By David K. Shipler
In 2004,
with the publication of my book The
Working Poor: Invisible in America, I was contacted by producers for the O’Reilly Factor about coming on the show
to discuss poverty. First, though, the producers wanted to track down a man who’d
made only a cameo appearance in my book, Kevin Fields. He had been buffeted by both
his own mistakes and a society that lined up against him as he made assiduous
efforts to pull himself into full employment and self-sufficiency. O’Reilly’s
producers wanted to get him on the show with me.
To no good
purpose, I was sure. O’Reilly didn’t admire the poor; he stereotyped them. He
would make mincemeat of Kevin. So while I tried to locate him, I thought I’d
probably warn him what might be coming and perhaps advise him against appearing.
But I couldn’t find him. I’d met him through his girlfriend, who had moved and
disappeared from public records. There was no listing for him.
This I reported to the producers,
but O’Reilly wouldn’t let them give up. So they contacted the penitentiary
where Fields had spent two years for assault (with a baseball bat, he had told me, against five
guys threatening him and his girlfriend) and got an address.
The producers cleverly refrained from telling me that they’d found him, that
they’d then interviewed him by phone, and that—while he wouldn’t be on the show—O'Reilly would present distorted
facts about him to fit Fields into the
conservative image of the immoral, undeserving poor.
I’d mentioned in the book that
Fields, trained in prison as a butcher, hadn’t been able to get a job as one
and had done mostly landscaping. But O’Reilly was determined to portray him as
a lazy, self-indulgent, sex-crazed slacker.
Fields happens to be black, and the image of the sexually promiscuous and aggressive black man is deeply rooted in white prejudice. This O’Reilly played on, announcing with gleeful indignation that Fields had fathered four children by four different
women (two more than at the time I’d interviewed him, Fields had told the
producers).
O'Reilly then proceeded to outright falsehoods and distortions. “He’s been
incarcerated time and again for failing to pay child support,” O’Reilly
declared. Not true, as I learned when I reached Fields after the show: He’d
been jailed once for one week and had otherwise made his payments.
“Here’s a man who’s just flat out
irresponsible!” O’Reilly huffed. Fields was one of those people “basically, at
their core, unable, unable—all right?—to be responsible. Thus, no one’s gonna
hire them.”
But in fact, O’Reilly’s producers
knew that Fields had been hired, which he told me afterwards he had explained
to them. He had been working steadily for the past three and a half years as a
meat wrapper in a Giant supermarket, at $7.35 an hour.
Fields was no model citizen: multiple
kids with multiple women, a spotty job record, a quick temper that got him into
trouble at least once with the law—but also a relentless determination to hold
down steady work and advance against the odds as much as he could. All these
were elements of the complex contradictions of a life that didn’t fit neatly
into either the liberal box defining the social roots of poverty or the conservative impulse to
blame the victims.
Complexity was not the stuff of the
O’Reilly Factor, whose host had to
distort to make his argument. Seeing him expelled from Fox for sexual
harassment, after denouncing Kevin Fields for his sexual activity, brings a
certain satisfaction. Except that we can be sure that Fox will find other such
propagandists to carry the banner of bigotry.
This article reminds me of Al Franken's excellent and very amusing book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - about the Right Wing's propensity for, shall we say, playing with the facts - including lots of material on Bill O'Reilly - as I remember it. You know, I honestly think these Right Wing characters have got twisted brains! - They're not like straight shooters. They don't have it in them to speak in an honest, straight forward truthful manner. And they are certainly missing the compassion gene. What I loved about Al Franken's book was how he NAILED 'EM BUT GOOD - because he had the smarts and the wherewithal to hire a crew of graduate students to do thorough research and to GET THE REAL FACTS on these people and what they actually say and do. And with those REAL FACTS, he NAILED 'EM. It was a real pleasure to read about - I must say - a genu-wine real pleasure. Very satisfying. I think you might enjoy the book if you've never read it - might bring you perhaps a bit more of that "certain satisfaction" you mention in this very interesting - but sad for the fellow Kevin Fields - article!
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