He travels first-class, only. Truly, a man who is living his populism, not just bloviating about it on TV.

No, really: he embodies the populism of the white, formerly-urban working class: up and out. It’s hard to tell with him: is he truly unself-conscious, as you posit, Nate? Or is he just that damn good?

Also, you read Parade magazine?!?

Tell me, what staggering displays of wit did Marilyn Vos Savant have for us this week?

I don’t regularly read Parade, but I do see its cover every Sunday Saturday as I search for the most important part of the paper: the comics. Bill O’Reilly’s mug on the cover interested me enough to read it. Besides: where am I supposed to go for my Bose sound system ads, or my opportunities to purchase rare collector coins?

Way to totally put words into another man’s mouth.

I think it’s a pretty valid reading. I’d certainly be willing to hear an argument that it’s not. I hope you’re claiming only that this is specifically incorrect, rather than claiming that exposing coded language like this is categorically illegitimate.

Consider this, however: by what means could any of the people that so terrified young Bill be identified as “wanted felons”? Was Mr. O’Reilly scanning police wanted lists? Was Billy scanning his list for any of the names he could spot on people’s tickets? Did he recognize faces from the walls of his local Post Office?

Or are we forced, instead, to conclude that these people merely bore the outward signs of criminality: the kind of dress or manner that indicated to Mr. O’Reilly that they were “felons”. What kind of dress or manner is exclusively criminal that is not actually shared with great swaths of the underclasses?

There’s definitely no way to prove that Mr. O’Reilly’s visual cues were at all racial—which is why I included my final paragraph. But the possibility, given the geographic context and the time period, practically leaps from the page.

I think it’s a pretty valid reading.

Rather, I think it’s all too indicative of the kind of reading you’ve been doing and the kind of thought you’ve been performing lately. To use a comment like the one quoted to accuse someone of racism is unconscionable.

I hope you’re claiming only that this is specifically incorrect, rather than claiming that exposing coded language like this is categorically illegitimate.

The problem with “exposing coded language” is proving that it is coded rather than means what it says. To call it “coded language like this” is to beg the question.

I wonder if you’ve ever taken a 30-hour bus ride. I have taken many bus rides, including a number of 30+ hour rides, and a number of 50+ hour rides, including two last year. And O’Reilly’s comments are very understandable.

Now it just so happens that where you live most of the people riding the bus are likely to be black. But where I took all of my long rides most of the people were white or hispanic. Of course they were pretty much all poor: that’s why they were riding the bus. While it’s not clear from the quote where O’Reilly’s bus ride happened—presumably a longer excerpt would inform us—it’s quite clear that he was poor at the time it happened. So to say that he means “poor black people” by bus riders, when the only actual individual mentioned was a poor white man (himself), seems unwarranted.

And it’s not poor black people that make him sick, it’s buses. Again, greyhound riders will understand. Many of the passengers on these buses are very scary-looking, especially if you’re quite young and inexperienced, as it sounds like O’Reilly was. The quote does not imply that O’Reilly today believes that all those people were actually convicted felons, but that to his younger, poorer, inexperienced self, the people around him looked scary and dangerous.

Again, he said stopping only at dank terminals to pick up a variety of wanted felons. The scariness of one’s unknown fellow-passengers is certainly not helped by the “dank terminals,” “code” for the dreary, depressing, shady, run-down places in bad parts of towns that are the only thing besides the road that one sees on these uncomfortable, lonely, and interminable trips.

Not a single phrase of your commentary seems warranted to me. I’m no O’Reilly fan—in fact I know very little about him, never having watched his show or read his books, except that Democrats sure hate him—and I don’t know whether he’s a racist or not. For all I know, he might be. But to infer from this passage that “O’Reilly says that black people make him sick” is just shameful. What it says is that he disliked being poor, and now that he’s rich he uses his money to avoid the unpleasant experiences of poverty. Not a very noble sentiment, perhaps, but still.

The article makes clear that the trip is to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

“In the spring of 1965, when I was 15, the O’Reilly family made a rare out-of-state vacation trip to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.”

He grew up in Levittown, New York. His trip was along the East Coast, therefore the racial demographics of California were unlikely to be represented here.

