Any scenario that begins with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and the Rev. Al Sharpton walking into a soul food restaurant in Harlem already comes with a built-in punch line, I'm afraid.

The thought of these two very well-compensated media provocateurs getting collegial over plates of soul food, after a day at opposite ends of the Culture Wars, reminds me of the Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf cartoons that Warner Bros. put out a half-century ago.

In those cartoons, Ralph spent his entire day trying to infiltrate and eat the sheep that Sam was assigned to protect. Their clashes were brutally comic, with Sam Sheepdog usually pummeling poor Ralph Wolf into senselessness just as the factory whistle blew at the end of their shift.

With hostilities officially ended, the antagonists exchanged ritual pleasantries while strolling from the meadow.

"Good night, Sam," Ralph said, punching the clock. "Good night, Ralph," Sam said, punching his time card. They went their separate ways knowing they would repeat their violent Kabuki the next day.

When Bill O'Reilly and the Rev. Al Sharpton sat down to exchange pleasantries over corn bread, coconut shrimp and collard greens in Harlem, it was like the episode where Sam and Ralph interrupted an epic battle to take a friendly lunch break. If it weren't for the racial contretemps that resulted from it, we would all be mildly impressed that he had lunch with Rev. Sharpton at all:

"And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City," Mr. O'Reilly told his radio listeners last week.

"I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronage. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A."

Later, in a discussion with National Public Radio and Fox News contributor Juan Williams, Mr. O'Reilly elaborated on his visit to the Harlem landmark: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.'"

As offensive and patronizing as Mr. O'Reilly's comments look in isolation, a review of the context shows they were part of a larger plea for tolerance by a man whose audience isn't known for progressive views on race.

Though hardly a progressive, Bill O'Reilly isn't the bigot he's been portrayed as in recent days. Like many of his accusers -- black and white -- Bill O'Reilly has bought into a series of racial myths that have made America a cauldron of superstition and terror for centuries.

But in his own bumbling way, Mr. O'Reilly was trying to emerge from the cloud of tribal association he inherited during his working class Irish-Catholic youth. A mere two generations out from Jim Crow, it could be argued that most middle-aged and older Americans are "recovering" racists at best and functional bigots at worst.

This applies to African-Americans, too. It's pure malarkey whenever black folks insist that they can't be racist because they "don't have power."

The ugly truth rarely acknowledged by conservatives or liberals, blacks or whites, is that interracial friendship and understanding remains a rare thing. Racial integration is more prevalent in popular culture than it is in real life.

Despite the relative egalitarianism of TV, we still can't count more than four blacks on "The Simpsons" -- and that's a cartoon! If you exclude Apu the Indian who runs the Kwik-E-Mart, there are only three blacks with recurring roles in the large animated cast. Can't we even buy a house in the cartoon Springfield?

Bill O'Reilly has spoken openly of his racist grandmother and her influence. During last week's show, he even conceded the reality of discrimination based on skin color. Committed bigots can't do that.

Like many, I was titillated by the "racist presumption" of Mr. O'Reilly's comments when I heard them this week. I cursed the unfairness of not having a column scheduled for days, fearing the subject would be picked clean by the time I got to it.

After looking at his words in the context of the show, I'm willing to give Bill O'Reilly what I would never have given him earlier this week -- the benefit of the doubt. He's as much a child of this racist society as the rest of us, but I'm impressed by his earnest, yet imperfect struggle to overcome decades of brainwashing. Even Al Sharpton agrees with me, or else he'd be picketing outside Fox News studios by now.

Instead of scapegoating Bill O'Reilly, we should look at what his "gaffe" says about our racial insecurities. This is 2007 and we're still finding out that "The Other" is not so different after all.