On Monday's CNN Tonight, during a discussion of Islamophobia with liberal CNN commentator Charles Blow and right-leaning CNN commentator Buck Sexton, host Don Lemon played a clip of a Saturday Night Live parody exaggerating the views of right-leaning Americans toward Syrian refugees, and then asserted that "it's not far from what some of the candidates are saying."
The skit depicted a family eating a Thanksgiving dinner with a younger woman annoyed by exaggerated comments of some of the older family members, with one male character claiming that "I heard the refugees are all ISIS in disguise," and a woman cluelessly agreeing, "Oh, yeah, that's true. I actually saw an ISIS in the A&P today when I was picking up the yams."
Lemon then reacted:
You know, you may laugh, but it's not far from what some of the candidates are saying. It's not far from what we're hearing sometimes from people, from viewers.
The segment had begun with the CNN host raising Donald Trump's claims that he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering on the 9/11 attacks. Lemon:
Twice this weekend, Donald Trump says, you know the story, he saw thousands of people cheering in New Jersey the 9/11 attacks. Ben Carson said that he saw it, but then he backtracked, said, "No, it didn' t happen." So what do you think? Do you think this discussion is dangerous, Charles?
Blow argued that the current screening process for refugees has been effective:
They seem to have been doing their job. And during that time, al-Qaeda was trying to do damage to America. So they seem to be doing a pretty good job. If you're going to keep it specific, that seems like one thing. If you go very broad, it seems dangerous to me because I think about all the millions of American citizens who are Muslim-Americans and what impact kind of ratcheted up rhetoric has on them.
Lemon then turned to Sexton and posed:
The way we have the conversation, the language, you said, are both important, and being specific about what exactly we're talking about is very important. So what do you make of Donald Trump's comments about 9/11 and the question, do you think it's dangerous or not?
Sexton disagreed with Trump's words, but also complained that the left often charges Islamophobia when people try to have a discussion about radical Islam:
Well, I think he's wrong on this point. I think it's unhelpful, and dangerous is exactly that. But I also have a concern from the other side of things, which is that there is a prevailing sentiment, and it's actually why some people are willing to give Donald Trump a lot of slack when he discusses Islamic issues of any kind whatsoever.
And that is that there is an attempt to silence all the time, the usage of terms like "Islamophobia," to always go with this very, very broad stroke of, "Why are you criticizing all Muslims?" when, in fact, there are many people of good faith in this country who want to have a discussion about jihadism and Islamism, who want to empower moderates from within Islam, who want to talk about what the bad ideas are that some adopt this faith tradition, how to stop them and how to counter them, that's often shut down.
He continued:
It's shut down by people who claim, for example, that criticism of Islam is racist. Which would be news to people with red hair and blue eyes in Palestine. Or blonde hair and blue eyes in Kurdistan. It's not a racial issue, it's an ideological issue. And like any other faith tradition or belief system, it has to be open to criticism. And the case of Islam. as we know, that is a sore point. There is a serious global effort-
After Lemon asked for more elaboration, Sexton added:
I think many people do deem that as Islamophobic. I think the moment that you begin to say that there are problems that come specifically from within Islamic tradition, not necessarily saying that it's predominant or even a majority, but when you say that there are some very bad ideas that are widespread enough that they are causing problems, including thousands of violent jihadist terrorist incidents around the world year in and year out, and then you have on the other side people saying, "How dare you say that? There's going to be a surge of violence. There's going to be a backlash against Muslims."
The right-leaning analyst then declared:
No, we're trying to prevent violence against Muslims by talking about where these beliefs come from and by helping those within the faith repudiate these bad ideas. And that can't happen if we're always being told, "You're a racist, you're Islamophobic," or, "You are endangering your fellow American citizens and American Muslims.
Lemon then brought up Blow's column from the New York Times:
Charles Blow writes in the New York Times today, "Anti-Muslim is anti-American," and he says, "This demonizing a single religious faith is a slippery slope. It feeds something that is at odds with the most noble ambition of this country's better angels: equality."
What do you mean about this happening? What do you think about this language and using the GOP candidates you believe were using against the-
Blow complained:
I think if we are targeting the idea that people who are hijacking a religious faith, whatever that religious faith may be, that we need to target those people and keep it specific to the people who are doing the hijacking and not broaden to have dangerous language about a whole faith. Because, in this country, we have freedom of religion, and I think that that, one of the things that makes America really special and one of the other things is to be specific about where the jihadists are coming from. There's a lot of, you know, like 1.7 billion Muslims in the world.