It’s perfectly understandable to be frightened by the experience of traveling on a bus as a kid; even a fifteen-year-old one. I found my first Greyhound experience a bit intimidating, too. I wasn’t used to East Coast poor people, just as my own brother was intimidated by walking down H Street this summer. That’s very understandable. What’s not okay is to not deal with the racism and classism that is at the roots of that fear, to not acknowledge it and to not grow past it.

“The problem with “exposing coded language” is proving that it is coded rather than means what it says.”

There is no literal reading to his story; my argument to Martin explains this. It is not reasonable to suppose he had wanted lists.

Perhaps most troublesome is his elevation of his own fear to the level of hellish torment. It indicated an unquestioning justness to his fear, a judgment that his suffering was a necessary result of his surroundings and that the best course of action is to flee from such purely external torment as much as possible.

the racial demographics of California were unlikely to be represented here.

If it’s possible to take a 30-hour to 50-hour bus trip inside California, I wouldn’t know. I’m talking about trips between California and New Mexico, North Dakota, etc.

So it’s clear that O’Reilly travelled along the East Coast and is therefore likely to have had a lot of black people on his buses. That provides no additional evidence that any racism is involved. And surely there are plenty of white people on the east coast who ride the bus? At any rate, I suspect long bus trips in this country are mostly alike, whatever the color of one’s fellow passengers. Nevertheless …

What’s not okay is to not deal with the racism and classism that is at the roots of that fear, to not acknowledge it and to not grow past it.

You’re still begging the question. You say There’s definitely no way to prove that Mr. O’Reilly’s visual cues were at all racial. You have yet to give any evidence whatsoever that there’s any hint of racism involved here. Still you presume that there is. As for classism: again, O’Reilly himself was clearly poor at the time the story takes place. He hated being poor and now enjoys being rich. He does not wish to return to poverty or to the experiences poverty entails. Does that prove that he’s “biased” or “bigoted” towards poor people as such, much less black people? That seems like a very dubious inference to me.

Perhaps most troublesome is his elevation of his own fear to the level of hellish torment.

Surely you’ve heard of hyperbole? Should he have said merely: “I was very uncomfortable indeed”?

Fear is tormenting. Again, having grown up very poor, I wonder how well you understand this. In my neighborhood as a child murder was not so uncommon. A mentally disabled girl who lived in my building was found raped and murdered on the grounds of my elementary school, just across the street. Bodies were periodically found in dumpsters in my apartment complex. Knowing all this, laying awake at night I could hear gang signals being whistled from alley to alley just outside my window, which was on the ground floor. My mother sometimes left my brother and I alone in the house at night. It was terrifying, nightmarish. Hellish torment? I imagined gang members coming through my window. Did they have hispanic faces in my imagination? I honestly don’t remember. Probably they had no faces. They were anonymous bogies. Meanwhile, by day, as a small white smart kid, I was regularly picked on and beat up by bigger kids with darker skin and less English than myself.

So I must, obviously, be racist, right? It’s okay, I can’t help it. I just need to acknowledge it and work through it, partially by voting for minorities. Never mind that my first girlfriend was a hispanic daughter of immigrants and that I never gave the fact a second thought. Never mind that I now live in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood and never give that a second thought. Anything I do or say or any economic or cultural or foreign-policy opinion I might happen to hold is now inevitably shaped either by my overt racism or by my inability to face up to my secret racism or my desire to overcome my repented racism. Oh yes, and if I don’t enjoy dull endless uncomfortable bus rides, periodically interrupted by stops at foul, dank, unclean concrete monstrosities, with scarred, haggard, dull-eyed, foul-spoken, vaguely menacing, urine-and-tobacco-smelling persons of indeterminate color for fellow passengers (ten or twenty percent of such passengers is enough to make an indelible impression), it’s because I’m racist and classist.

This kind of thinking is so—to use a word you used recently—insulting.

I was in fact exposed as a child to a lot of prejudice against my neighbors and fellow townspeople. But I don’t recall any of it having to do with skin color or language differences. It was because they were all a bunch of gambling drunkard cursing romish papist idolators.

I’ve grown past all that.

I’m interested in your strong emotional response to this, Michael. Let me try to separate out a few different things.

One point in contention is whether there is any evidence at all to support the speculation that the “wanted felons” to whom O’Reilly refers are, specifically, black people. O’Reilly grew up in a relatively small town (current data shows a population of approximately 53,000) in New York State. He then took a bus trip down the eastern seaboard through some of the largest centers of African American population in America. It is very likely that the percentage of African Americans on his bus was significantly higher than that in his community, let alone those he regularly associated, given the likelihood of a pronounced cultural divide.

