Bill O-Reilly just doesn't understand Asians.
I mean, Asians are the model minority, right? So they must be Republicans, and conservative ones at that.
After an "investigative" report on Hawaii, which voted overwhelmingly for native son Barack Obama in last year's election, O'Reilly mused, "You know what's shocking? Thirty-five percent of the Hawaiian population is Asian, and Asian people are not liberal by nature, they're usually more industrious and hard-working."
Fortunately, O'Reilly's resident ambush interviewer Jesse Watters explained it to him, slowly, with small words.
"If you add the indigenous native Hawaiian population to the Hispanic population, [minorities] outnumber whites by more than two to one," he said. "So then you have all the rich liberals coming from California, and it's a perfect storm for liberalism."
One member of Hawaii's congressional delegation is calling for O'Reilly to apologize.
"Leave it to Bill O'Reilly to thoughtlessly insult 1.3 million people with one sweeping misstatement," said Colleen Hanabusa, the Democratic representative of Hawaii's 1st District, who is of Japanese ancestry.
However, I think O'Reilly's attempt to characterize Hawaii's Asian-American population is most insulting of all," Hanabusa continued.
"Claiming that Asian-Americans are not liberal by nature because they are 'hard working and industrious' is the kind of one dimensional and paternalistic attitude that we should have gotten past decades ago," she added.
"Hawaii's -- and America's -- Asian-American communities are as rich and diverse as any in our nation," said Hanabusa. "Attributing any broad set of characteristics to any large group only serves to encourage attitudes that 'they' are somehow different from 'us.'"
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