May 20, 2010
ADL: Comedy Central video game encourages anti-Semitism
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A video game and clips on Comedy Central’s Web site “play into and encourage offensive anti-Semitic and anti-Israel stereotypes,” the Anti-Defamation League said.
The game in the “Drawn Together” section of the Web site, based on an animated series that previously ran on Comedy Central, features a character called Jew Producer, and a robot called “the Intelligent Smart Robot Animation Eraser Lady” (I.S.R.A.E.L.), which murders children and wreaks destruction.
In a letter sent earlier in the week to Comedy Central’s Executive Vice President Tony Fox, Abraham Foxman, national director of ADL, said: “We agree with complaints that this video game and other video clips and trailers featuring the “Jew Producer” character play into and encourage offensive anti-Semitic and anti-Israel stereotypes. While that may not have been the intent, the fact that your site caters to and potentially influences such a wide audience, including children and young adults, is especially troubling to us.”
The section should also include clear labeling, or be placed behind an age-verification wall, and mature-content warnings should be consistently provided, the letter said.
“Given these concerns, we believe that the appropriate response would be to immediately remove these videos and the game from your site or—at the very least—to put the clips from the show behind a wall so that young children will no longer have access to them,” the letter concluded.
