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Geraldo And O’Reilly Tussle Over Whether Gingrich Called Spanish The ‘Language Of The Ghetto’

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A few years ago, Newt Gingrich advocated for making English the official language of the nation to prevent people from speaking “the language of the ghetto.” In the context of his proposal, many, including Geraldo Rivera, think it is indisputable that he meant Spanish, and on The Factor last night, Bill O’Reilly countered that he could just as easily have meant Farsi.

RELATED: Wolf Blitzer Busts Mitt Romney Over Anti-Newt Gingrich ‘Ghetto Language’ Ad

“He meant Spanish, that is what he was implying,” Rivera noted without a doubt, “he is speaking specifically about Spanish people.” O’Reilly countered that he could have been speaking about “Iranian people speaking Farsi,” as Farsi would be at least as useless in the American economy. Rivera countered that he did believe that “immigrants should be required to speak English,” but so much time had elapsed between Gingrich’s comments and his equivocation on them that it demonstrated a desire for it to be construed as it had been for so long. On that point, Rivera called the comments an “awful mistake.”

“I don’t think it was one of his finest moments, but he could be talking in general,” O’Reilly countered. While both O’Reilly and Rivera agreed that “ebonics” did not “help anybody,” they did not find the comments helpful to Gingrich, particularly in Florida where, Rivera noted, Mitt Romney has strong support in the Cuban-American community. Rivera ultimately predicts that Romney will win Florida “overwhelmingly” in the primary, but lose it to the President in November.

The segment via Fox News below:

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  • Gloves Waxy Donahue

    Geraldo Rivera es un neutral Obama partidario.

  • Anonymous

    How much does fox news pay you? Always the first to comment positively for the right wing!

  • Anonymous

    You’re much to kind, I could think of many other ways to describe Geraldo, both in Spanish and English, but they would be non-compliant with Mediaite’s new comment guidelines. 

  • Anonymous

    You’re much to kind, I could think of many other ways to describe Geraldo, both in Spanish and English, but they would be non-compliant with Mediaite’s new comment guidelines. 

  • Moderate

    Geraldo will not be happy until the non-Cuban Latinos dominate Florida.

  • Anonymous

    “There is nothing common about common sense” and Geraldo Rivera is case in point.  The “obvious” frequently eludes the man?  Also, he tends to defend the indefensible, often!

    Purveyor

  • Anonymous

    Has nothing to do with FOX News, Gloves does that just to annoy YOU!

  • Anonymous

    ????????????????????????

  • Anonymous

    Billbo has no credibility whatsoever.  Not that this is news.

  • Anonymous

    Seriously, has Geraldo been to FL in the last three years?  It has been real estate Armageddon.  I think even Santorum would beat Obama in FL this year.  Obama will still be competitive this fall, and he probably has a reasonably good chance of winning.  But, he ain’t winnin’ FL.  Not a chance.

  • Anonymous

    Ek is bale om jou te ontmoet. From the ghetto

  • Hout Bosques

    How about the REAL problem – suggesting that ANY language other than English is “the language of the ghetto”? Otherwise, why did BillOld throw in “ebonics”, which gave an opportunity to these two nimnodes to bond over their shared ignorance. Ebonics was never a language, any more than Marxism was ever a political ideology. Ebonics was a method to figure out & dignify some variations on urban black American slang; as a project, it failed in large part because by the time was able to identify a non-obvious use for a word or phrase, the language actually being used had moved on to something else – as language always does. Each person comes into this world without preconception & tries to make sense of what’s being said, and through that unique understanding changes language use. Generations of such persons put millions of times more pressure on shared language to change. English use today isn’t just different than it was in the time of Henry VIII & his six wives, it’s different than it was in the 1980s, and nearly incomprehensibly so from what it was in the 1780s.  

    Where these two nimnodes show any competence at all in their ignorant knee-jerk conversation is when they turn to predicting the effects of the IMPRESSIONS of what ever Newt & Mittens said on voters – but on that, we didn’t need THEIR help; we have quite a bit more mediated punditry going on here at Mediaite, & it’s at least as accurate.  

    (BTW is there some place one can go to get into all the action BillOld lays down? “Florida will go Republican” – I would LOVE a piece of that; and if I were allowed to lay down enough on credit, by mid-November I’d be Romney-retired.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Malone/100002475802402 Tim Malone

    “the language of the ghetto.”That would be ebonics, “he is speaking specifically about Spanish people.”

    Spanish people are Spaniards, not Mexicans. Spaniards aren’t the problem, they accomplished more in the 15th century than Mexicans ever have. 

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  • Anonymous

    “WHAT, WHAT, WHAT, ” Sheila Braslovski

  • Hout Bosques

    Yup – fought an incredibly expensive hugely brutal soul-eviscerating LOSING war against the Netherlands over most a century, staged the single most famous naval disaster known to human history, spent the next quarter millenium getting their lunch money taken regular as clockwork by a pirate nation thereby enabling that pirate nation to succeed it as the world’s greatest empire, turned their own countryside into an unproductive desert h.q. for out-of-work swords-for-hire, sent thugs over to the New World to disembowel all semblance of pre-existing civilization, permanently hooked the native dupes on Catholic heroin, provided a useful punching bag for the new American experiment in conquering the better part of half a continent – great accomplishments, all. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_76F7SAA3N35X4IBY5BGVQML2YM James

    Seems to me it was a dig at Ebonics: Spanish in no world I have ever heard of is considered a ghetto language. Gingrich was being sarcastic best I can figure out and not talking about actual policy. Over parsing this stuff is stupid.

  • Anonymous

    Are you really this stupid, or are you playing a part?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NPUP22FNTPVCXRUMWJEURGQGD4 JonasP

    I am so shocked that Newt could imply something so terrible, such a  racist. (and I agree 100%, with him)

  • Anonymous

    Guys. Guys. GUYS!
    Consider non-grammatical English as the possibility and be sure schools teach “English” rather than politically correctly honoring every dialect and bad habit vernacular that comes along.

  • AliveStillKickin

    The only language spoken in the ghetto comes out of the business end of an illegaly-possessed 9mm Beretta and it’s always a serious, universally understood message…”Kill or DIE”.

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  • Anonymous

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  • Anonymous

    Spanish isn’t the language of the ghetto. It’s the language of the barrio.

  • Anonymous

    AHA! … Trick comment from “Tim Malone” (BTW, what were the Irish doing in the 15th century? Now?) … Everything you mention is an actual accomplishment.  He never said “accomplished more good.”

    ‘Course, TM also thinks Mexicans speak Mexican, apparently. 

  • Anonymous

    That could be correct. If Newt hadn’t apologized for his remarks, in bad Spanish, about a week later, on a Hispanic channel.

    That really narrowed the field.

  • Anonymous

    What universe does your understanding come from?

  • Anonymous

     Oops! Thanks for the addition.

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