Minorities are often stereotyped in the media; over the last forty years, no group has been more stereotyped than that often unrecognized minority, hippies.

From the late-sixties episode of Dragnet where hippies high on marijuana let their toddler drown in the tub (recently reborn as a War on Drugs commercial) to the 2000 film Pay it Forward where a heroic adolescent is murdered by a male classmate with a ponytail (also the only male in the film with long hair), hippie types have become the bad guys. Instead of a black hat, if a director wants to indicate a bad male character--presto!--add a ponytail. Even in advertisements for auto-repair shops, to belittle the competition, show one of their mechanics looking like the sleazy, long-haired parking-lot attendant in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

The examples are ample, but consider two particular television programs: the now-defunct Baywatch, once the most syndicated show in the world, and Fox's now-popular 24.

Baywatch--what is wrong with this picture? Well aside from thongs gone awry, hippies types are absent from any good-guy roles. The only possible exception is one long-haired male hunk apparently there to lure women viewers. I mean, who do you suppose life guards in California are? Can you say, "Like surfer dudes, man"? Yet, in creator David Hasselhoff's world, the staff looks almost military. Aside from the hunk, not a long hair anywhere, not even a male sporting an earring.

More troubling is the surprising number of Baywatch villains that are hippie types. In one episode, evil men are shooting helpless baby seals. The trigger man, a sadistic scoundrel, is a scruffy long-hair with a goatee who wears a stocking cap in summer--he looks hippie to me. In another episode, a rogue FBI agent is murdering people. And we can easily tell he's a bad cop, one who's lost his moral compass, because he has a ponytail. I doubt FBI dress code even allows that, but on Baywatch, bad guys are often hippies, and hippies are usually bad guys. And for years now, across the globe, the show has spewed this ugly stereotype.

Well, Fox's 24 is no stranger to controversy. It's been accused of stereotyping Arabs and of promoting torture; the program also maligns hippies. As is now a staple of American television, the thugs of the terrorists and drug dealers are usually white males with ponytails. And in one episode, Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane) has a son--a hippie son, it turns out. With his denim jacket, shoulder-length hair and necklace, he looks like your typical twenty-year-old stoner. Of course, the kid represents the entire counterculture: he's a bad seed--bitter, filled with self-pity--who's betraying not just his father but his country. At least he is until 24's hero, Jack Bauer, gets a hold of him. Bauer explains to the quivering coward that he'll have to be tortured for his treason, and torture him he does--this, no doubt, to the delight of fans. And again, any countervailing images of hippies are absent.

Yes, we get it: hippies are in league with international terrorism. They're weaklings and traitors who good, patriotic Americans should feel not a speck of remorse about hurting very badly. They have it coming.

The irony underlying the two shows is striking: Pamela Anderson was a major cause of Baywatch's success. On the show, she's not hippie, but in real life, arguably she is: she socializes, after all, with a certain countercultural rock-star set. And she's an animal-rights activist too. On Baywatch, hippies murder baby seals; in real life, a hippie actress protects them.

The ironies of 24 are still more painful. Bauer is played by Kiefer Sutherland. Yes, that's right, son of countercultural actor Donald Sutherland. In photos of the young family, the mother, Shirley Douglas, also looks hippie. Biographers tell us Kiefer's nickname in high school was "Reefer"; I doubt this is a reference to the trucking industry. So, the real-life Jack Bauer is probably hippie himself. Go figure: Sutherland gets a reported 400,000 dollars an episode to help vilify his own kind.

Stereotyping eases our anxieties by giving us black-and-white heroes and villains, and it boosts our self-esteem by giving us some outgroup to feel superior to. But those things come at a price: a warped and dangerously simplistic view of the world, a self seduced and degraded by bigotry, a society headed towards the ugly right. Beware of stereotyping; beware of liars; beware of darkness.