O'Reilly: let the racial profiling begin

Posted by Jennifer Fox at 1:36 PM on August 17, 2006.

Bill O’Reilly made racial profiling the subject of his ‘talking points.' As if it wasn't enough to hear FOX contributor Mike Gallagher call for a 'muslim-only security line, now we have to hear O'Reilly's equally ignorant take on the situation. O’Reilly demands that the U.S. “stop the nonsense and institute profiling at airports.” He makes one ridiculous point after another:

“Trained security people should receive the passenger list of every flight, and interview those people most likely to be terrorists. Folks who have traveled to Muslim countries, people who have criminal records, passengers who are Muslims ages 16-45--all should be spoken with. And if the ACLU doesn’t like it, tough. This isn’t racial profiling, this is criminal profiling.”

Great plan, Bill. Lets just bypass that whole ’presumption of innocence’ clause and start criminallyprofiling innocent people. Pure genius.

Not to mention that O’Reilly hasn’t done his research. Check out this list of anti-American terrorist incidents from wikipedia.org. There are men and women from all ethnicities, racial groups and religious affiliations on that list. Would O’Reilly’s racist theories have caught Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a Christian, ex-military, caucasian guy?

Jennnifer Fox is an AlterNet intern.