The second season of the PBS series Finding Your Roots with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. ended on a strange/strained note — as actor Ben Affleck asked the show to cover up his slave-owning ancestry. But now the show is back for Season 3 and digging into the history of men who prefer to expose rather than cover up.
[Ben Affleck Defends Islam, Plain and Simple on Bill Maher’s Real Time]
Gates looks into the ancestry of conservative FOX TV personality Bill O’Reilly. Turns out O’Reilly has familial ties to HBO’s very different talking head Bill Maher. When O’Reilly finds out, he says, “You’re going to have to put him (Maher) on 24-hour medical watch. This ruins his career. This destroys him.” When Maher finds out he says, “It just show you what a great place America is.” He added, “because we’re about as opposite as you can possibly get.” O’Reilly and Maher share a male ancestor from Kingdom of Breifne in Ireland (13th to 17th Century). Finding Your Roots airs Tuesdays at 8pm.