The liberal CNN analyst added:
This is not happening in every Muslim country. It's not happening even in some of the countries with the most Muslims in it. You don't have the same set of circumstances in Indonesia. You don't have the same set of circumstances in India. You don't have the same set of circumstances in Bangladesh even. So I think you have to be very specific and say there's an area where this is very prominent, figure out what's happening in that particular area that is making this problem.
After a commercial break, Lemon introduced the Saturday Night Live Thanksgiving parody:
The refugee crisis is one of the hottest issues on the campaign trail, but that hasn't stopped SNL, Saturday Night Live, from taking it on. Back with me now, Buck Sexton and Charles Blow. So Saturday Night Live, you know, sometimes in humor, we learn things. They didn't shy about this refugee crisis. Look at this.
Then came the SNL clip:
AUNT KATHY: You know, I am thankful our governor is not going to let those refugees in here.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You know, I heard the refugees are all ISIS in disguise.
AUNT KATHY: Oh, yeah, that's true. I actually saw an ISIS in the A&P today when I was picking up the yams.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: No, you didn't, Aunt Kathy, that was an Asian woman.
The CNN host responded:
You know, you may laugh, but it's not far from what some of the candidates are saying. It's not far from what we're hearing sometimes from people, from viewers, Charles.
Blow responded:
Well, see, I mean, and one very interesting part of that is when the lady says, "I thought I saw somebody from ISIS," and somebody says, "You saw an Asian lady." And this gets to the idea that, even though, you know, people can move, anybody can be part of ISIS, anybody can be Muslim. We kind of identify and stereotype based on appearances, so the racial overlap, race overlaps tremendously with the way people stereotype about religion, particularly Muslim religions, because they think about, kind of, areas where people are from.
Below is a complete transcript of the segment from the Monday, November 23, CNN Tonight:
DON LEMON: Twice this weekend, Donald Trump says, you know the story, he saw thousands of people cheering in New Jersey the 9/11 attacks. Ben Carson said that he saw it, but then he backtracked, said, "No, it didn' t happen." So what do you think? Do you think this discussion is dangerous, Charles?
CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think the larger discussion where kind of, anti-Muslim, broad discussions about Muslims in general, not specific to ISIS, not specific to refugees, whether or not we should deal, you know, improve our screening process which is, in fact, pretty good at this point, it seems, based on the data we have already on the people we have allowed into the country as refugees since 9/11 and the number of, kind of, people who have either been removed or arrested because of terrorist, kind of, links.
They seem to have been doing their job. And during that time, al-Qaeda was trying to do damage to America. So they seem to be doing a pretty good job. If you're going to keep it specific, that seems like one thing. If you go very broad, it seems dangerous to me because I think about all the millions of American citizens who are Muslim-Americans and what impact kind of ratcheted up rhetoric has on them.
You know, it's millions of people, it's hard to know exactly how many. The estimates range from like a few million to over 10 million. If you peg it in the middle just as a reference point, that's about six million people. That's about as many Jewish people as we have in this country. That's a large number of people, and those are people who have found a way to reconcile their religion to our laws, to find a context for it, and just like the rest of the people who are religious in this country-
LEMON: The way we have the conversation, the language, you said, are both important, and being specific about what exactly we're talking about is very important. So what do you make of Donald Trump's comments about 9/11 and the question, do you think it's dangerous or not?
BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think he's wrong on this point. I think it's unhelpful, and dangerous is exactly that. But I also have a concern from the other side of things, which is that there is a prevailing sentiment, and it's actually why some people are willing to give Donald Trump a lot of slack when he discusses Islamic issues of any kind whatsoever.
And that is that there is an attempt to silence all the time, the usage of terms like "Islamophobia," to always go with this very, very broad stroke of, "Why are you criticizing all Muslims?" when, in fact, there are many people of good faith in this country who want to have a discussion about jihadism and Islamism, who want to empower moderates from within Islam, who want to talk about what the bad ideas are that some adopt this faith tradition, how to stop them and how to counter them, that's often shut down.
It's shut down by people who claim, for example, that criticism of Islam is racist. Which would be news to people with red hair and blue eyes in Palestine. Or blonde hair and blue eyes in Kurdistan. It's not a racial issue, it's an ideological issue. And like any other faith tradition or belief system, it has to be open to criticism. And the case of Islam. as we know, that is a sore point. There is a serious global effort-
LEMON: So why do you think that's important? You think, to have the conversation, is deemed Islamophobic?
