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Ellison's Must Read of the Day

Ellison must read
August 27, 2014

My must read of the day is "Bill O’Reilly gets schooled on white privilege by Megyn Kelly," in Salon: 

When Bill O’Reilly had fellow Fox News host Megyn Kelly on his show Monday night to discuss white privilege, viewers familiar with the two cable personalities’ track records on race likely expected to be overwhelmed by the kind of racist nonsense that’s defined Fox’s coverage of the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri, thus far.

So imagine their surprise when Kelly — who made her name in part by hyping fears of a New Black Panther Party —  turned out to not only argue that white privilege is real, but to do so by citing the large amount of academic research to buttress her point.

"There’s a lot of evidence behind" the idea of white privilege, Kelly said. "If you look at the statistics, Bill, they’re alarming."

I don’t understand why people are so surprised that Megyn Kelly is smart and does her job.

A handful of people on the left were shocked when she called out Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson for making sexist comments. Those same people were shocked when she asked former Vice President Cheney a pointed question. Now they’re shocked she knows some data and disagrees with Bill O’Reilly?

Whether it’s Wonkette, Salon, Huffington Post, or Jon Stewart, they’re amazed because Kelly’s actions don’t fit the image they’ve concocted of her. Instead of watching her shows and judging her work they’ve set out to prove something they already believe to be true. They cherry pick a couple of moments to harp on, rather than evaluate the totality of her work, and it’s for no other reason than they hate her network.

These dumbfounded headlines are tired, because it’s actually more surprising when Kelly messes up.