Let's review: During his show on Wednesday, in response to his own bafflement that despite the presence of a large Asian-American populace, the state of Hawaii faces the very same social challenges impacting Americans all across the nation including financial debt, substance abuse and homelessness, O'Reilly offered up the ludicrous assertion that: "Asian people are not liberal, you know, by nature. They're more industrious and hard-working."
If this ass-clown of a television host was an influential sociologist, he might just be dangerous. But since he can't possibly testify as to what millions of Asian-Americans think and believe, he comes off as ill-informed, dense and as detached from reality as Donald Trump. And as an increasingly irrelevant right-wing media pundit/wind-bag who's famously long on opinionated, cranky nonsense and short on logic or reason, he's just plain useless to a decidedly (and increasingly) multicultural society that's evolved beyond some kind of strange nostalgic desire for the kind of endearing cultural intolerance of Archie Bunker.
As Congresswoman Hanabusa astutely observed, "Leave it to Bill O'Reilly to thoughtlessly insult 1.3 million people with one sweeping misstatement." The rest of her comments are a spot-on summation of the growing disgust with his simplistic efforts to paint easy-to-digest stereotypes over a diverse Asian-American culture that spans a broad range of nationalities, religions, beliefs and perspectives.
Sadly, Asian-Americans have long been used by conservatives in the US to justify outmoded beliefs and prejudices about non-whites in this nation. From disenfranchised Chinese-Americans workers building canals and railways alongside other Americans under horrendous labor conditions, to loyal American citizens of Japanese descent being herded into concentration camps during World War II (which never happened to German-Americans or Italian-Americans...) Asian-Americans have long been used by conservatives to inspire fear, loathing, jealously, patriotism or loyalty depending upon the need to scapegoat or hold up as a "model minority" in a deceitful effort to malign other minorities in the US.
As if detached conservatives like O'Reilly use Asian-Americans to serve a duel purpose in the US; to inspire either racial fear or hatred. Case in point: hopelessly confused self-hating Filipino and right-wing extremist media pundit Michelle Malkin's book 'In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror' defending America's imprisoning of Japanese citizens. Or by projecting sweeping generalities and positive "super-attributes" about Asian-Americans (all Asian-Americans are great at math, great students) to subtly justify bigotry or prejudicial beliefs against other minorities; as in O'Reilly's misplaced use of code words like 'industrious' and 'hardworking' as a not-so-subtle indirect attacks against Hispanics and African-Americans.
But don't take my word for it, I just watched former 'Star Trek' actor George Takei on television being interviewed on MSNBC's 'Ed Show' in response to O'Reilly's detached ramblings; the man who brilliantly played 'Mr. Sulu' on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise is even more offended by O'Reilly's statements than I am.
And he rightfully pointed out that not only did an overwhelming majority of Asian-Americans cast their votes for President Obama in the 2012 elections (73% according to some polls, so much for O'Reilly's "Asian people are not liberal" theory...) , the most influential Asian-American politicians (including the recently passed and well-respected Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii) in the US have been Democrats and tend to align themselves with liberal agendas and political objectives; begging the question so many of us have asked before - what the hell is Bill O'Reilly talking about?
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