Now: is it reasonable to speculate that the “wanted felons” were of a particular race? What evidence might we have to support or gainsay that?

I’ve already argued—conclusively, I think—that we must construe O’Reilly to have been judging whether a person was a wanted felon based upon appearance. You seem to grant that point by describing the people O’Reilly might have taken to be criminal as “scarred, haggard, dull-eyed, foul-spoken, vaguely menacing, urine-and-tobacco-smelling persons”. My extension of this to a racial dynamic is based purely on the speculation that O’Reilly was likely to be encountering a higher density of African Americans than he ever had before. This is, of course, merely a possibility—but one so likely that it cannot but jump off the page.

The racial aspect is not necessary to the larger points, however, and I overemphasized them in my original post.

It strikes me, though, that you want to use an apparently egalitarian notion of poverty as an argument for your case. As if being poor is all the same, and O’Reilly could not possibly have been in quite a different economic situation as a member of a family that could not afford plane tickets from a homeless man, or a drug addict, or a child from a single-parent home in the inner city.

Nate: “Perhaps most troublesome is his elevation of his own fear to the level of hellish torment.”

Michael: “Surely you’ve heard of hyperbole? Should he have said merely: “I was very uncomfortable indeed”?”

I’m surprised that you would seriously advocate such a reading, Michael. O’Reilly’s use of the Inferno as a metaphor has specific implications, ones that are, for reasons I explained before, significantly different than simply stating one’s own discomfort. The poetic difference between describing one’s situation as “hell” and one’s self as being “uncomfortable” is glaring.

I’m uncertain how and where to respond to your last paragraphs. You write: “This kind of thinking is so—to use a word you used recently—insulting.” And, indeed, you write tremendously defensively: as if you are precisely the person who has been called “racist”.

I will, however, attempt to correct at least one misreading:

Michael wrote: “Anything I do or say or any economic or cultural or foreign-policy opinion I might happen to hold is now inevitably shaped either by my overt racism or by my inability to face up to my secret racism or my desire to overcome my repented racism.”

My guess is that this is in response to this line from my original post: “…what a horribly unselfconscious revelation of the fact that fear is at the root of his most important choices!”

I was not, however, referring to O’Reilly’s “economic or cultural or foreign-policy opinion[s]”, I was referring to his own description of the few things on which he chose to spend his money: “I spend money on important things like living space, good food, and security. I travel first-class, no buses ever.”

I hope that clears up at least one of your objections.

Nate, given the orientation of your posts lately, it’s impossible not to suspect that this post is “coded” with political undertones. And the kind of inference you’re making is the kind that people of a certain politics make a lot in the periodicals which I—and, I suspect, you—read frequently; but I find it logically and morally suspect and you apparently think it’s fine.

My extension of this to a racial dynamic is based purely on the speculation that O’Reilly was likely to be encountering a higher density of African Americans than he ever had before. This is, of course, merely a possibility—but one so likely that it cannot but jump off the page.

Yes, it’s purely speculation. But even if it’s statistically likely that O’Reilly saw a lot of black people, it’s completely irrelevant. One can think of a bus ride as hellish and find one’s companions repellent without being racist, even if those companions are black. I might also point out, again, that there are poor people and then there are those certain types well-known to long-trip bus riders who are not merely poor, but poor and frightening and menacing in a peculiar way I tried to describe. This “type” can be either black or white—to my mind that’s not the point.

I’m surprised that you would seriously advocate such a reading, Michael.

I could say the same thing about this post. Again, the whole point of the quote as it stands is that being poor gave O’Reilly some extremely unpleasant experiences and that, now that has money, he avoids them like the plague—not that he speaking “code” for racism.

It strikes me, though, that you want to use an apparently egalitarian notion of poverty as an argument for your case. As if being poor is all the same

Not at all. There’s no need to suppose that O’Reilly was just as poor as the other people on the bus. What they all had in common was that they were poor enough to take the bus. One can in fact be legitimately or at least forgivably frightened of certain poor people even if one is not as poor. A person can be very poor indeed and not look like a heroin addict, or a mental ward escapee, or a hardened thug. It’s uncomfortable to be approached by the latter even on the street: we’ve all, I suppose, encountered panhandlers who seemed more dangerous than your average bum—and presumably we give them a wide berth, or escape quickly from their importunities. On a bus for 30 hours with such people, there is no escape, and what begins as uncomfortable just might perhaps grow into something more unpleasant. Such people are not frightening on the East Coast because they’re black, any more than because they’re white or hispanic elsewhere.

