To watch "The Talking Points Memo" in the Screening Room click here.
Hi. I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks for watching us tonight. President Bush back from Africa, but it didn't do him any good among some African-Americans. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo.
Writing in Newsday, militant columnist Les Payne (search) said, "Until the republic addresses reparations for the victims of slavery, Bush's Goree Island talk is just old time white-Christian fundamental -- Texas hooey."
Is that unbelievable or what? A Newsday columnist saying the president's trip means nothing because African-Americans aren't getting reparations. And the wording of it, what if a columnist wrote black hooey, can you imagine?
Now Talking Points is used to seeing irresponsible stuff from crazed newspaper people, but lines are being crossed all the time these days. We got a bunch of these guys calling Mr. Bush a liar without any documentation. And now even though he's the first Republican president in history to extensively visit Africa, his efforts are demeaned in the worst way.
This week, the NAACP is holding its convention in Miami Beach. And here's what it's chairman Julian Bond had to say about the administration. "They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division...their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon. Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."
Well, the tragedy of this over the top rhetoric is that it hurts regular African-Americans who are 13 percent of the population. To have black leadership so bitter, so polarized from white majority is to put all African-Americans at a decided disadvantage.
Many white Americans are simply fed up with extremist rhetoric from the so-called black leadership. And don't give me the whites don't understand line. The political figure getting the highest favorability ratings in the country is Secretary of State Colin Powell (search).
No one except Mr. Bush knows his true motivations, but the man just delivered $10 billion to the African continent and will most likely send U.S. troops to Liberia to save lives. A fair person would give the president some credit. But the demagogues will never do that.
Once again, Talking Points believes fairness is what the vast majority of Americans respond to. And these attacks on Mr. Bush are anything but fair. And they are destructive to hardworking African-Americans who want to be treated fairly. And that's The Memo.
The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day
Time now for "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day."
The New York Times has a new editor even as it has to retract yet another story. This one about a business enterprise.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Who cares about The New York Times? Well, you should because what it reports goes out to your local newspaper and is parroted by many TV newscasters. It would be ridiculous to think the Times is not important in America. It is.
The new editor is a man named Bill Keller (search) who wrote the best profile on President Bush I've ever read a few months ago in The New York Times magazine. Let's hope Keller keeps the liberal bent of the Times on the editorial page where it belongs and makes the paper a fair voice in America, which it has not been.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox