Politically Incorrect Transcripts

Monday, September 24, 2001

Guests on this program were:
Tommy Smothers
Kerri Houston
Holland Taylor
Michael Eric Dyson

Panel Discussion

Bill: Good evening. Welcome again to "Politically Incorrect." I think we have put together a panel again tonight for you that will be interesting and enlightening. Some people here I have had on many times, and I like very much. All of you have been here before. This is Michael Eric Dyson. This is his book "Hollar if you hear me." He is a college professor and a columnist for the "Chicago Sun-Times." This, of course, is Holland Taylor, an Emmy-winning actress. You're doing a play at the playhouse these days called "The unexpected man." Kerri Houston's been with us before. She is the National Field director for the American conservative union. And, of course, Tommy Smothers is Tommy Smothers. I don't -- [ Applause ] I don't know what -- I think. With just him sitting here --

Tommy: Yeah, here I am.

Bill: -- It's like in "The Godfather" when they brought the brother into the trial, you know? Nothing had to be said, he's here. All right, I wanna talk about racial profiling here today. And I don't want you to have to bear the burden of being the spokesman for all of black America.

Michael: Right.

Bill: But, I think a lot of people, and I am one of them, have been thinking lately, what do black Americans think about racial profiling? Because, until this happened, this was a horrible thing in America, racial profiling. But, I would guess now, black Americans, like most people, also don't wanna get on the plane with the three angry-looking Arab guys.

Michael: Well, you know, here's the reality. I think that many African-American people understand that, in this nation, where we've endured this horrible tragedy, that obviously all of us have jangled nerves, we're suspicious, we're skeptical. We wanna be kind, and, yet, we don't wanna be stupid. But I think that, beyond that, most African-American people say they flip the script. They say, "Maybe now white Americans understand what we've been dealing with for a long time here." So when we look at Arab-Americans, true enough, I think -- I hope I would've had the courage to step out on the plane with them in Minneapolis and say, "You know what? I'm in solidarity with you, 'cause this stuff has happened to me." And many white Americans think they're justified because they think black people tend to rape, rob, kill, steal, murder, destroy. So I would tend to think that many African-American people, although they understand why it happens, still find it unacceptable. I still think it's an unacceptable practice. Because many of those Arab people who are citizens of this country and who have given their lifeblood for the sustenance of this nation as we have, the rest of us have, are the very ones being targeted. And they are just as embarrassed at the outrageous behavior of a small subsection of their community.

Kerri: And, of course, a lot of them came here to escape what has happened to us.

Bill: Almost all of them --

Kerri: A great number of them. Yeah, yeah.

Bill: -- Came here to be away from the culture that produced this kind of violence. That's why those are the ones who come here. And they're the smart ones 'cause they're the ones who've figured who to get out of that prison.

Holland: It isn't just racial profiling. It's any kind of profiling. And you have to look at when it's happening. Is it happening because somebody is driving down in a rough neighborhood with a bunch of guys in a car? And are they suspicious and should you pull them over just because of profiling or if someone's getting on a plane, which is, after all a bomb, and is there profiling there for much more serious reasons? I think once a person has been admitted to a plane, they theoretically should have gone through all the scrutiny they are going to go through.

Bill: Oh, and there's so much scrutiny.

Holland: And once having gotten on the plane, they should be welcomed as anyone. They've passed through what scrutiny there is.

Michael: Right, and they just --

Bill: But we still don't have scrutiny at the airport.

Michael: But, you know what? I'll tell you this, though. I think America is now a black nation, though, Bill. Because, you see, when people tell me, "Well, you gotta get to the airport two hours ahead to get your luggage searched through" -- oh, I've been doing that for 15 years. Oh, you mean -- oh, and I'm always the random guy. My name is Michael "Random" Dyson. [ Laughter ] I go through -- right? I go through the airport, they check me -- and I go, I don't care if I shave, I got a beard, I can have my left eye closed and my right eye cocked -- if I go through wearing a suit and a tie or looking like a B-boy, it doesn't make a difference. "Sir, could you step aside, please." And I'm saying, this is what I deal with constantly. And, you know, I said, "Tim McVeigh behind me is getting away with murder, and I'm being checked and searched down." And I'm saying that this, to me, now, puts America in the position of African-American people. This is indeed, to me, the kind of blackening of America.