I’m interested in your strong emotional response to this, Michael…And, indeed, you write tremendously defensively: as if you are precisely the person who has been called “racist”.

The vigor of my response has two factors: first, I’m appalled at your logic. Based on what you admit is a demographic speculation, you accuse a man of racism when he was saying something else entirely. You do it again in your comments. That’s bad logic and it’s unjust.

But, second, it’s also indicative of a larger complex of ideas which become increasingly familiar to me when I read political literature and which seem enormously wrongheaded to me. If you can confidently accuse someone of racism on grounds like this, anyone can be accused of racism on practically any grounds whatsoever. And this in fact occurs. I think it’s very offensive when it’s trumpeted as a fact that if Obama loses it’s because of the country’s racism, as though there could not be many other reasons not to vote for him. That certainly comes to mind when you accuse someone of racism when there are much more obvious explanations for his words. If I let it be known that I don’t plan to vote for Obama, will you, or your friends, or at least many people, not believe, even if they don’t say it, that in my heart of hearts it’s at least partly because I’m at least a little bit racist? I’m afraid so.

So, all the bringing up of personal data was meant to illustrate that one can say exactly what O’Reilly said and it not be racially motivated. But to presume that any such reaction as his, when there are scary unfamiliar black people around, must be racially motivated, meaning stemming from his racism, is to make an accusation for which there is no possible defense. It reminds of the time when, as a teenager, my (white) friend shocked me by saying “we all secretly think we’re better than them really, of course,” to which I vehemently protested in the negative, to no avail. Secretly, really, truly, of course we’re racists, and no denial or behavior can prove otherwise. This is just plain unfair.

Come on: the very title of your post orients the reader and directs him to look for racism. Surprise! I found it.

I wouldn’t have focused on the potential racism thing. I would have focused on the absurdity and cognitive dissonance of O’Reilly’s claims about himself:

“The Spartan life we led back then has stayed with me to this day. I spend money on important things like living space, good food, and security. I travel first-class, no buses ever. I get a stomachache just looking at a bus… I don’t waste money on stupid stuff like vanity possessions.”

I can see how it fits together in his own mind. His father bestowed on him certain values that he’s honored in a general spirit. His father saved money; O’Reilly eats good food and travels first class because those things are “important” and possibly related to “security”: “the greatest word in the English language”. He can’t say, “wealth has changed me” or “experience has opened my eyes to new values”, but he can say “I know more than my dad about money because he was limited, but his values were sound.”

Anyway, about the racism or “coded language”, I have to agree with the others that you’re making too much out of it. Greyhound people are scary, in 1965 or 2008, and many of them are at the least ex-cons, because prisons give you some money and a Greyhound ticket when they let you go. I know from personal experience that Hagerstown is the pickup point for ex-cons returning to Baltimore and DC. I’ve also sat next to people on the bus who have claimed to have committed felonies that they haven’t been caught for. On the other hand, in 1965 and given the likely law and order tone of William O’Reilly’s household, it probably didn’t take much to look like a “wanted felon”, let alone a “punk”, a “freak” or a “hippie”.

Michael,

Thank you for your comment! Being clearer on your perceptions of the problem help me understand your objection better. We should zero in on the question of my accusation of racism. The only actual claim of racism I’ve made is in this comment. I wrote:

“It’s perfectly understandable to be frightened by the experience of traveling on a bus as a kid; even a fifteen-year-old one. I found my first Greyhound experience a bit intimidating, too. I wasn’t used to East Coast poor people, just as my own brother was intimidated by walking down H Street this summer. That’s very understandable. What’s not okay is to not deal with the racism and classism that is at the roots of that fear, to not acknowledge it and to not grow past it.”

