On Feb. 19, Bill O'Reilly was hosting a call-in debate on The Radio Factor, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show heard by more than 3 million Americans every week. The topic of discussion was Michelle Obama's recent admission that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country."
Someone named Maryanne phoned in to say that the prospective first lady was an "angry ... militant woman." O'Reilly had already said he wanted to verify everything in a "fair and balanced and methodical way."
So he said this:
"I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's hard facts, evidence, that shows this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that's legit. We'll track it down."
This is one of the more offensive things I've heard anybody say on national talk radio. But we should ask: What does this rather bumbling statement mean?
Does it mean that O'Reilly would only lynch Mrs. Obama if he knew, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she thinks America is less than perfect? The answer is clearly no: O'Reilly was using the phrase "lynching party" figuratively. But does that make it permissible?
O'Reilly's defenders believe the "metaphor defense" exonerates him. They argue that if "lynching party" is just a figure of speech, then the comment is innocent.
At The Huffington Post, a reader posted the comment: "I don't think that O'Reilly or anyone else should have to apologize for using ['lynching party'] or any other colloquialism." At City-data.com, another commentator wrote, "The word 'lynching' was said in a colloquial fashion and wasn't meant to bespeak of anything having to do with race."
It's true, "lynchings" weren't always race-related. The original use refers to violent vigilante justice on the American frontier, often against white loyalists.
It was only during the Jim Crow era that "lynching parties" acquired its present imagery: angry, white mobs asserting their supremacy over people of color. In the century following the Civil War, at least 5 thousand people were publicly tortured, burned and hanged for the color of their skin.
Some would argue that the phrase's blood-stained history is enough to make it completely off limits. According to this view, anybody who uses these words out of quotation marks disrespects the dead.
I would go further. I think O'Reilly's metaphorical use of "lynching party" is not only racist, but also dangerous.
The reason has to do with the life and death of metaphors.
Linguists draw a distinction between "living" and "dead" metaphors. A living metaphor is one that still has figurative power. A word is applied to a new context, but retains much of its old meaning. If you say "an armada of pigeons," you are suggesting that the birds are especially fierce-looking, numerous or in tactical formation.
Metaphors become "dead" through overuse. "Branches of government" was once a living metaphor, conveying the strength and unity of an oak. Now to most it simply means "divisions of state authority." Similarly, the phrases "asset freeze," "loud shirt" and "hot under the collar" have shed some of their original sensual expressiveness.
Metaphors enrich language. They permit us to understand our world, feel at home in unfamiliar territories and connect with other cultures, foreign ways of thinking and abstract realities.
But not all phrases make good metaphors. "Lynching party" is such a phrase. The reason is that certain words are essential to memory. When those present have died, events live on mainly in words. Some words are so essential, and their underlying memories so important, that it seems incorrect to commandeer them as metaphors for unrelated situations.
Apartheid, the Holocaust, the Crusades: The words that recall humanity's darkest hours require our respect. They are instruments for the transmission of historical knowledge to others. If we make these terms do lowlier work, we run the risk of them becoming metaphors. If this happens, then in the habit of words-turned-metaphors, they will be sapped of their original power — to stir up images, recall stories and provoke thought in those who hear them.
Then we are likely to inhibit some of our key connections with our history. And we clear the way for future generations to commit the mistakes of the past.
Let me be clear — we should not hesitate to draw connections between past and present in appropriate cases, as when our species all too often recycles its crimes. When genocide recurs in Darfur, or modern-day witch hunts are pursued against innocent Americans, it behooves us to know it when an old phrase can capture precisely what is going on.
But "lynching party" is thankfully not such a phrase. To use it metaphorically is to belittle and obscure the past. This is a perilous road that leads to collective amnesia. O'Reilly and others in the mass media should be careful not to dandle unwittingly with the interface of language, memory and violence.