Holland: They're learning.

Bill: You mean the people at the actual going through where you put your luggage, they're the ones who take you aside?

Michael: Oh, absolutely.

Bill: 'Cause they're the ones who look -- I mean, they're the ones, who, when they go through, must get it even worse.

Michael: Oh, absolutely.

Bill: I mean, they look --

Michael: Here's the irony. You tell them, you know what, a lot of you who are doing this job, getting paid subsistence wages, look like me. You must know that I'm not more likely to do this to somebody else. And black women, above anybody, are stopped and searched ridiculously. I've talked to many professional black women who are taken aside. So I'm saying to you that the treatment America now is dealing with is kind of low-level.

Bill: Why women? Why black women?

Michael: Well, that's -- it's idiotic, because they're not more likely to commit any more crime than anybody else. But, because they're felt to be somehow more likely to conceal it by not looking obvious, then they are the ones who are taken aside.

Bill: Oh, they can hide it in the high hair.

Tommy: Well, the profiling -- if you profile -- if everybody was profiled, and just not the Arabs or blacks, and they're starting to profile everybody now, but they're not. But, if they were, they would probably, if there was somebody that'd be profiling and started profiling, say, someone, not as -- say, a little weird or a little slow-witted, so that they say, "I don't know, you might be stupid enough to do something." [ Laughter ] [ Applause ]

Michael: But, here's the point. That's interesting. I think -- but, you know what? Whenever we talk about profiling, look at this. When Tim McVeigh did what he did -- and let's admit it, it's not your religion or your -- if you're a fundamentalist. When Tim McVeigh did what he did, I didn't see them profiling white boys from mid-West with buzz cuts. They just didn't do that. I mean, they were not the suspects who were being taken aside.

Bill: But that is a bit of a specious argument, because that really was an aberration. I mean, the amount of people in this country, or even around the world, who were sympathetic to what Tim McVeigh did, I would guess number in the hundreds, maybe the thousands. Even militia groups distanced themselves from Tim McVeigh. The amount of people around the world who were sympathetic, whether we wanna believe this or face this to what went on September 11th, number in the millions to tens of millions, maybe the hundreds of millions. The Arab streets in many capitals and villages in the Arab world think that was a good thing. So it is not comparable, and let's get --

Michael: Okay, point granted in the sense that there are millions of more people around the world who believe that, but, in this country, when we talk about some of the ideas put forth like a Tim McVeigh, or people who are engaging in the murder of doctors at abortion clinics, I'm saying, to me, the problem is not whether you are Christian or muslim or Jew, the problem is, are you a fascist and fundamentalist? And do you believe that your viewpoint is the only one to be taken legitimately, and has the resonance morally in this country? And I'm telling you -- listen, the arguments that bin Laden is making against the West, I've heard Bill Bennett make 'em, I've heard right-wing Rush Limbaugh make 'em -- "American Western culture is crazy, it's stupid, it's ridiculous -- "

Bill: Hey, hey. Rush limbaugh defended me last week. Don't attack him. [ Light laughter ]

Michael: Right-wing conservative. And they've made the most ridiculous arguments, both on terms of race and in terms of class and gender and culture in this nation. And I said, that's the same stuff. I don't see the difference between Bill Bennett and the argument -- not in terms of the moral context. So, that's what I mean. I mean, of course, millions of people around this world think that what happened to America was its comeuppance.

Bill: But --

Michael: Many black people understand that.

Bill: But, to racially profile, even if it's not right and we agree it's not right, can something be not-right and yet be justified? Kerri: Well, I think we might be having a little bit of the wrong argument. I've flown twice since the event happened. And both times they asked me if I had nail clippers. And I said no. And then I thought to myself, if I'm a terrorist on a plane, do I say, "Excuse me, do you have any nail clippers in your bag that I could use?" It's ridiculous. What we need to concentrate on is security, not racial profiling. You can have 500 Arabs and one lunatic on a plane, and it's the white lunatic that's gonna do something crazy.