In it I make a claim that racism was involved in feelings experienced by me, my brother, and only then, by extension, Bill O’Reilly. It becomes increasingly clear to me that you and I have very different ideas of racism, or at least different aspects of it that seem to dominate our thinking. To my mind, most contemporary American racism is not an overriding maxim of racial hierarchy. Instead, it is a subtle current of subtle expectations, fears, stereotypes, prejudices, and often unconscious behaviors. It’s the kind of thing that I think everyone has some mix of to deal with. It’s not at all the sort of binary thing that you can check off your list by having dated someone of another ethnicity.

It seems to me that you’ve read a claim into my post wholly different from what I intended and that when we use the word “racism”, we’re each thinking of substantially different ideas. Certainly, your fear that my intent is political was startling. I’m far, far more interested in class and racial dynamics than I am in Democrat vs. Republican politics.

You seem to have read my post as code for something like this: Bill O’Reilly has accidentally revealed himself to be a secret racist, someone who harbors privately racist beliefs that are at the root of his political thinking. This is neither my belief, nor is it the post I wrote.

I was wondering when Method would weigh in on the Greyhound discussion. Glad you did.

Nate’s point clearly doesn’t actually apply to you, Michael: you don’t appear to base all your practical decisions on fear. (Although, allow me to point out that none of us has been as tempted as Mr. O’Reilly has by the means to attempt to achieve security.) Moreover, I don’t think Nate was using that line of reasoning you’re afraid of. He wasn’t generalizing to all humans or white people, but speaking about Mr. O’Reilly as a particular human being, who appeared to reveal something pretty shameful about himself, without even knowing that he did so or that it was shameful.

Were there grounds to talk about race here? Yeah, I think so, although they were kind of thin, as Nate has admitted. But he wasn’t saying simply, “O’Reilly is a closet racist!” but rather, “O’Reilly is physically afraid of poor people, buses, and possibly black people, to the point that it underlies all his important decisions.” Yes, the racial topic was in his title, but I don’t think that gave it the importance in his reasoning that you read it there.

On the interesting subject you raised: I’m not as familiar with that line of thinking about race as I suspect you and Nate are, but I too find it debilitating and unfortunate. Not all faults can be attributed to racism! Not all people are racists! And not all opposition to “progressive” politics is based on unconscious human frailties! Some people are able to know themselves, and more importantly there are good arguments not to place race and sex in such important roles in our discourse.

I also know Nate has railed against similar thinking about sex and sexism elsewhere on the Internets. And while I have noted his discussion of politics has gotten more frequent on Monadology than perhaps it was in the past (although he certainly talked about it in past election years, as you may remember), I haven’t seen evidence of him employing such thinking here.

The really hard thing for me, however, has been to discover that, for all its faults, often the thinking about “privilege” and “code” is in fact pointing to actual phenomena. Even more troubling has been the discovery that other people, using less foolish language and assumptions, aren’t really talking about such things. So, as much as I hate the aspects I mentioned above, I do think that that line you and I find suspect has at least some use.

As an example, albeit a pedestrian one. I have recently started acting as a student attorney. As a result, I have clients, all of whom are black males. Many in the legal community like to rail against paternalism in the justice system, saying it has no place in it, since everybody is entitled to be treated as an autonomous individual with particular Constitutional rights that must allow him to decide whether or not to go to trial, to testify (perhaps thereby incriminating himself), and to plead not guilty, if he so desires. Now, you and I can spot any number of problems with this reasoning, but that’s modernity for you. We can also spot that loaded word paternalism. But that term is actually descriptive of a lot of aspects of the CJS and has a particular usefulness in describing it. What’s one example? Well, in order to support this system of rights guaranteed to autonomous individuals, counsel must be appointed to these individuals so that they can be sure to properly understand and exercise their rights. These counsel almost invariably start acting on their clients’ behalf without regard for their clients understanding the particulars of their actions. They start advising their clients to get their lives together, to get off drugs, to get a job and, literally, to cut their hair. And this is all because judges like to see that sort of thing at sentencing: it’s important to look like a middle-class kid on sentencing day. The word paternalism take on an important set of functions at this point, no?

Oops, looks like Nate beat me to the punch. Glad I appear to have read him as he intended to be read.

To be clear, I meant that last comment sarcastically. Clearly, as Nate elucidated, you guys are on different sides of the word racism. Not sure Nate at all falls into my strawman category, of course, but still, the disagreement is there.

