or so. But I can always tell when Bill O'Reilly was screaming my name.
Along with a slew of interesting emails, I also received a nice phone call from someone who called me a "fat monkey nigger", or some other entertaining descriptor. Yes, I have been gaining weight, so maybe he has a point...except for the monkey nigger part. I would prefer to be described as a "fat, hunky sex machine".
I hope he doesn't have some kind of fatal attraction toward me, since I don't roll like that. Either way, I've rarely seen Bill O'Reilly, nor anyone else so obsessed with someone who doesn't even return his phone calls. But then again, I guess intelligent black men have that effect on racists like Bill O'Reilly. I am an honest believer that educated black men are Bill O'Reilly's worst nightmare, which is why he has gone so hard after Barack Obama.
Keep screaming Bill....you and I both know what's going on.
Rick Wright, a radio show host and professor in the Newhouse School of Communications is one of my greatest heroes. He is also one of the top black radio personalities in America. Thanks to Lee Keitt and the NSBLN alumni network for providing the audio.
I learned something about the power of money last night. I received an email from one of our readers on Your Black World, who simply said, “Bill O’Reilly is coming after you again.” I took it in and got back to what I was doing. I expected O’Reilly to make another smear attack this week, since a good terrorist always hits the target multiple times.
O’Reilly Bin Laden’s latest target was my poor chancellor, Nancy Cantor. Sending one of his goons (some call them correspondents) to the campus, Dr. Cantor was asked why she is allowing “the good name of Syracuse University to be ruined by a ‘racist’ like Boyce Watkins.” Translation: to some, a “racist” is any black person who speaks up for black people. I accept that.
O’Reilly never really came at me directly, as I and some other black scholars have refused to appear on his show. I don’t fault the ones who choose to appear, but I don’t consider a platform legitimate just because it has a few viewers. Instead, he felt that going after my chancellor and the alumni of Syracuse University would be a more reliable tactic.
I couldn’t agree with O’Reilly more, perhaps the chimp is smarter than I thought.
Our campus is in the middle of a billion dollar fund raising campaign, and I am sure there are those who are sickened by the fact that one of the most visible faculty members on campus is the subject of racial controversy. Financial theory teaches us that risk management and minimization are critical to maximizing popularity and profitability. Controversy is risk, and too much risk hurts your ability to raise money. Oprah knows this all too well, as her political moves have diminished her show’s brand and base during the past year.
As Barack Obama’s experience reminds us, race is not a comfortable conversation, even when presented in the most diplomatic fashion possible. The backlash is far greater when you are direct and honest. What’s interesting is that O’Reilly couldn’t exactly cite why he was so obsessed with me, nor could he point to any strong evidence to support his “race baiter” assertions. The mere fact that he labeled me a “race monger” was enough to get his disciples up in arms. Bill O’Reilly should change his name to Bill Oprah-Reilly, as he has an amazing ability to manipulate his minions and their small, impressionable minds.
According to Bill O’Reilly, I am using the Presidential campaign to engage in “villainous pursuits” to promote a radical agenda. Being the good and noble American that he is, his goal is to ensure that “race hustlers” like myself don’t use their “hate-filled speech” to manipulate the results of the 2008 Presidential Election. Bill O’Reilly has become Martin Luther King Jr in his fight for truth, justice and political purity. God bless him.
My finance lesson this week came from watching Bill O’Reilly squirm. He was boiling mad at me, and even his fellow conservatives couldn’t quite figure out why (note the confusion on the face of the silly conservative radio show host, Laura Ingraham). The reason O’Reilly had become obsessed with me and my words is because of the dirty secret exposed by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann: A group with which I am affiliated, The Your Black World Coalition, has mobilized an intense email, phone and letter writing campaign to O’Reilly’s corporate sponsors, the FCC and the producers of the show. The ultimate objective is to hold O’Reilly’s corporate sponsors accountable for supporting a man who has consistently engaged in dirty tactics to defame Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and other respected individuals in the black community. While O’Reilly is certainly entitled to Freedom of Speech, I won’t have him unfairly assaulting and defaming my respected colleagues, and using my money to do it. While I give O’Reilly credit for being a good financial student, he must remember that I am ultimately the professor.