SEXTON: Yeah, I think many people do deem that as Islamophobic. I think the moment that you begin to say that there are problems that come specifically from within Islamic tradition, not necessarily saying that it's predominant or even a majority, but when you say that there are some very bad ideas that are widespread enough that they are causing problems, including thousands of violent jihadist terrorist incidents around the world year in and year out, and then you have on the other side people saying, "How dare you say that? There's going to be a surge of violence. There's going to be a backlash against Muslims."
No, we're trying to prevent violence against Muslims by talking about where these beliefs come from and by helping those within the faith repudiate these bad ideas. And that can't happen if we're always being told, "You're a racist, you're Islamophobic," or, "You are endangering your fellow American citizens and American Muslims.
LEMON: Charles Blow writes in the New York Times today, "Anti-Muslim is anti=American," and he says, "This demonizing a single religious faith is a slippery slope. It feeds something that is at odds with the most noble ambition of this country's better angels: equality."
What do you mean about this happening? What do you think about this language and using the GOP candidates you believe were using against the-
BLOW: Right, so this is a very simple concept, right? This is a country where we have freedom of religion, we have separation of church and state. This is a country that is moving slowly but, you know, toward equality for most and trying to honor this idea that people are born equally, sometimes being forced in that direction but also just over the long arc of history, moving in that direction.
LEMON: Do you see part of his argument, though, what he's saying?
BLOW: Listen, I think if we are targeting the idea that people who are hijacking a religious faith, whatever that religious faith may be, that we need to target those people and keep it specific to the people who are doing the hijacking and not broaden to have dangerous language about a whole faith. Because, in this country, we have freedom of religion, and I think that that, one of the things that makes America really special and one of the other things is to be specific about where the jihadists are coming from. There's a lot of, you know, like 1.7 billion Muslims in the world.
This is not happening in every Muslim country. It's not happening even in some of the countries with the most Muslims in it. You don't have the same set of circumstances in Indonesia. You don't have the same set of circumstances in India. You don't have the same set of circumstances in Bangladesh even. So I think you have to be very specific and say there's an area where this is very prominent, figure out what's happening in that particular area that is making this problem.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: The refugee crisis is one of the hottest issues on the campaign trail, but that hasn't stopped SNL, Saturday Night Live, from taking it on. Back with me now, Buck Sexton and Charles Blow. So Saturday Night Live, you know, sometimes in humor, we learn things. They didn't shy about this refugee crisis. Look at this.
AUNT KATHY: You know, I am thankful our governor is not going to let those refugees in here.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You know, I heard the refugees are all ISIS in disguise.
AUNT KATHY: Oh, yeah, that's true. I actually saw an ISIS in the A&P today when I was picking up the yams.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: No, you didn't, Aunt Kathy, that was an Asian woman.
LEMON: You know, you may laugh, but it's not far from what some of the candidates are saying. It's not far from what we're hearing sometimes from people, from viewers, Charles.
BLOW: Well, see, I mean, and one very interesting part of that is when the lady says, "I thought I saw somebody from ISIS," and somebody says, "You saw an Asian lady." And this gets to the idea that, even though, you know, people can move, anybody can be part of ISIS, anybody can be Muslim. We kind of identify and stereotype based on appearances, so the racial overlap, race overlaps tremendously with the way people stereotype about religion, particularly Muslim religions, because they think about, kind of, areas where people are from.
LEMON: What we're talking about here, does the truth matter anymore? Because people see things, they take one bit of information to shape their truth. Does it even matter anymore, not only with the candidates, but overall in general?
SEXTON: We're getting almost existential here, but, yeah, I think the truth matters in some contexts. I don't know exactly if they were talking about the demogoguery around refugees, for example. The truth matters, and there's truth on both sides of that when you say that there's demogoguery. Look, I was in the refugee camps in 2013. This has been an issue for a very long time. The Obama administration has not cared about refugees very much at all until just now in the aftermath of the Paris attacks when it seems like a very convenient way to get the discussion going onto something else. So I have to say that it's a bit late in the game for them. Also, 10,000 is a very small fraction of refugees that we're actually dealing with here.
LEMON: I understand what you're saying.
SEXTON: Look, I'm somebody who's in favor of bringing in refugees that have been properly vetted
BLOW: I would just say this one thing. The truth shouldn't just matter in some contexts. It should matter always and forever. And that's the way it should be.
