Bill O’Reilly Gets Owned by Cornel West & Tavis Smiley Video Analysis

Elysse S. Price

Eng 4

Mr. DeWit

10/13/13

Bill O’Reilly Gets Owned by Cornel West & Tavis Smiley Video Analysis

The video opens with Bill O’Reilly providing statistics stating: “46 million Americans living below the poverty line. That is 15% of the population.” He goes on to give another statistic saying: “In 2010, $560 billion, 16% of the entire federal budget, was spent to help the poor. That’s up to 5,400% since 1970.” Providing more statistical facts he mentions that 9% of Americans have some kind of substance dependence. Most of those people cannot earn a living?” Bill O’Reilly then reiterates a portion of those facts: 15% poor, 9% addicted and he concludes by saying “Maybe poverty is not exclusively an economic problem.”

The main topics of this video are: who's to blame for the cause of poverty and what percent of the population in poverty is addicted. Who cares who's addicted and what they're addicted to at this point? Who cares who's to blame for poverty? These should not be the concerns or focus of this video. The focus should be solutions to poverty. Although Tavis Smiley and Cornel West mention women and children as one of many solutions to poverty in their book, the Rich and the Rest of Us, it is briefly mentioned within the video. Neither O'Reilly, Smiley or West make it a main focus. Women and children should be a main focus because they are the changing majority of the future America.

We should focus on women and children as a solution to poverty in America because it is women who birth these children and in most cases these days who are left to raise these children alone. These children literally are our future. In their book, Smiley and West mention, "we can't take care of America's 1.6 million impoverished children without creating living-wage job opportunities that allow single parents, especially mothers, to move out of poverty" (177).