October 4, 2007 | 8:56 am

Hollywood’s Arab typecast: terrorist

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

Welcome to the post-9/11 minstrel show. The LA Times today dedicates its Column One to the plight of Arab and Arab-American actors looking for work in Hollywood.  It’s an interesting chapter in the old tale of typecasting. Sayed Badreya’s saga embodies the issue well:

The burly, bearded Egyptian-born actor has played an array of menacing characters in a 20-year Hollywood career. He’ll appear with Robert Downey Jr. in next year’s “Iron Man” as an Arab arms dealer who kidnaps the hero. In 2003, he and Issawi made a short film called “T for Terrorist” in which an Arab actor, frustrated with endless terrorist roles, takes over a movie set at gunpoint.

Badreya recalls when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1986. “I couldn’t work. I was too handsome,” he laughs. “So I put on some weight and grew a beard, and suddenly I was working every day and playing the angry Arab.”

Some of the younger Arab newcomers to Hollywood look down on Badreya’s career as one spent reinforcing stereotypes. Badreya, however, makes no apologies.

“I never played something that didn’t happen. We hijack airplanes, I play a hijacker,” he said. “I do my work. I’m not going to sit and cry about it.”

I did, however, find a remark in the lede to be odd. See if you can find it:

“What kind of a name is that?” the voice coach asked at the end of the lesson. The name on the check he’d been handed by his student didn’t match the young actor’s European-sounding stage name.

The actor hesitated. He was fairly new in town and leery of any missteps. “Umm, my grandfather was Middle Eastern,” he said.

The actor said the room temperature seemed to drop. The teacher took him aside and spoke urgently. “Look,” the teacher said, “I see big things for you, but if you tell people this, you will not work in this town.” Recently, the actor landed a prominent role in a big-studio film. But he still feels compelled to keep his heritage under wraps. Only his closest friends know his ethnicity; he tells others that his parents are Italian, French, anything but the truth.

“I’m really proud of who I am, but I’m constantly having to lie about it,” said the actor, who didn’t want to reveal his name for fear that he would be relegated to playing terrorists, the new Arab acting ghetto.

Did he really say his grandfather was Middle Eastern? Not that his grandparents were from the Middle East—one from Iraq and the other from Lebanon—but that granddad was from somewhere between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. Well, if you go back far enough, we’re all from the Middle East; I wonder if the actor said what country his father was from, but asked the reporter to change it as a condition for quoting him. Or maybe he really said “the Middle East,” which would further drive home the point that this actor is really aware of Hollywood’s supposed sensitivities to all-things Arab.

(A year ago, NPR broadcasted a segment titled “Filmmakers Shatter Arab Stereotypes in Hollywood,” focusing on Badreya, who had just finished shooting AmericanEast, a film that has yet to be picked up.)

* Updated: Anti-Jihadist at Pedestrian Infidel emails:

Hollywood can’t type cast Arab Muslims as terrorists enough.  Besides, it’s overhyped as a ‘problem’.

I think Hollywood’s more insidious type casting is always making the US Government (or some ‘disgruntled’ or ‘rogue’ employee/agent[s]) out to be the real bad guys. Syriana, Diehard 4, Xmen 2, the list of movies that exemplifies this bad guy paradigm goes on and on.  Even the recent movie on Daniel Pearl, a story about the horrific true-to-life torture and barbaric beheading murder of an American reporter in Pakistan became just another pathetic cinematic exercise in asking typically pointless questions.  Questions like “why do they hate us so much?”  If you have to ask or wonder about such things, six years after 9-11, I sincerely suggest that you go and get your head examined.  Common sense is in sadly short supply.

October 4, 2007 | 12:47 am

The Other Russia

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

David Remnick, whose reporting I always enjoy, has a piece in last week’s New Yorker about the Don Quixote of Russian politics, former world chess champ Garry Kasparov. It’s an interesting story that illustrates the insincere democratic makeup of the former Soviet Union, a country that successfully suppressed religion.

