"But how do we know the difference -- I mean, you're reasonable. How do we know the difference between you and those that are trying to kill us?"
-- CNN's Glenn Beck, to Muslim guest
It's not often that CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck runs across a point worth making -- he is famously demure and objective, and not at all an intellectual thunderchud propped up in front of a television camera because CNN looked at their demographics and decided that appealing to the vapid, stupid and bigoted was a far cheaper way to run a network than any of the possible alternatives. But he has a good point here. How, indeed, are we to tell the difference between a brown person who is reasonable, and a brown person who is trying to kill us?
It is a troubling question, and one that got me thinking. How can we tell the difference between evil people and good ones, based solely on their race or religion? How is a reasonable person -- like, say, a news anchor for a major media outlet -- to know which ones to hate, which ones to fear, which ones to merely suspect, and which ones to give a pass to?
Let me give an alarming example. Here's two pictures: one of CNN host Glenn Beck, and one of infamous racist David Duke.
The similarities between the two are striking. Both appear to block transmitted light; both wear clothing. Both have hair. Faced with this conundrum, I undertook a more extensive investigation, and here again the results were inconclusive. Both Glenn Beck and David Duke have appeared on CNN, and both appear to wear pants with pockets. Both seem to have at one point applied for credit cards. Both spell their names using a series of alphabetical characters. Are you worried, yet? Then take a deep breath, because we are about to enter the looking glass.
Here is another set of pictures. One is Glenn Beck; the other is infamous murderer Charles Manson.
Can you tell the difference between the two? Look at the cold, dead eyes; that murderous glare. Both are a disturbing white color; they appear to be of identical race and heritage. Both have orifices in their faces that, according to experts, they use to ingest food. Both have allowed themselves to be photographed in black and white, just as Hitler himself did.
How can any savvy individual, whether they are host of their own national news program, or a deliverer of fine foodstuffs to grocery stores across this nation, or bowling ball fabrication technicians, tell the difference between one of these individuals and the other? Merely talking to them will not suffice, since if you are wrong, one or both of them may kill you and use your bones as makeshift prison silverware. Are you willing to take that risk?
Still not convinced of the dangers we face? Then I give you this haunting paradox:
One of these pictures is of Glenn Beck. The other is of fictional 1980s-era cartoon villain and ThunderCats arch-nemesis, Mumm-Ra. Quickly, at a glance -- which one of the two is evil? Which one of the two menaces the imaginary landscape of Third Earth, and which one is merely folksy-but-bigoted spokesman for a major news network?
Note the pale, pallid skin. The multiple fingers on each hand, apparently movable independently. The dark, menacing clothing. Are you willing to trust your own safety to your abilities to tell the two apart? What about your children?
This is why I feel for Glenn Beck. This is not the first time Beck, when confronted with a Muslim American on national television, could not help but shudder at the incongruities of being presented with a brown face that may or may not have been a terrorist. When interviewing House member Keith Ellison, a Muslim, he also gave voice to what he asserted "a lot of Americans" were thinking:
"... what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'"
And how could he not think such a thing? Clearly, the person before him was ethnic, and if you cannot judge the relative character of someone by their ethnicity, what possible method could CNN hosts and viewers have to judge them?
So thank you, CNN. It is important in this day and age, given all the possible hosts of national news programs, that we retain the necessary common sense to know that bigotry is fine and good and eminently marketable, as long as it is polite. Others will claim that you, as a news institution, continue to sully your name by wallowing in the idle pronouncements of implicit racism allowed on your network: do not believe them. You and I both know that such critics are quite possibly ethnic, or at the very least may look and dress like venomous racists, or serial killers, or cartoon supervillains. No news organization could be expected to tease out those differences.
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