Bill O'Reilly has taken on rapper Lupe Fiasco over lyrics in his politically stirring song, “Words I Never Said.”
While as far as rap goes, it’s one of the tamest show-and-tell critiques of a political situation (Immortal Technique, anyone?), but going after rappers for anti-establishment rhetoric seems to be increasingly fertile ground for commentators on the right. O’Reilly takes issue with a line from “Words…” in which he makes metaphor of Obama, calling him a terrorist.
My thought is it’s the same kind of critique Bob Dylan was making in “Masters of War,” not necessarily about a certain person or people, but using a particular (albeit in that case anonymous) person as a moral inference for the system at large.
Dylan himself once said, “It's not an anti-war song. It's speaking against what Eisenhower was calling a military industrial complex as he was making his exit from the presidency.” And yes, this is the same Dylan that O’Reilly named a patriot a few years back.
Without making any conspiracy theory statements, let's say the general consensus is that Lupe was pretty much steamrolled – at the end he even offers the consolatory, “I appreciate you Mr. O’Reilly,” which seems out of character with the entire tenor of this interview. Any thoughts, readers?
