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I thought Appalachia was what right wingers like to call the "REAL America." So, why does Bill O'Reilly hate Appalachia and its people - the people that Jim Webb writes about in "Born Fighting" - so much? Here is some of what O'Reilly had to say:
I submit to you that the culture in Appalachia harms the children almost beyond repair... There's really nothing we can do about it," O'Reilly told Sawyer.
She had a different view, of course. She said, "The great opportunity is the information economy... These kids are as smart as the kids in India."
"Sure," O'Reilly agreed. "But their parents are screwed up. That's the thing... Kids get married at 16 and 17. Their parents are drunks. I'm generalizing now. (Gee, ya think?) There's a lot of meth. There's a lot of irresponsibility. There's fear to go. Look, if I'm born in Appalachia, the first chance I get, I go to Miami. Because that's where the jobs are. But they stay there. And the cycle of poverty for 200 years - boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I don't want to sound hopeless about it but I think it IS hopeless."
Last election, we noted that poor whites--in the form of Appalachians--are one group you can still get away with insulting in otherwise "polite company." Bill O'Reilly is picking it up right where many others left off.
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