Bill O’Reilly has hearty chuckle over bloodied United passenger

Filled with the joy of discussing a PR fiasco that isn’t his own, Bill O’Reilly had a hearty little chuckle over the video of a passenger being dragged from a United Airlines flight, which he shared on Monday’s edition of your nearly commercial-free rock block of bad takes, The O’Reilly Factor. By now you’ve no doubt seen the clip of the 69-year-old man who refused to voluntarily give up his seat so that United employees could have it, stating he was a doctor who had patients to see in the morning, and was subsequently strong-armed by security goons working at the behest of a corporate oligopoly who left him drooling blood, disoriented, and openly wishing for death. (Or as United puts it, “re-accommodated.”)
But amid the subsequent outrage and horror that airlines can openly treat their passengers like talky cargo, because constant mergers and consolidation have left them no other choice besides aisle, window, or getting bodied into the armrest if the airline deems it necessary, perhaps we missed the humor in it? Granted, it’s not funny ha-ha, but funny weird—as in “Ha ha, isn’t it weird that we’ve reached this point of complacency with a system designed to value profits over human life with no alternatives or recourse for redress?”
Or as O’Reilly put it, “I shouldn’t be laughing, but it’s just so bizarre.”