Last week, Fox News’ Jesse Watters did an extremely racist, xenophobic, stereotypical and, frankly, gross segment during the O’Reilly Factor, titled “Watters’ World,” in which he went to Chinatown in New York.
He preceded to ask outdated questions to people of Asian descent, like “can you do karate?”, and put sound effects and clips between their answers, which made them appear as stupid, uninformed props in his game.
Outrage ensued, the story gained publicity (something Watters was probably happy about) and Bill O’Reilly, being the class act he always is, said he was “proud” of Watters and called it satire.
Isn’t satire supposed to be funny, though? I wasn’t laughing. It doesn’t seem like Asian Americans were laughing. Journalists weren’t laughing. So who was?
Well, probably your Uncle Billy who posts about how much he loves Trump on Facebook, but that’s beside the point.
The real point is, this is nothing new for Watters or O’Reilly. Watters consistently likes to offend people. For example, earlier this year, he went to Princeton University and used trigger words to get a reaction from people.
O’Reilly is also no walk in the park. He constantly speaks out about how political correctness (a.k.a. respecting people) is ruining our country and even goes so far as to name it as the reason for “black poverty” (something he actually has no right to speak on as a white male who thinks black on black crime is a bigger problem than police brutality, but I digress).
The right’s war on political correctness is nothing new. The term “politically correct” is used as an insult, to excuse people for being racist, xenophobic, sexist, etc. In fact, the poster child for horrible republicans, presidential candidate Donald Trump, stated on numerous occasions his disdain for political correctness.
Not to mention in conservative news, specifically Fox, the consistent and blatant racism in covering stories. They spin Black Lives Matter to look like a terrorist movement, refused to talk about Dylann Roof murdering a group of black people as a hate crime, and seem to generally believe if you disobey a cop in any way and you’re black, you deserve to be murdered. And don’t even get me started on the fear mongering, islamophobic sludge they are producing.
Let’s let these people continue not to treat human beings like more than stereotypes and continually disrespect their culture, preferences and lifestyles and then have them call it “not being politically correct” so they look better and liberals look over sensitive.
If you have a problem with political correctness, you probably 1. don’t know how to be funny without making fun of someone (therefore you actually aren’t funny, sorry,) 2. are a white male who has never been marginalized or dealt with oppression, 3. are an old person who likes to call millennials whiney and still believes trickle down economics is effective, or 4. and most relevant to this article, you are Bill O’Reilly or Jesse Watters.
Featured Photo Credit: Feature photo courtesy of Jesse Watters‘ on Facebook.
Kira Sansone is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at ksansone@terpmail.umd.edu.