Bill: We have to take a break. We'll be right back.

Bill: Okay, welcome back. One of the things I wanted to get to last week and never did is why do they hate us, you know, what's goin' on there. Dan Rather said something that I thought was rather -- I didn't understand why he said this. He was asked a week ago as a guest when he was on with Dave Letterman, why did they do this, why do they hate us? And he said, "We just don't know. They just hate." And I just thought that can't be -- and -- [ Talking over each other ]

Tommy: I've heard that said. "Why do they hate -- why do they hate our freedom? And why do they hate -- " I say, "They don't hate our freedom. They hate the fact that we're not -- we're not exporting it to the rest of the world. We're just sitting here free as birds, all the things we can do, and yet I haven't seen our government representing people who love revolution, who support the little guy. Our government goes out, we don't pay attention to 'em. They support every death spot, every -- just about all the way down along the line --

Bill: Well, we fought for the freedom of Kuwait when that was invaded, who, incidently, had oil.

Michael: Yeah, right.

Tommy: Was that another democracy?

Michael: Well, that's the a point, though. I mean, America, let's get it right, either we're supporting the guy, we're against the guy. Either we're with Saddam Hussein, ol' man Bush is in his corner, and then when Kuwait becomes a problem, geography then -- with the oil there, then he becomes the enemy. Either we're funneling money through the CIA into Afghanistan to put down the Soviet rebels on the one hand and then Laden is our friend. Or now he's our enemy because we taught him the dirty tricks he used against us. So, for me, why do they hate us? Because American imperialism and colonialism is devastating. It reaches wide. Its tentacles are just enormously offensive. And people don't hate our freedom, they hate the way in which we hord the freedom to ourselves. [ Talking over each other ]

Holland: It's just ours. It's our jewel.

Michael: In that kind of arrogance. -- To me, is deeply offensive. This is why, again, when I talk about African-American people who look at this, when we look at the flag waving, it's not that we're not American, we love America, but we make a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is the critical support of your country in the face of its best virtues and trying to correct it when it's wrong. Nationalism is the uncritical support of America, right or wrong. And nationalism --

Holland: Which we've seen a lot of lately-- six guns shooting and flags waving. It's just undiscriminately.

Michael: This is nuts to me. If I was a guy who's smart as you, I'd be pissed off when I got stopped at the airport, too. I tell ya -- [ Applause ] Right?

Holland: Can I say something on the hate America theme? Speaking after such brilliance, Mike, forgive me, but just, from my point of view, the thing that I find myself thinking again and again since the 11th is that a lot of us say, and the phrase that comes to everybody's mind, it's a new world, it's a different world. The fact is, it's a new America. It's a different America. It's the same old world. And what I find, in terms of everyone hating us, which is the theme, that, on the contrary, not speaking of the Arab world specifically or our enemies there specifically, but generally I find the world has been kind to us and tolerant because we are like a prodigal bad child who has all the goodies and our face smeared with candy and our pockets stuffed with dollar bills and our tricycles and our guns and our six-shooters. And we've been having a whale of time over here on our continent, and nothing has happened to us. And something has happened to us. The scale of it was so spectacular that it stopped the world. But, really, European nations around the globe could have said, "Grow up, wake up. So now you're like -- now you understand what the world is really like." Because they live with the potential of this kind of thing all the time. It's just the scale of it was like -- it was like a child that was whipped unseemly, in an unseemly way. So the world is now saying, "That was a hell of beating that young nation had to get to wake up, to grow up and enter the world which already was there."

Bill: Right. [ Applause ] Very true.