Kasparov, who announced Monday that he would run for president next year, leads the opposition party, The Other Russia, and is a main target of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine, illustrated this summer by a legion of youth organizers protesting outside an oppositional meeting and chanting, “Kasparov is Judas!”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 3, 2007 | 3:45 pm

From the ‘Only in LA (County)’ files

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

LONG BEACH - The belligerent, naked man accused of assaulting a Long Beach police officer near a popular Westside delicatessen last week is a Los Angeles County probation officer.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 3, 2007 | 2:27 pm

Biography of Luke Ford gets a buyer?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When I was researching for my profile of Luke Ford, I came across the Luke Ford Fan Blog, which has since been renamed “Horrid Boy TM Watch: Stopping Luke Ford Before He Betrays Again.” I’m not sure who the site’s author is; Luke has said its some guy he’s never met who lives in Vancouver.

Anyway, Horrid Boy TM Watch reports today that its found a publisher for an “unauthorised biography of Horrid Boy™ tentatively titled Torah Weirdo: Sex, Religion and Luke Ford—a reference to a quote about Luke that appeared in my profile of him.

The book will be published next spring by Verso Press—well respected in the industry for distributing the works of leading intellectuals, such as Norman Finkelstein, Alexander Cockburn, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Rebecca Schoenkopf. A pretty impressive line-up, huh? I’m so proud!

Currently I’m finishing off the final chapters on Luke Ford‘s icky love life. I’ve spoken to some thirty victims of the Hairless Porker™. If you, your grandmother, or your pet wallaby has had sex with Mr Ford please contact me for an interview. There is still time for your story to be included in my book. Your anonymity will be respected if you so request; although, in the interest of authenticity, I would like to use your pet’s real name if possible. Thank you.

Luke already has a self-published memoir on the market; I’ve emailed him to see if he thinks this post is for real.

* Luke responds: ”Everything on that blog is a joke.”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 3, 2007 | 1:15 pm

Islam gains ‘foot’hold at NYU

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

New York University wants to make its sinks foot-free.

As more than a dozen universities and colleges across the country have done, the school is looking to install foot baths for ritualistic cleansing in a new Islamic center proposed for its more-than-1,500 Muslim students.

“It’s something that’s being looked at as part of the new interfaith center,” said university spokeswoman Kelly Franklin.

While a home for the center has yet to be secured, NYU is in talks with the Archdiocese of New York about buying its building at 238 Thompson St., where the student Catholic and Islamic centers are currently housed.

In a bathroom there by the Muslim prayer room - as well as in more-visible university bathrooms - Muslim students wash before each of five daily prayers, a task they precariously conclude by rinsing their feet in hip-high sinks.

Although students haven’t been clamoring for foot baths, according to leaders and members of NYU’s Muslim community, they would prefer them to standard sinks where washing leads to wet floors, dirty conditions and, at times, uncomfortable moments.

“The foot part is definitely the most difficult,” said Rida Aslam, 17, a freshman from Brooklyn.

Having other students “just walking in and seeing us have our feet in the sink - it’s awkward,” she added.

As this New York Post article states, footbaths for ritual washings have been gaining ground in various communities, sometimes at tax-payer expense. The entry hasn’t been pretty—full of church-state concerns—and an Indianapolis pastor claims on the ultra-conservative WorldNetDay that footbaths are the beginning of a Sharia-run United States.

“How do you eat an elephant?” Hillenburg asked during an interview with WND. “One bite at a time. And this is just the first bite of the elephant, a step towards Islam’s desired goal, which is to thrust the entire world under one single Islamic caliphate under sharia law.”

A clever metaphor, but gimme a break.

(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)

2 Comments — Leave your comment

October 3, 2007 | 10:26 am

Forget Passover—The Debate’s Over

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s difficult to imagine the California High School Speech Association holding its annual tournament on Christmas, so why is this acceptable?

Last May, when it was discovered that the next tournament, which long ago was scheduled for April 18-20, 2008, would conflict with the first night of Passover, Jewish leaders requested a date change from the California High School Speech Association (CHSSA), an independent group that organizes the event. They were ignored.

After additional attempts to change the schedule failed, Jewish leaders this week issued an “Action Alert,” asking people to contact the CHSSA and their school districts to pressure organizers to reschedule the tournament.

