Let’s get past looks

Bill O’Reilly’s “James Brown wig” comment was horrendous.

Mean, mocking, sophomoric — beyond the pale, really, even for a guy whose racially charged comments are his calling card: “If you go to any restaurant, Mexican restaurant in the world, they come out and they’re singing ‘Guantanamera’ with the sombreros on.” Many African Americans “are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads.” And so on.

But let’s talk about the comment leading up to the wig part. “I didn’t hear a word she said,” O’Reilly told his “Fox & Friends” co-hosts Tuesday, after they watched a clip of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., delivering a speech about patriotism on the House floor. “I was looking at the James Brown wig.”

Didn’t hear a word she said. Too focused on her appearance.

When are we going to stop doing this to women?

Not any time soon, it appears.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and British Prime Minister Theresa May met earlier this week, and The Daily Mail newspaper chose to mark the occasion with a front-page photo and the headline “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!”

I didn’t hear a word she said.

Ha ha ha. I can’t hear you. You’re too beautiful. Or you’re not beautiful enough. Or you don’t fit my teeny-tiny definition of beautiful. Something about beauty, which is a woman’s duty to uphold, above all else.

O’Reilly apologized for his wig comment Tuesday, calling it “dumb.”

Indeed.

Call it out when you see it, friends. We can accomplish a whole lot more if we stop tuning out half of the Earth’s population because we can’t get past their looks.

This story was originally published March 30, 2017 at 7:46 PM with the headline "Let’s get past looks."