Michael: And you know what? What else is -- what's interesting, too, is that this is not the first Wall Street to burn. You remember back in 1920s when, in Oklahoma City with the upwardly mobile black people, there was an act of such utter horror when they bombed those people out of their communities in Oklahoma. And what's interesting to me, when I hear people rage to war --

Bill: People are not familiar, so just briefly tell the --

Michael: Well, what happened is that this was the call to black Wall Street in Oklahoma. And in Oklahoma -- an all-black community was established -- historically established. They had their own banks, their own systems of delivery of goods and services. Highly educated black people. And because of the resentment, the collective resentment, of the white folk who were there against the black folk, they went out and looted their stores, burned their homes and killed these people in massive numbers. And I'm saying, what's interesting to me is that, now that I see America hurtling toward war, I ask, should black people have responded against their white brothers and sisters in the same way that we now want to respond to our brothers and sisters throughout the world? I don't romanticize bin Laden, because he started in Africa. Let's not get it twisted. He doesn't have solidary with people of color. The reality however is that African-American people in particular, but others as well, understand that low-grade terrorism is what we confront in this nation every day. You tell me about arbitrary violence. What happens if you think -- my son who lives in Atlanta, will he go out today and, reaching for his wallet, some policeman mistake it for a gun and then murder him? I tell you, that's terroristic to me. Now, it's low-grade, it's not on the spectacular scale about which you've spoke, but it is an insidious every day factor that robs us of a sense of security in this nation. And that's what I think we all feel. That's why I say we're all black now. Everybody understands what it means to be black right now in America. [ Applause ]

Bill: But, for that reason, do you think that black America has an understanding of -- because I think, like I said, this idea that, you know, "Why do they hate us?" "They just do." That seems to be the white America -- "They just do." Is there an understanding that black America has? I mean, because, you know, when I heard that -- "They just hate us" -- I thought back to like when we had the riots here. And I heard people say the same thing. "Why are the black people rioting? Well, they just do. You know, they're criminals, and they just do. They just -- you know, they have nothing better to do, and they just hate us." And I thought, you know -- and don't hang me on this analogy, but it's like when you heard on "60 Minutes" last night -- muslim people say -- well, a lot of the Arab people, the muslim people" -- this was like, okay, they finally got the invincible super power. I thought, like, when the O.J. verdict came down. It's like they finally got one.

Michael: Right, exactly.

Bill: And I'm not saying black -- I don't need anymore trouble. I'm not saying black people are anything like the terrorists, but is there an analogy there between people who finally get one mark against the invincible?

Michael: And black people didn't even have to necessarily believe O.J. was innocent, they just didn't think he was guilty. Because what they were trying to say to America is, "We've been trying to tell you this story about how black people have been mistreated in this system for so long." O.J. is a rickety broke-down metaphor, but he's the best we got. Because only a guy like that would be really appealing to white America. O.J. was a substitute white man. So when white America saw him, they were abhorred. Now, if Jim Brown had been the guy, white people would have been going, "Of course, he did that. Of course." Right? [ Light laughter ] But not -- but hey, not with O.J., 'cause O.J. was a white guy in black face. So finally, black people said, "Hey, you know what, if O.J. got away with it, baby, and he was one of theirs, then darn right, we're gonna do the boogaloo and celebrate." Now I'm saying to you -- and black people knew that he was just as disingenuous and -- the only thing black on O.J. for several years was the bottom of his shoe.

Bill: But for people who had never gotten a break from the criminal justice system --

Michael: That was beautiful.

Bill: It was even better that he really was guilty.

Michael: That's exactly -- [ Laughter ] You can't frame -- you know what was wrong with that trial? You can't frame --

Bill: -- A guilty man.

Michael: You know what I'm sayin'? And I'm not suggesting that, Mr. Simpson, if you see this. What I'm saying to you -- [ Laughter ]

Kerri: Bill?

Michael: Keep it real, "G." But let me tell you this, many of those -- black people understand. We live in a nation where, yes, we have been mistreated. Here is what we say, "If they did this stuff to us in slavery -- and apartheid, do you think -- if they did this with people who are Americans, who died for them and went to the war to defend the possibility of democracy spreading and came back with German prisoners of war. And the German prisoners of war could go into the front door, and the black people had to go to the back. If they did it to us, what do you think they've done throughout the world?" Of course, we understand. Of course, we empathize. Of course, we understand what it means, finally, to say, "This is what we have felt like. This is the terror we experience every day. And you must now bear the unavoidable misery that comes with that kind of imposed terror."

