Just when all the world had had their minds made up, that the passing away of Michael Jackson was undeniably the greatest tragedy of recent times, both on and off the entertainment circuit, there seems to be a distinctly discordant note struck right to the heart of the matter.

Bill O’ Reilly, of Fox News Channel’s ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ fame, became ostensibly, the ‘lone man standing’ in his strikingly aggressive ambush of Michael Jackson’s legacy of being celebrated as an African-American icon.
Evidently not thrilled with the deification of the Pop-idol, whose questionable conduct on several occasions, seems to have been overwhelmed by a tide of sympathy following his untimely, though not entirely unexpected, death (given his history of medical abuse), O’ Reilly launched an all out verbal attack on the entire MJ episode.

Apparently, the cut-and-dried tirade was on account of him being (by his own admission) “fed up with the adulation” in general, as well as the “phony platitudes” of those who attended the memorial service. He described the sentiments of the participants as “basically grandstanding and pathetic in the extreme.” Most interestingly though, he questioned the rationale of elevating Jackson to the iconic status of an African-American hero, given the fact that, he had (according to O’Reilly) bleached his skin and fathered white children. The ironic quip made in that context, was: “If he was such a black American icon, why did he have his kids with white men?”

He however did concede, that Michael Jackson was in fact an “all star entertainer” and that his family could rightfully mourn him the way they wished to. Obviously then, O’ Reilly doesn’t seem to share the late star’s sentiment: “…it don’t matter if you’re black or white.”