What’s My Line?

My fascination with “conspiracy theories” led me down a JFK rabbit hole a few months back. The rabbit hole produced the name of a journalist, Dorothy Kilgallen. The secondary Dorothy Kilgallen rabbit hole rejiggered my YouTube algorithm and it was flooded with videos of an old game show called “What’s My Line”? I became obsessed, quickly forgetting what led me there. If you’re not familiar or need a refresher, “What’s My Line” was a game show with a celebrity panel. A contestant would walk out on stage and sign his or her name to a chalkboard. The panel would ask yes or no questions in an attempt to guess the individual’s line of work. Every “no” answer won the contestant five dollars. Ten “no” answers and the contestant won the game taking home a whopping fifty dollars. Every episode had a mystery guest, who was a celebrity of some kind. The panelists wouldn’t learn the name of the guest and were blindfolded as they answered questions. The audience would roar with laughter as guests like Lucille Ball and Zsa Zsa Gabor used silly voices and cheeky answers to trick the panel. The most striking episode I’ve seen is one where Colonel Sanders was the contestant. The panel wasn’t blindfolded. He proudly signed his name to the chalkboard. And the Colonel walked away with the full prize of fifty dollars. It never occurred to me that there was a time that no one knew who Colonel Sanders was. This program is a time capsule. It’s a peek into our recent history and I’m not the only one who thinks so. The comments section is filled with watchers amazed at how times have changed. They note the civility of the era. They comment on how well-dressed everyone is from the girl who sells worms to Elizabeth Taylor. They are shocked at how politely the political guests behave. It certainly appears to have been a better time.

“What’s My Line” aired from 1950-1967. While you could make the argument that some things were better back then, the absence of social media chief among them, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the 1950’s was still segregated. Civility didn’t banish separate drinking fountains or rebuke white only spaces. Civility didn’t pay equal wages for equal work. Amidst all of this civility of yore MLK, JFK, RFK, and Malcom X were all assassinated. And let’s not forget what led me to this program. Dorothy Kilgallen died in 1965 at the age of 52. The official story is that she died of an overdose. The rabbit hole suspects she was killed because she was working on a story related to the assassination of JFK.

Some may argue that we were more civil back then because we were culturally Christian, which is all but lost in our current climate. People behaved better. There’s a letter from Paul to the church of Corinth. He writes at a time when they were new followers of Christ. “Infants in Christ” is his phrase. He warns them against, what I would refer to today as, cultural Christianity. I Corinthians 13:1-3 reads “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not love, I gain nothing.”

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, there are calls to tone down rhetoric, come together, and find common ground. These are all calls for culturally Christian behavior. To tone down, come together, and find common ground without love will turn us into clanging symbols. It’s just noise that gains us nothing. By the way, toning down rhetoric and coming together is precisely what Charlie Kirk did. And it’s precisely why he was killed. His words and actions were rooted in love. Below is a clip I find simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming.

It’s just one tiny example of how he spoke with those who disagreed with him. Charlie was confronted by a young woman who was struggling with gender identity. She asked him when he thought it would be okay to use medical treatment to transition. He doesn’t cast judgment. He doesn’t call her names. He doesn’t hate her. He tells her, in the end, that his prayer for her is that she would learn to be comfortable in her own body. If I had to guess, no one has ever told her that before. I wonder if he was the first person to extend love to her. Our culture has brainwashed us into believing that the kind thing to do is “affirm” the confusion of this young woman.

Lest we begin to bicker on what love means, Paul clarifies for us in verses 4-7. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.” It is fruitless to long for civility and common ground if it’s not rooted in love.

For those of you who have never heard of Charlie Kirk and are curious about the hullabaloo, I recommend you watch some of his interviews and particularly his interactions on college campuses, so you can know for yourself why millions around the world are grieving him.

For those of you who think Charlie might have had it coming because he spoke out against things like abortion and transgenderism and was friends with Trump, I challenge you to ask yourself how you can harbor hatred in the name of loving kindness.

And to those of you who feel a heaviness, who wonder why you are grieving a man you never met, I urge you to lean into the voice of the Holy Spirit and ask “What’s My Line?”