* I’m not sure Rep. Monique Davis did herself any good by going on Fox News last night, but it’s been my experience that state legislators cannot resist the siren call of the national spotlight, so whatever…

Bill O’Reilly [last night] faced off with Illinois state representative Monique Davis, who said on a radio show this week that many of her constituents have “suspicions” that Chicago police are gunning down black children. O’Reilly told Davis that she unfairly legitimized a “destructive” rumor, and that she had a responsibility in her role as an elected official not to say such garbage in the public eye.

Davis insisted to O’Reilly that she wasn’t alleging anything, just repeating what constituents told her. O’Reilly pressed her on why she didn’t dismiss it as “crazy,” explaining that she has “credibility as an elected official” and she should know better than to say police are killing black kids. Davis suggested that given how such a high number (70 percent) of murders in Chicago remain unsolved, “people are wondering what the heck is going on.”

O’Reilly still insisted she was being “irresponsible,” and switched to overall problems in the black community. Davis told O’Reilly he was “terribly wrong” about the majority of black problems originating in the collapse of the family unit, pointing to poor education and a lack of “resources to help these kids to anything.” O’Reilly brought up the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate, to which Davis shot back that unmarried actresses get pregnant all the time. O’Reilly said, “Actresses aren’t living in the ghetto.”

* Video…

* More…

“I didn’t say it, Bill. I repeated what members of my community have said to me,” Davis said. “It is crucially important that people realize that was not Monique Davis’s statement.”

“Do I have to say that?” Davids asked when O’Reilly prompted her to refute such statements as falsehoods.

“Yeah, you do,” O’Reilly shot back. “Here’s why you have to say it, two reasons: Number one, you have credibility as an elected official, alight? And number two, people don’t know where you stand…That is destructive to the discourse. Chicago police as you know are not gunning down black children. You know that, right?”

Bill O’Reilly complaining that somebody who doesn’t have a nationally televised cable TV show is being “destructive to the discourse” is more than a tad bit ironic. Just sayin…

The full transcript is here.