(skip)

“I find this astonishing and frustrating, and I take that as a slap in the face to the Jewish community,” said Southern California Board of Rabbis executive vice president Rabbi Mark Diamond, who competed as a high school student on the debate team. “There is an attitude here that is profoundly disturbing, a total unwillingness to grapple with the issues, to even apologize for the mistakes and to work with people of good will toward trying to resolve this. There seems to be an attitude of, ‘Tough. Too bad. Life is filled with difficult choices.’ And I do not accept that.”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 3, 2007 | 10:01 am

The talented Mr. Katz

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The New York Times had an underachieving profile last Sunday of Louis Katz., who for 45 years has been a typesetter at The Yiddish Forward, the venerable Jewish weekly that spawned The Forward.  Katz is a throwback (I didn’t realize newspapers still had typesetters) who survived the Holocaust by being smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto and raised in the country as a Christian, a story not unlike Abe Foxman‘s, though I don’t think anyone has ever called the ADL chief a “kitten.”

On Wednesday, a little before 5 p.m., Mr. Katz was sitting in his office at The Forward, before his shiny white Apple computer. Next to it, on a more old-fashioned device, he had tacked a page of Yiddish text. Some of the paper’s writers still submit handwritten material in Yiddish, often by fax, which Mr. Katz then types on a word processor and occasionally translates for the English supplement.

In his years at The Forward, Mr. Katz, a short, round man with neatly combed white hair and bifocals (as opposed to what he called his “speaking glasses”), has worked with many of the publication’s distinguished writers. He has enjoyed the rare privilege of handling raw copy from major Jewish-American voices, like Isaac Bashevis Singer, before converting their words into type.

“For a period of time, I was the only one he wanted to set his articles,” Mr. Katz said of Mr. Singer. “He used to come upstairs and read his own proofs. I remember once he was missing a page ——”

Struggling to describe Mr. Singer’s reaction, Mr. Katz threw up his hands and emitted a drawn-out “whish” sound.

“All hell broke loose,” his wife, Hanna, translated.

Rukhl Schaechter, a Forward reporter, said that while Mr. Katz had helped expand her vocabulary of Yiddish swear words, his geniality made him a beloved figure in the paper’s office, to the point that some people, playing on his last name, nicknamed him “ketsele.” Because “ele” is a diminutive suffix, Mr. Katz became a “kitten.”

 

I was disappointed, though, that the story just ends, when it seems to me like Katz’s biography would be a beautiful read in much greater depth. Where’s Joseph Mitchell, peace be upon him, when you need him?

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 2, 2007 | 10:29 pm

Looking at the model of ‘Jewish power’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jews generally take offense to the phrase “Jewish power” because of its historically anti-Semitic overtones (Goldberg says that in the beginning of his book). But some ethnic groups appreciate the model of Jewish success, and today the NY Times tells the tale through the experiences of Indian-Americans.

Indian-Americans, who now number 2.4 million in this country, are turning to American Jews as role models and partners in areas like establishing community centers, advocating on civil rights issues and lobbying Congress.

Indians often say they see a version of themselves and what they hope to be in the experience of Jews in American politics: a small minority that has succeeded in combating prejudice and building political clout.

“It echoes 30 years ago,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the [Simon] Wiesenthal [C]enter. “There is the same feeling of a growing community that says, ‘We want our voices to be represented, and how do we that?’”

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 2, 2007 | 3:18 pm

Roaming Iraq with a heavy metal mercenary

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Washington was abuzz today with the 3 1/2 hour testimony of the head of Blackwater USA, whose appearance reminded some people of Oliver North’s two decades ago. Blackwater is the biggest provider of diplomatic security in Iraq, and its been accused of killing Iraqi civilians in firefights that it most often initiates.

The rise of American guns for hire reminded me of a piece from Rolling Stone two years ago that was included in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005. It dealt with Wolf Weiss, a rock ‘n’ roll merc whose father was assassinated when he was 11.

“He was found with over seventy percent of his bones broken, shot twice at point-blank range in the back of the head, wrapped up in a blanket with a yellow ribbon and a bow tie and then put in the back of his Rolls-Royce.” Weiss says this in an almost neutral tone, as if he’s stating where he went to high school.

The piece is titled “Heavy Metal Mercenary.” It’s raw, evocative and shows why these “contractors” are risking their lives in Iraq. (Hint: $20,000 a month.)

