I don't watch a lot of television, fortunately. When I do it's generally History Channel, things like that. Well, Sci Fi channel, but I'll deny it if asked...

Anyway, I caught the Fox News Channel for the first time in a very long time last night. Watched the Bill O'Reilly show. I run hot and cold on O'Reilly--I might watch him three or four times over a year, so I'm no slavish fan, and while I often agree with him, I also often see him as sort of overwhelming, almost bullyish.

Last night O'Reilly interviewed a guy who calls himself Malik Zulu Shabazz. Right off the bat, the guy gets zero points for originality. Way back when, a guy named Malcolm Little changed his name to Malcolm X, and then eventually to Malik Shabazz. They historic figure we know as Malcolm X was Malik Shabazz before the snot in question was even born.

Originality aside, the new Malik Shabazz has been something of a gadfly since his days at what is euphemistically called an "Historically Black University". In other words, he went to a school at which whites are as welcome as a randy dog at a Miss Lovely Legs contest. Shabazz is an acolyte of Screwy Louie Farrakhan and refuses to refute anything Farrakhan has said--not even Farrakhan's assertions that he was once beamed into an alien spacecraft.

Shabazz continues in the Farrakhan tradition: he's clad in a very expensive looking suit, and just like Louie--and I'm damned if I know why this is such a priority--he's wearing very expensive glasses. It's a fetish the two share. Nonetheless, both of them are living very expansive lives, funded by people who hardly know where their next meal is coming from.

I wasn't paying much attention, so I don't know how the interview started, but eventually O'Reilly got to the the people who used the neo-Nazi march in Ohio as an excuse to go wilding. O'Reilly asked Shabazz point blank if he understood that the rioters handed the skinheads a victory. Shabazz refused to acknowledge the point, but I couldn't agree more with O'Reilly on that issue. A bunch of ignorant whites exercised their freedom of speech to broadcast their message that blacks are animals, and a small group of blacks did their level best to prove the point. They certainly don't represent all or even most blacks. The rioters were an infinitesimal portion of the black population (just as the skinheads are an infinitesimal part of the white population), but they made the news. Not only did they show themselves to be contemptible, but they stole they spotlight from the skinheads. Rather than concentrate on the ignorance and hate of the skinheads, we ended up focusing on the behavior of the rioters. And Shabazz, who has become somewhat influential despite the fact that he's a jerk and doesn't amount to a pimple on a paratrooper's a$$, utterly missed his opportunity to say that. I have no problems pointing out whites who are ignorant jerks, but Shabazz is so wrapped up in race he can't even condemn other blacks who behave like savages.