"the soft bigotry of low expectations."

Well, aren't Bill O'Reilly's race-based low expectations of Harlem restaurants a form of "soft bigotry" as defined by the right-wing catchphrase? 

The problem of defining it too narrowly is obviously problematic....defining it too broadly is as well. You make that case above, and Malcom Gladwell shares that point with you to an extent.....

....we debase that term when we apply it to comments or actions indiscriminately. There is a distinction between being a racist and simply saying something dumb.

 It seems to me that O'Reilly's comment is a case of the latter.

He first makes the the point that harboring prejudices can't be a criteria for racism.....

All of us, in our unconscious, harbor prejudicial thoughts. (If you don't believe me, I urge you to take the tests at www. i-a-t.org.)

He attempts to lay out what he considers guidelines to define racism due to similar logic.

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/12/defining_a_raci.html

Here are his proposed criteria.....

 

1. Content. What is said clearly makes a difference. I think, for example, that hate speech is more hateful the more specific it is. To call someone a nigger is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites. To make a targetted claim is worse than calling a name. Similarly, I think it matters how much a stereotype deviates from a legitimate generalization.  For instance, (and this is, admittedly, not a great example) I think it's worse for someone to say that Jews are money-grubbers than it is to make a joke about how Orthodox Jews have large families. The first statement is groundless, and the second is at least statistically defensible. All hate speech is hurtful. But racism crosses the line and becomes dangerous when it encourages false belief about a targetted group. This much, I think, is fairly straightforward.

2. Intention.  Was the remark intended to wound, or intended to perpetuate some social wrong? Was it malicious? I remember sitting in church, as a child, while our Presbyterian minister made jokes about how "cheap" Presbyterians were. If non-Presbyterians make that joke, it might be offensive. But a Presbyterian making jokes about Presbyterians with the intention of making Presbyterians laugh is fine, because there is a complete absence of malice in the comment. I think that Richard Pryor or Dave Chapelle's use of the word "nigger," or the Jewish jokes told by Jewish comics fall into the same category.

3. Conviction. Does the statement represent the individual's considered opinion? This to me is the trickiest of the three criterion. In Blink, I wrote a great deal about unconscious racism--how powerful and how prevalent it is. All of us, in our unconscious, harbor prejudicial thoughts. (If you don't believe me, I urge you to take the tests at www. i-a-t.org.) What is of greatest concern, I think, are not instances where those kinds of buried feelings leak out, but cases where hate speech appears to have been the product of considered, conscious deliberation.  Comments made in writing, then, ought to be taken more seriously and judged more harshly than comments made in speech; comments made soberly are worse than those made in anger or jest. Comments made in the absence of emotional or chemical duress are worse than those made drunk, or in some stressful context. When a teenager yells at her mother, "I wish you were dead," that's hate speech. It's malcious and its targetted (I wish YOU were dead, not all mothers.) But mothers forgive their children for shouting those words, because the speech fails the conviction test. When we are frustrated or angry, we say things we don't mean--and the world, properly, ought to make allowances for us when we do.

of that interview on Opie and Anthony (radio show) and it was just not very good... Maybe not racist but over the top stupid. "There was no craziness" part is... Come on.