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Download | Play (h/t Heather)
Keith Olbermann brings on Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson to discuss the horrific history behind Bill O’Reilly’s casual and callous use of the phrase “lynching party” in reference to Michelle Obama’s quote about being really proud of this country and the implications one may draw from it.
You know what lynching was? Lynching was a horrific practice of murder, torture, dismemberment, burning alive, hanging, and the only purpose of lynching was to perpetuate white supremacy in the Jim Crow south. It wasn’t…the idea of course, wasn’t to lynch all black people, but by lynching a few black people…not a few, by lynching some black people to demonstrate to other African Americans that this could happen to you, that you have no power, that we have all the power, and that we can take anything we want from you, including your life. There’s nothing funny about lynching. There’s certainly nothing at all funny or remotely appropriate about the use of a lynching reference to talk about Michelle Obama. And the word “unless” followed by “we’ll track it down,” is way beyond the pale.
