Has 24 Gone Too Far? You Decide!

I’m not a big fan of television (it rots the brain) – but I did happen to catch the last two episode’s of Fox’s hit series 24. I mean, really, when you read that even the US Vice President and former Secretary of Defense are "huge fans", you kinda get curious…

In any case, I have to admit that I found 24's plot to be rather unoriginal. Don’t get me wrong – the actors are pretty good, and the show is both action-packed and suspenseful, but the whole concept of having an emotionally distraught, yet ruggedly handsome, white dude run around saving the country by preventing an evil band of Arab terrorists from detonating nuclear bombs on US soil is kind of played out - don't you think? Besides, it's atrociously reminiscent of those 1980’s Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, and Jean-Claude Van Damme flicks that everyone loved back then, but now recognize as being stereotypical and politically incorrect, if not overtly racist, garbage

Oh snap! What’s that smell? Is it the stench of “Abu Fayyad’s” (no relation) desert dwelling, camel humping, wife beating body odor? Oh, no – silly me – that’s just Orientalism at its finest…

On Monday night’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill interviewed Arsalan Iftikhar, National Legal Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), about this very issue. In response to CAIR’s criticism (and fear) that the show’s depiction of Muslims at this time could potentially spark increased anti-Arab / Muslim sentiment or action, he posed the following question to Iftikhar:

Isn't this political correctness gone crazy? I mean, let's face it, come on, you
have a program that's a fictional program. Everybody knows it. You have in this
world Muslim villains. They are on the other side of the war on terror from us.
There are Muslims who want to kill Americans, you know that. So you combine
fiction with reality in this program. And now you guys are complaining about it?
And the far left nuts are complaining about it? What's going on?

Granted – it’s The O’Reilly Factor, so Bill spent the entire duration of his interview berating Iftikhar for not recognizing 24’s artistic representation of current world events before finally conceding that he did, in fact, have a “legitimate point.”

But what struck me as being the most interesting is that O’Reilly flat-out denied any presence of anti-Arab / Muslim hate crimes in the US. Check out the following exchange:

O'REILLY: And I think we have a very good relationship Muslim-Americans
with other Americans. There's no bias incidents that we know of, and we watch it
closely. I don't think Americans hate American Muslims. I don't think they
do.

IFTIKHAR: There was a Gallup poll that came out last year that
said 44 percent of Americans do not want to have Muslims as their neighbors.
There is great and growing Islama-phobia in this country. That is something
that, you know, the 7 million American Muslims.

O'REILLY: But it hasn't played out in anything criminal.

IFTIKHAR: We've had over 2,000 -- we've had 2,000 hate crimes since
9/11 against American Muslims and those perceived to be American-Muslims. I
mean, people who are like you said Portuguese, people who have olive skin. You
know, it's painting terrorism as a monolith that it's only brown people that can
do bad things…

And then this: On Monday, January 22nd (the same day that O’Reilly denied anti-Arab / Muslim hate crimes), three Guilford College (NC) students were arrested in connection with a group assault carried out against three Palestinian students: Faris Khadar, Osama Sabbah, and Omar Awartani. Two were “severely injured.”

[T]hose arrested are accused of beating three Palestinian students with
fists, feet and brass knuckles while calling them "terrorists" and using racial
slurs. The documents also indicated that the attack involved "at least 15
members of the football team."

[The perpetrators were] Michael Bates, of Reidsville; Michael Robert
Six, of Clemmons; and Christopher Barnette, of Semora… All three were charged
with ethnic intimidation.

According to Awartani:

It was the most horrific experience of my life. This was a horrible, unprovoked
hate crime… These people who beat me I had never seen before in my life. They
just began insulting us… We tried not to fight them, we did not insult them
back, but they beat the hell out of us… We were beaten because of who we were,
because of what they thought about us. We were never even given a chance to
defend ourselves

Now I’m not the type of person who goes around accusing pop-culture of somehow being responsible for the actions of fools. I refuse to pin the blame of Columbine on Marilyn Manson, and so certainly wouldn’t chalk anti-Arab / Muslim hate crimes up to a Fox television series. But I do believe that art (which includes pop-culture) can often times evoke underlying emotional responses from people who (to some degree) have taken conscious and/or subconscious steps to suppressing those feelings, urges, etc.

In my opinion, and I think many will agree, both art and society often mimic and/or satirize one another. In fact, that may very well be the beauty of it. Artistically speaking – censoring it, watering it down, or placing any other type of restrictions upon it can certainly corrupt it's integrity.

But still, as a nation that strives to maintain harmony among all of its people, we can't afford to overlook the impact - both negative & positive - that art has (or can have) upon society.

So my question to you is this - What can we, as a multi-racial / ethnic / religious / sexual society, do to curb negative effects stemming from pop-culture while simultaneously upholding and maintaining its artistic integrity?

Given the recent controversy surrounding 24, I'd especially like to hear what Arab & Muslim Americans have to say about this issue…