Bill: Okay, I have to take commercial. We will be right back. [ Applause ]

Bill: Okay, we're back. And, you know, we're all trying to be sensitive. And that's well and good. Is anyone a little bit disturbed by this list of songs that the radio is not supposed to play anymore? Clear channel communications, which --

Michael: Yeah, yeah. [ Laughter and applause ]

Bill: Uh, yeah. No, it's not -- no, they're not banned. But, it is kind of a blacklist. And some of them I really don't understand. You can't play "What A Wonderful World" --

Michael: I don't get that.

Bill: Yeah, because I guess it's not --

Kerri: 'Cause we don't wanna be too cheerful.

Bill: But then we don't --

Holland: It's inappropriately cheerish.

Kerri: Yeah. Michael: Right.

Bill: We don't wanna be cheerful, but then we don't wanna sing, "Benny and the Jets" is no good, "American Pie" is no good. It's odd -- "Ticket to Ride" -- you know, some of these, obviously you understand the reasoning --

Kerri: Are the royalties too high? Is that the problem?

Tommy: Well, there's a time, when things get tough, there's always these people who wanna stop the very concepts of what we're about. Which is free expression, and it's always in a righteous, national, sick sense of the word. And when I look at you, Bill, and what you're going through this past week, I have such compassion for you because --

Bill: Who would know better?

Tommy: -- The Smothers brothers, we were fired. We had all these constant things that we were unamerican because we were patriotic, we criticizing our country because it was valid to do it. You had to do it if you're a real patriot. If you have a sickness going, you wanna point it out.

Bill: Right.

Tommy: And you had to go through this thing. And, now, I warned you about this. I said, "Sometimes we gotta keep a twinkle in our eye and not say exactly what we wanna say, what we mean." Your passion's true, and your thoughts are true. And right now when we see this thing, it's the same type of thing. We don't wanna it hear it on -- something that disturbs, someone's making those rules for us. And who they are, I don't know who they are.

Holland: Well, fortunately, it wasn't a law. It was a suggestion. But it's interesting to me that the suggestion is to avoid stirring up feelings. This is not about opinions or politics. This is about making people feel a certain way. "Don't make them feel squeamish about having any kind of happiness when such a terrible thing has happened in the world. Don't make them feel even more downtrodden by, you know, songs that use words like 'bomb,' or 'kill' or 'death.'"

Bill: It is odd that --

Holland: It's suppression of feeling --

Bill: At the moment that Mayor Giuliani is telling the citizens -- you know, 'cause he said he would walk down the streets, somebody would pass him, they would be smiling and they would stop, because they felt it was wrong to be smiling. And he had to say, you know, "Please, it's okay. You may smile." And at the same time, we're not allowed to say, "What A Wonderful World" or -- you know. Two of the songs -- "Imagine," I thought was banned. And then it was sung on the telethon the other night. So, which is it?

Holland: One of the great songs ever written, "Imagine."

Michael: I think we're caught in kind of a collective -- Bill: And isn't that the appropriate song now? Aren't we trying to "Imagine" a better world?

Tommy: What's this collective thing we're caught in now? 'Cause I know we're there.

Michael: Right, right, right. Well, I think it's collective grief. I mean, obviously we're grieving as a nation. We don't know the appropriate response.

Holland: But, we should have those feelings.

Michael: Oh, no, no -- absolutely. We should have them. We should articulate them. And we should be honest about them. But I'm saying, that, in a nation, again, where we have -- you know, we don't wanna be too happy or to appear to be too blithe in the face of somebody else's horror and destruction. I understand that. But, at the same time, I think as brother Smothers is saying is that -- [ Bill chuckling ] -- When you have a nation where you cannot express yourself -- all right, one of the brothers. [ Laughter ]

Bill: I'm sorry.

Michael: That's the black Baptist preacher --

Bill: I gotta take another break. I'm in enough trouble.

Bill: Okay, we're out of time. Thank you, panel. Thank you for letting us talk openly, even as we pay our respects and rally around the flag.

Tommy: Your show is very important. I'm glad it's on.

Bill: Thank you. [ Applause ]

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