“Locked, cocked and ready to rock!” Scott shouts to Weiss over the radio. As he guns the Yukon through the crowded streets, Weiss views the drivers all around us not as fellow motorists but as potential terrorists—and we are their target. The director of a private security company that escorts supply convoys between cities and ferries clients to work, Weiss is a private gun for hire, part of the vast and growing army of for-profit contractors who are providing much of the firepower in Iraq. There are now an estimated 20,000 “operators” or “shooters,” as they’re known on the ground, making corporate soldiers the second-largest contingent in Iraq after the American military. For better or worse, these private military contractors have become an integral part of the occupation, the only force available to protect workers and officials as they attempt to rebuild schools and restore power. By government estimates, the for-profit militias could wind up costing American taxpayers more than $4 billion - a quarter of the cost budgeted for reconstruction. “A lot of people are calling us private armies—and that’s basically what we are,” says Weiss. “This is not a security company. This is a paramilitary force.”

Some of the private warriors sport such neat haircuts and tidy polo shirts that they look, at first, more like golf pros than gunslingers. Wolf Weiss, as his name suggests, is not the polo-shirt sort. He wears his body armor, and his bravado, at all times. He is not tall—only five feet eight—but his barrel chest is bursting out of his black bulletproof vest. His dark, crinkly hair, which hangs halfway down his back, is pulled back in a braid. His left bicep features a long, curling tattoo of a panther; the right displays a smaller one of the Grim Reaper playing the guitar. Beneath his vest, covering every inch of his back, is a tattoo that Weiss considers “a good representation of myself and my ideals in a nutshell”—a full-color, full-face rendering of a wolf about to pounce. “If you look into the eyeball,” he tells me later, “you’ll see a hunter with his hands up.” Sure enough, in one of the gleaming oracular pools, there is a tiny reflection of a predator, helpless in the knowledge that he has become the prey.

“The wolf is obviously me,” Weiss says. “The man in the eyeball is Evil.” As he drives, Weiss keeps changing lanes abruptly, cutting off other drivers in a high-octane dash for the desert. “Speed is security,” he likes to say. If anyone evil manages to get close enough to look in on us, the first thing he sees will not be faces but muzzles poised to fire. So when a car pulls alongside the Yukon, Weiss floors it and swerves away. “Kedar, get him!” he yells. “Get him!”

Kedar swings his weapon around and trains it on the car. The driver takes the hint and immediately peels off.

 

Read the whole thing here.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 2, 2007 | 2:11 pm

Ahmadinejad’s public rest stop

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Does Larry Craig wear Birkenstocks? Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can say whatever he wants, but we know the truth.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 2, 2007 | 1:27 pm

Playboy, that anti-Israel rag

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You ask any guy over 40 why they read Playboy they will give you the same answer… for the articles. Over the years the interviews really broke ground ... remember Jimmy Carter’s Lust in His Heart Interview for example?  Folks I have bad news. As Hef continues to be overtaken by feebleness (or exhaustion from having 3 live-in girlfriends) and the rest of us pass middle age the quality of the non picture part of Playboy has suffered. We can no longer claim to look at Playboy just for the articles. In the latest Issue, for example they published an article that would have never gotten past Hef when he had all of his marbles.

That’s Yid With Lid‘s riff on a report from that says Playboy has taken up the anti-Israel cause with an article in its October issue that states, “Jimmy Carter is correct in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid when he describes the control over Palestinians’ movements as similar to South Africa’s apartheid system.”

This is one of the more unusual pairings of story themes I’ve seen in a while.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

October 2, 2007 | 12:15 pm

Bush loses favor with young evangelicals

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

God only knows how this could be, but between 2001 and 2005, President Bush’s approval rating with evangelical Christians ages 18 and 29—people just like me—ranged from 70 percent to 87 percent. The big news from the Pew Forum is that Bush’s favoritism with young evangelicals has fallen to 45 percent.

Members of this group remain fiercely conservative in your politics—supporting the war in Iraq and capital punishment and opposing socially liberal causes—and aren’t likely to ankle to Republican Party, the report says, even if evangelicals can’t pick a presidential candidate to support in ‘08.

But what shocks me is that Bush still enjoys even that much favor with my co-religionists.

0 Comments — Leave your comment