On Monday night's "O'Reilly Factor," Jon Stewart showed up to debate Bill O on the so-called "Common Controversy," a seemingly endless stream of speculation and soundbite-ry that stemmed from the rapper's invitation to appear at a White House poetry event, and his "support" of "cop killers," including a visit he paid to one of the accused, "the notorious Joanne Chesimard," (as O'Reilly put it,) in Cuba (gasp!)
The gist of O'Reilly's agitation seems to be that, by having Common appear at the White House, Barack Obama was "validating" the rapper's entire career — not to mention his support of Chesimard and Mumia Abu-Jamal — and that the whole thing was, simply put, "a bad idea," one that undermined national unity (a concept we all know the folks at Fox News certainly strive to nurture.) Not mentioned in all of this were the facts that a) Common's career was pretty nicely validated before the White House invite, and b) Common has, in the past, said some rather nasty things about former president George W. Bush, which didn't exactly put him in good standing with the Right before this whole "controversy" began, but still, it's nice to see America officially give a crap about poetry again, especially since it's been about 16 years since "Spoken Word Unplugged" (shout out to Maggie Estep!)
And while Stewart basically ethered Bill — that's a "rap phrase" — when he brought up the fact that performers like Bono and and Bob Dylan have both penned songs that supported convicted killers (an early version of U2's "Vertigo" was titled "Native Son," about jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier, and Dylan's famous "Hurricane" proclaimed the innocence of boxer Rubin Carter), and both have been invited to the White House in the past with little incident, Monday night's debate inspired us to go back and look at some of Jon and Bill's greatest hits. After all, the two have traded barbs on each other's shows at several points in the past, and here are some of the best bits.
By Steven Roberts
Crimes and courts edition