Bill O’Reilly To Marc Lamont Hill – ‘You Kind Of Look Like A Cocaine Dealer’ (VIDEO)
Why, oh why, did Bill O’Reilly tell an African American man — Marc Lamont Hill — that he looks like a cocaine dealer? Was it because he is black? Was it just a joke? Perhaps we’ll never know, but the most likely scenario seems to be race — and that is extremely offensive. Here’s the video (courtesy of Media Matters), with transcript provided below:
Transcript:
BILL O’REILLY: I don’t need IEDs. If I have 10,000 Guard down there [U.S./Mexican border] that’s an intimidating force. That intimidates. Let’s say you’re a cocaine dealer — and you kinda look like one a little bit — umm,
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MARC LAMONT HILL: As do you; you look like a cocaine user! We’re even!
O’REILLY: I’m too thin, I know! I’m twitchy. Um, but say you’re a cocaine dealer, uh, or heroine merchant, all right, and you’re trying to smuggle across, and you know there’s 10,000 National Guard on the other side of the border. You’re not likely to do that; you’re gonna find another way to do it. It’s an intimidator.
HILL: It’s a reactionary approach; like you said, you’re gonna find another way to do it. Instead of working on that and worrying about that, why not worry about the guns going in?
I’m not completely positive about whether O’Reilly was trying to be offensive on purpose or not. Signs point to yes, but not to African-Americans in general; he was likely trying to poke fun at Hill that was insensitively — in highly inappropriately — racially driven. Perpetuating negative stereotypes is nothing new to Fox News pundits, and Bill O’Reilly is no exception.
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What Bill doesn’t seem to understand is that Tagg Romney looks more like a coke dealer than Prof. Hill does.