Bill O'Reilly has been attacking hip hop so long, his tired critique is finally out of date.
Ari MelberBill O’Reilly is still picking fights with rappers, but it feels like his heart’s not in it.
On Monday night, O’Reilly hosted Lupe Fiasco, a 29-year old rapper and singer who recently dubbed President Obama a terrorist. The remark created an opening for O’Reilly to attack hip hop while getting Obama’s back. That’s a twist for Fox News, which usually attacks rappers by lumping them with Democrats, or rehashes the conservative complaints about “gangsta rap.” But the new angle couldn’t really save the segment.
O’Reilly dutifully presented his soundbites (“Obama is not a terrorist”), then turned to condescension, lecturing “Mr. Fiasco” that the word fallacious means wrong, and observing that few rap fans have political science Ph.Ds. Mr. Fiasco countered that his beef is not just with Obama, but with militaristic foreign policy, the root causes of terrorism and all American presidents. There was no fire, and very little substance, in the 5-minute exchange. (It’s a long ways from O’Reilly’s classic rap battles —like the spirited, lengthy 2003 debate he hosted between Damon Dash, Cam’ron and Salome Thomas-El, a black elementary school principal who felt that rap promoted obsccenity and negativity. )
O’Reilly has been obsessed with rappers as social and political leaders for over a decade, but the mainlining of hip hop in American culture has rendered his outrage rather quaint.
“The conventional wisdom is that attacking a rapper is good for high drama,” says Jay Smooth, a hip hop radio host who also does political commentary on the video blog illdoctrine.com. He argues that nowadays, however, rap has become “a bland middle American product like any other,” pointing to this year’s Superbowl, which included three different luxury car ads by rappers (Eminem, Jay-Z and Diddy). “That was a big landmark to me of how far hip hop has come into the safe mainstream,” Smooth told The Nation. Meanwhile, the conservative critique still assumes people think rapper is a dirty word.
As for O’Reilly’s enduring fascination with his hip hop adversaries, real and imagined, Smooth has that figured out, too:
"I’ve always had a theory that O’Reilly sees rappers as kindred spirits —sees a lot of himself in their bravado. He’s always had this mix of declaring himself the master of ‘the no spin zone,’ and ‘keeping it real’ the whole time, but he’s doing a contrived persona that is calculated to keep people watching, which is similar to commercial rappers."
Smooth first spotted this connection in 2007, in an irreverent music video taking O’Reilly’s MC fetish to the next level. (Hint: it rhymes. Video below.)
And back to Monday’s interview, it would not be complete without some post-show sparring. Later in the evening, Lupe Fiasco went online to complain that some of his sharpest arguments were edited out of the segment. He had charged, for example, that U.S. military manuals “teach you how to be a terrorist.” He tweeted the claim to his 670,000 followers, hastening to add that his father was a Green Beret and he’s “not against the military.”
Well alright. Branding opponents terrorists is a destructive tack, obviously, from any corner of the spectrum. Still, Lupe’s lyrics are more compelling than his punditry. Take “Words I Never Said," the new song that started this controversy, where he raps about the War on Terror and the sensationalism of the news media:
I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullsh**/ Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets… Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts/ If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut The school was garbage in the first place, that’s on the up and up/ Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust
If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the f*cks ‘Dude is dating so-and-so, blabbering ‘bout such and such/ And that aint Jersey Shore, homie —that’s the news! And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say sh*t Thats why I aint vote for him —next one either/ I’m a part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful And I believe in the people.
So Lupe on politics is more interesting than Lupe on Lupe — and definitely more worthwhile than Lupe on O’Reilly.
Videos below:
Jay Smooth’s O’Reilly video:
Lupe Fiasco’s music video:
The Fiasco-O’Reilly debate:
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.