Obama Singles Out Rivals O’Reilly and Sharpton at ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ Event (849 hits)
Today President Obama announced a My Brother’s Keeper initiative to help young men of color, and present at the announcement were both Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly. This odd coupling did not go unnoticed by the president in his remarks today.
Obama spoke about the need to “encourage fathers to stick around and to remove barriers to marriage,” among other things, and said it’s clear that this is such a broadly agreed-upon message that it can bring personalities from two politically disparate networks together.
“If I can persuade Sharpton and O’Reilly to be in the same meeting, then it means that there are people of good faith who want to get stuff done, even if we don’t agree on everything, and that’s our focus.” And obviously the president’s onto something here, because it’s not as if O’Reilly and Sharpton have gotten along well with each other in the past. In fact, one might say they’ve had a pretty public feud over issues of race in recent years.
UPDATE: O’Reilly is set to interview Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett on the subject tonight at 8 p.m. ET.