Method wrote: “Anyway, about the racism or “coded language”, I have to agree with the others that you’re making too much out of it. Greyhound people are scary, in 1965 or 2008, and many of them are at the least ex-cons, because prisons give you some money and a Greyhound ticket when they let you go. I know from personal experience that Hagerstown is the pickup point for ex-cons returning to Baltimore and DC. I’ve also sat next to people on the bus who have claimed to have committed felonies that they haven’t been caught for.”

I just wanted to make sure that I acknowledged that these are a couple possibilities for how to appear as a wanted felon that I hadn’t imagined. I still blink at the idea of unreflectingly calling even ex-cons “wanted felons” (this denial of any differentiation among anyone associated with criminality is very present in modern America). At any rate: I appreciate your weighing in.

Well, clearly the race-related aspect of the original post has been quite thoroughly commented upon. It does seem like a wildly speculative and ungenerous reading of O’Reilly’s comments to me as well.

But I have my issues as well with the strange notion that O’Reilly has unwittingly admitted that “fear is at the root of his most important choices!”

O’Reilly’s ain’t-going-back-there-ever attitude, as Michael grants, is not exactly noble; but for the record I don’t think it means that “fear is at the root of his most important choices”; nor, contra HB, do I think it has anything particularly to do with the “white, formerly-urban working class.”

This gritty class-climber attitude—“I’ve made it. I don’t ever have to deal with certain unpleasant things ever again, so I won’t.”—is most importantly a psychologically intelligible one. I’ve witnessed it myself in lots of people of different ethnic groups. I don’t think it’s a matter of any particular matrix of race & class, in short, but rather—whatever its shortcomings—a quite intelligible human response to the experience of climbing the class ladder.

Mr. Sullivan wrote:

“I think it’s very offensive when it’s trumpeted as a fact that if Obama loses it’s because of the country’s racism, as though there could not be many other reasons not to vote for him. […] If I let it be known that I don’t plan to vote for Obama, will you, or your friends, or at least many people, not believe, even if they don’t say it, that in my heart of hearts it’s at least partly because I’m at least a little bit racist?”

I hope it’s of at least some minute degree of comfort to you that you may say you don’t plan to vote for Obama and I will not for a moment suspect it to follow from any sort of racist impulse — and I doubt I am alone in this.

It has been my impression that many conscientious people who for one reason or another haven’t supported Obama — both in the Democratic primaries and now in the general election — have had some small paranoia that everyone must think them racists. Maybe this reflects our culture’s recently developed abhorrence of overt racism (not the sort Nate is talking about, I should add).

In my own encounters, most of the people (by which I mean nearly all) who tend toward the Republican candidates either a) bristle at the largeness of the role of government, and at the idea that they are being taxed to support what they take to be welfare state, b) want to protect their access to firearms, c) oppose all abortion in such a way and for such reasons that they feel morally compelled to let it be the single and deciding issue for them, or d) some combination of the above. It is not necessarily the case that my own encounters are representative of the electorate, but it nevertheless seems to me that any or all of these reasons are much more likely to be at work in someone’s not voting for Obama than his race, and if I were to jump unfairly to conclusions about someone on the basis of their declared voting intentions, they would likely be along these lines, and not the racial one.

But also, I think it’s important that it’s not being “trumpeted as a fact” — at least not any meaningful way — that if Obama loses it’s because of racism. There are certainly some pundits declaring this, but the claim is contentious, and they know it.

It seems to me that any real claim that an Obama loss follows from racism is akin to the claim that Al Gore lost because of Ralph Nader. It is not “as though there could not be many other reasons not to vote for him,” but that this is one reason why a few people won’t vote for him, and that in a narrow defeat they could be enough to make the difference. (And there are surely people — most visible along the Appalachia, in swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio — who often vote for Democrats but will not vote for a black one. Especially in a 2000 scenario, that’s a real issue.)

And about the bus-riding strand of this conversation, I’m a bit surprised at the unanimity of people’s impressions of buses. Maybe I’m a jaded city-boy, twisted from riding urban public transport fairly regularly from childhood — and, admittedly, though I’ve ridden greyhound and other buses for long-ish trips on both coasts, none for nearly as long as those described here — but my own impressions are quite unlike these.