In reference to my many “lies” to smear O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann asked Bill one simple question: “If that’s what Watkins said, where are the lies?” In naming Bill O’Reilly “The Worst Person in the World” for his attacks on me and the chancellor, Olbermann quoted my reference to O’Reilly’s statement about wanting to have a “lynching party” on Michelle Obama. O’Reilly speaks of lynching the potential First Lady of the United States, and then has the nerve to call others racist and unpatriotic.
Given my training in finance, I learned one thing about living in a capitalist democracy: money makes people move. O’Reilly also understands this. Money makes good people do bad things and gives bad people an excuse to do good things. Money is the reason Fox News exists, and why this form of “capitalism gone wild” has destroyed the integrity of American journalism. Money is the reason that Barack Obama went from being a non-factor to becoming a target of The O’Reilly Factor and the reason that President Bush is sweating over the price of gas.
It is the ability to acquire resources, mobilize resources and take away resources that will change this election. This election will, in turn, change the world. Race matters, there’s no question about that. But money matters much more.
Yes, I was on O'Reilly last night. Yes, he did the whole "That black man is crazy" routine. Yes, my inbox was full of email from people who are dumb enough to pay attention to anything this ridiculous hack has to say. Here is my standard response. I felt the need to protect the poor chancellor, for I hated seeing her getting chased around by the cameras. She is a good woman, and she didn't ask to have Boyce Watkins on her campus. Curing the disease of racism is a nasty, scary process, and not everyone is ready for the backlash from a country that remains ignorant and in denial.
O'reilly and others are nothing new to America. For the past 400 years, there have been those who fight against racism and those who work to oppress those individuals. Terms like "reverse racist" or "black racist" are designed to alleviate America of the guilt of what it has done to every black man woman and child for the past 400 years. Our country has not even apologized, nor taken personal responsibility for the damage done by slavery. 400 years of continued, terroristic destruction doesn't go away with 20 years of Affirmative action.
O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh are in the same tradition as those who killed Dr. King and Malcolm X. Unfortunately, such individuals and those who support them are always on the wrong side of history. But it is safe to stand with them because they tend to have the most power. I don't expect that any piece of my contribution to Syracuse University will be recognized today. Rather, it will be acknowledged 30 years from today, the same as that of Jim Brown and the 8 black students who protested racism on the football field. The pattern is: punish now, ostracize now, and apologize when the person is old and gray. I accept that.
Do not hold Chancellor Cantor responsible for my words. I speak on my own behalf. The Chancellor is an amazing and capable human being who has brought wonderful intellectual light to the university and to this country. I even feel sorry for the headaches I cause her from my viewpoints. I cannot apologize however, because there are tens of thousands of voiceless Americans who agree with me.
I refuse to stand silent as Jeremiah Wright, an ex-Marine, scholar and accomplished human being, is reduced to a worthless hack by those who don't even have the guts to fight in the very same wars they promote.
Syracuse's business school, to my knowledge, has not tenured a black man in over 100 years, and I do not expect to be the first. So don't worry, I don't anticipate you're going to have to deal with me for much longer. But I am going to keep telling the truth, since someone has to make that sacrifice.
Well, I guess my own chickens have come home to roost.
One of the readers on Your Black World sent me an email stating that Bill O'Reilly mentioned today that he "took a trip to Syracuse to deal with some concerns he has about a professor up there."
I guess that professor might be me.
They have a saying in China that "the fattest pig always gets slaughtered", and I accept the fact that my university is not going to be happy with my confrontation of Bill O'Reilly. Many of their wealthy alums who give money to the university are part of the Bill O'Reilly Zombie Fest, and support this man as he perpetuates the ugliest aspects of our country's history.
But the truth is the truth. I WILL NOT and CANNOT allow him, nor anyone else, to continue telling lies that distort reality and hurt our country. They are incredibly unpatriotic, and their continued dirty tactics and tricky smears on Senator Obama, Pastor Jeremiah Wright and others will not be tolerated.
Fortunately, the black community is behind me on this one. When I sent a call out to our readers on YourBlackWorld, I received hundreds of emails within one day. Additionally, our readers have sent hundreds of letters to the FCC, and we are also in position to hold two of Fox's top corporate sponsors accountable for their behavior.
The fact is that Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Fox News do not represent American values. Also, most of the major networks will allow this racist hate to hit the airwaves, yet they do not have a single host of color representing viewpoints of the silent majority.
This is wrong, it's unAmerican and it must stop TODAY.
Bill O'Reilly, do what you must. Deep down, you know you are wrong.