I suppose I might use the word “scary” — maybe especially when I was a teenager — to describe some of the rarer sights, but I think it would likely be a comical use of the word, and not the sort of actual terror that O’Reilly describes. My first reaction to his description is not to make an association with race (though given the geography, I agree that it’s a likely association) but to suppose it reflects a fearful contempt of human beings. I’m not sure my first is a fair reaction, and since fear is fear — regardless of where it comes from — I want to be sympathetic to the real experience of a frightened person, especially a kid. It nevertheless strikes me as strange (even if not at all unusual) and also sad.

I’m reminded of this episode of the radio program This American Life. In one segment, a guy takes a recorder onto a very long bus ride, and has conversations with people. Really, listen to it. It much more nearly represents my own impression of buses. They’re strange, and sometimes maybe even tragic, but not hellish.

Jess,

I am quite willing to grant that the “up and out” attitude I mentioned is not restricted to the white, formerly-urban working class (let us not forget Scarlett O’Hara), but I do think it’s pretty prevalent there.

Two things about O’Reilly’s incarnation: 1) That attitude, along with a host of different things (racism, post-modernity, etc.) has had a profound impact on America over the last fifty years when in the minds of white, formerly-urban working class Americans. 2) Having spent a little time reading about Mr. O’Reilly (in magazines or magazine articles throughout my misspent youth and even more misspent post-St. John’s life) and having some familiarity with his work, I think that his version of his life is explicitly oriented to appeal to the demographic group I mentioned. I wondered above whether his descriptions of his feelings and motivations are genuine, or if he is in fact such a great dissimulator as to make them part of his schtick. I have to admit, I lean towards the former: the horror of a man acting as Mr. O’Reilly does based on such little self-control, channeling his anger and pain onto the TV screen for the sake of ratings, just seems more plausible when I watch him on TV. But Mr. O’Reilly is marketing that genuine attitude to a particular group, in part because he feels he knows about that group and its experiences.

You have said it’s not fear that makes him spend money on living space, good food, and security. I confess that the attitude isn’t so completely intelligible to me that I can see what is motivating him, if not at least partly fear. Disgust of genuinely distasteful things (the urine- and tobacco-soaked). Hatred of want. Shame over having been reduced to certain things like taking Greyhound. Fear seems to me to be lurking all over the place.

Clearly, there are lots of good reasons to like living space, good food, and security. But O’Reilly’s attempts to square those desires with his father’s views and without any contradiction does seem pretty terrible to me. He doesn’t want to reject the lessons of the Depression; but he doesn’t want to give up the money either! Result? That he’s living out his father’s precepts while always flying first class.

You agree that it’s not noble. But is it living out his father’s precepts? Would his father, taken generally, fly first class if he could? Probably, you say—and you might well be right, if this up and out attitude is so common. But if not out of fear, what?

Robbie,

Don’t confuse reaction to Greyhounds with reaction to all buses! Only O’Reilly has glommed the two together here. I’ve ridden intracity buses with nearly everyone here, and we all use them without distaste. I actually like some of them (I’m thinking of you, 42).

This has been a fascinating thread. I just want to speak up for Greyhound. I’ve taken Greyhound rides from Baltimore to Missoula, Santa Fe to Austin, Los Angeles to Seattle, and Boston to New York, and it ties with Amtrak for my favorite way to travel. The two experiences are very different, but I wouldn’t give either one up in favor of the other.

Robbie, I would modify my “many” above to “some”. And I feel I’ve met a disproportionate number of wackos, criminals and sloppy drunks on the Greyhound because I tend to sit at the back of buses and that’s where the characters go.

The people on the Greyhound are different from the perceived white middle class mainstream in that it’s a population of people who don’t own cars (poor) or aren’t able to drive them (disabled, recent DWI) and are in transit but can’t or won’t spend on a plane ticket (poor). A lot of the people on the Greyhound seem to be headed toward a new city where they plan to make a new beginning, even as they display the same behaviors that got them into trouble in the old city. We’re talking about two values of “scary” then: one is the scariness of being stuck on a bus when someone’s having a psychotic break or of being seated next to someone whom you consider sinister or gross (just like on public transit except you’re stuck there for several hours) and the other is the “scariness” of associating with people who act differently and live different lives from one’s delicate, reserved, well-heeled self.

Groundhound isn’t actually that scary (Pittsburgh just got an awesome shiny new terminal, btw) but it’s definitely something you do to yourself. I usually take Amtrak because it’s so comfortable and you can choose your interaction with people.

HB,

I didn’t mean that fear had nothing to do with it, I just thought it seemed ungenerous and an overly broad statement to say that that’s all it was. I guess I had more of a general theoretical dispute with applying that sort of reductionist psychology to that worldview than with the specific contention that it applies to O’Reilly in particular—if that makes any sense. Again, I think there’s generally more than fear at work in that mentality: often shame and anger as well—and maybe some not-so-entirely-bad sentiments at work too. Dunno.

And yeah, I tend to suspect he is very sincerely a loose cannon—a genuinely angry jerk—in addition to being a manipulative, self-aggrandizing ratings whore. I saw O’Reilly in person once, standing not fifteen feet away from me, in front of America’s oldest continuously operating inn., and there was something horrifyingly smug and angry in his very way of being. Just the sight of him made me upset—seriously. He seems plain awful. So to be clear, I’m not defending the guy: I think he’s a virus.

PS What does the impact of ‘post-modernism’ on the white working class entail?

I wasn’t worried about you defending the man himself—and what a description!

I could forgive the thing we’d pointed to earlier if I understood it better. That’s why I asked you for more specificity about it and its intelligibility. As it is, I’m still angry at such an attitude for decimating America’s cities. And I admit it seems somewhat sympathetic—in that I suppose I can feel similar things to what such folks feel—but not truly intelligible. I don’t want to seem the prig, but can vice truly be intelligible? I can sympathize with the bad actions of men quite forcefully. Truly understanding them is harder.

Reductionist: not sure what to say. Shame and disgust are different from fear. But fear seems somehow of a higher order, or at least the thing that dictates how we respond, after a while, to shame and disgust. Put another way, to quote Eva Brann, courage is the primary virtue. Without it, no other virtue is possible. Certainly it seems that perhaps the primary instance of courage, the courage to inquire, is missing in poor Mr. O’Reilly.

Post-modern: I guess I meant dissatisfaction with the city. That’s not necessarily post-modern, sure. But I guess I thought there was a particular tinge to post-war America: some sort of disappointment that can only come from the particular foolish promises of modernity. I meant to signify how a kind of beneficent materialism failed America round about the mid-1960s, in part precipitating the move to the ‘burbs. Maybe I can point to what made this song popular (such as it was)? Perhaps vice isn’t intelligible.

Perhaps that’s a cop-out.

Oops, and meant to say to Fafner: glad you liked it. And glad you stuck up for Greyhound as a worthy experience and (possibly) mode of transportation.

Previously, I wrote:

“I hope you’re claiming only that this is specifically incorrect, rather than claiming that exposing coded language like this is categorically illegitimate.

Last night, I talked with Bek a bit about this comment thread, which she had just caught up on, and I tried to express some of the reasons I had sympathy for people who hated the idea of “coded language”. I remembered the infamous incident over the word niggardly, an incident in which a word demonstrably unconnected to any history of racism has been effectively expunged from common acceptability. I remembered an incident at UVA during the year I spent in Charlottesville, the details of which I cannot even recall, where a high-ranking staffer had to step down for use of a word or phrase that struck me at the time as being absolutely, incontrovertibly free of any racist intent. There appears to be no place, though, for even the idea of an objective truth by which a person might be exonerated for this perceived wrong. Instead, the perceived injury is self-justifying. It hurt someone, so the offender was wrong.

I’m right there with hb when he says: The really hard thing for me, however, has been to discover that, for all its faults, often the thinking about “privilege” and “code” is in fact pointing to actual phenomena. I think it’s tremendously important to retain that desire for a common truth, one in which the offended might conceivably be wrong in his taking of offense. It’s every bit as important, though, to follow the possibility that these subtle ideas are very, very real, and that their reality might be concealed to us for reasons that have a lot to do with our station in the social milieu.

All that said, in retrospect, I think using the phrase “coded language” was precisely wrong in reference to my post, and helped obfuscate the intent of my post. “Coded language” makes it sound very much like I was accusing Mr. O’Reilly of having secret and explicit intent in broadcasting a hidden meaning through his words. My actual speculation is quite different: that he revealed something profound about himself rather unknowingly. That he spoke something he believed to be plain, uncontroversial, and good about his experiences and his beliefs. What I intended was to expose what I saw as a larger, vivid picture about the man that his words accurately revealed without his intent.

Girls are vegetables. Don’t deny it.