Do you remember that, when Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was about to be released, liberals attacked it preemptively on the grounds that it would stir up anti-Semitic passions amongst its primitive viewers? Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Movie goers did not see the movie as an indictment of modern Jews, nor did they take it as license to go on an orgy of synagogue burning.
Something different is happening now, and it’s happening under the radar. You’ve probably heard about Sacha Cohen, whose movie Borat is doing fabulously well at the box office. Even Michael Medved said it was funny, although he acknowledged that the movie is often crude and mean-spirited. I never find crude and mean-spirited amusing (and yes, I sound like and am a prig in that regard), so I’m not chafing at the bit to see it. The previews I’ve seen have been predictable, which doesn’t recommend the movie to me.
My husband, though, thought the previews very funny, and he started hunting down Cohen’s appearances in clips available on the internet. That’s how he found a sketch from the Ali G show, in which Cohen, in Borat mode, goes to a bar in Alabama, and sings a completely anti-Semitic song entitled “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” The “joke” is that the bar’s redneck denizens happily join in, singing along and miming little horns on their heads at appropriate moments in the song. Their instant ability to pick up on the horn reference and mime it makes me believe the whole thing is a set-up, but what do I know?
What I do know is that the whole sketch seems to have become something of a license to be anti-Semitic. On the website I linked to above, you can read this disclaimer: “Again warnings are made that this may be quite offensive to some, but Sacha (Borat) is of course himself Jewish.” I found the language fascinating. It’s not just offensive,” it only “may” be offensive “to some.” I assume the author means that either people with Cohen’s sophisticated sense of humor or out and out anti-Semites, will find it inoffensive. I was equally fascinated by the excuse for the song’s message: Cohen is Jewish. That doesn’t excuse anything in my mind. Some of the worst anti-Semites are Jewish. Karl Marx, whose family underwent a strictly nonreligious conversion in order to advance materially, is a stunning example. Noam Chomskey is another.
Aside from core problems I have with the sketch, what I find really disturbing the traction it has gained. Go onto YouTube and you’ll find a significant number of videos celebrating the song’s message (“ Borat encouraging us all to throw transport and jews down a well to free his country!”) as well as a growing number of “do it yourself” videos in which people gleefully sing “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”
Maybe it’s just my priggish side showing here, but I find this unfunny. I also find disturbing that, because this song is presented in the context of a hip comedy show, and is performed by someone Jewish, it’s totally okay to make it part of modern intellectual/pop culture currency.
Filed under: Anti-Semitism |
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Yes, I remember the stir over the Passion of the Christ and the fears people had. Were liberals the only ones fretting? I didnt realize that. Silly liberals!
I did not see the Passion of the Christ, but saw Borat in Monday and found it very funny. Yes, it pointed an amusing spotlight on racism, sexism and nationalism, but a license to be anti-Semetic? Please.
Ths most accurate review I’ve seen:
“.a fall-on-your-face, pee-in-your-pants screaming riot of wild racism, leering sexism and all-around grotesque intolerance…and believe it or not, it’s on the side of the angels.” — Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly
It is on the side of the angels. Can the same be said of the Passion of the Christ?
Maybe it’s just my priggish side showing here, but I find this unfunny
That’s because you don’t think that getting rid of the Jews would make the world a better place. Most of the world, I mean the 6 billion people on this god forsaken ball of earth, would think getting rid of the Jews would make the world a better place. That and Americans, too.
So either the comedian is doing low brow vulgar humour, preying upon the prejudices and parochialism of his audience, or the comedian just doesn’t care. Or both.
The Left would find Borat funny because they are thinking about getting rid of Jews and the Christian Fundamentalists in America. The Right would find it funny because of how Islamic Jihad behaves and how Iran executed a rape victim. That is why it is doing well at the box, it appeals to different folks, for different reasons.
right y,
so now ‘the left’ is anti-semetic? never-mind the fact that a great number of jews (possibly a majority in this country) identify themselves as being, if not democrats then definitively ‘left-leaning’.
…and cohen is hilarious. i’d say he’s pretty much an equal-opportunity offender.
peace
Yes, Dagon, the Left is extremely anti-Semitic. Jews are at at long last wising up and leaving the Dems in ever greater numbers. The fact that there are Jews who continue to vote Democratic, despite that party’s really offensive political bedfellows just goes to show that not all Jews are a smart as they like to think they are.
re: “That’s how he found a sketch from the Ali G show, in which Cohen, in Borat mode, goes to a bar in Alabama, and sings a completely anti-Semitic song entitled “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” The “joke” is that the bar’s redneck denizens happily join in, singing along and miming little horns on their heads at appropriate moments in the song.”
I find this not only anti-Semitic, but also anti-Southern. The notion that someone can just wander into any bar in Alabama (or anywhere else in the South) and encounter anti-Semites is extremely bigoted in and of itself. White Southern Christians are among Israel’s strongest supporters in recent years.
BW: “Maybe it’s just my priggish side showing here, but I find this unfunny.”
I agree with you. Further, I’ve been finding subtle and not-so-subtle digs at “rednecks”, “fundies”, and other comments sneering at White Southern Christians extremely unfunny for years. I completely sympathize with you on this.
I agree with you, Mama. I just kept the focus on anti-Semitism, because I see that as potentially more dangerous over the long haul.
Ja, the Jews aren’t going to go Jacksonian ballistic like Southern boys and gals. So they are in more danger. Did you hear what Olmert said? He said that he is “willing to give a lot” when he sits down with that other dude. Oh boy, that would get elected you for 5 hours in the South, if Southern children were getting blown up every few weeks. 5 hours is just enough for them to arrest you for gross derelection of duty, anyways.
The more the Israelis kowtow in public and “apologize”, the more they are going to die, regardless of any appeasement plans the political elite could cook up. I’ll try appeasement any day of the millenium, I’m an open minded guy. Which is why I’m glad Israel and France and Spain, and Co, have paved the way for appeasement. That way, I can learn from them, instead of doing it myself.
BW, I agree with you AND with Y… Southerners DO tend to go “Jacksonian ballistic” (LOL! I love that phrase!) when threatened. We tend to not let others tell us how to act… some of the worst mistakes we’ve ever made came because someone pulled a “Bre’r Rabbit” on us (“Do anything you want, but please, PLEASE don’t throw me into that briar patch!”). 😀
I still don’t get Jewish anti-semitism. A woman that I know once bragged to me how she was “formerly Jewish” (now Unitarian)and conveyed, in so many words, how being anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian put her on a higher moral plane of objectivity. What I saw was someone who was so in thrall with their moral vanity that she could not see how she degraded herself by identifying with people wholly commmitted to her own people’s destruction. I could imagine her walking obediently to the camps in 1939, nodding to herself that she was doing a deserved and “moral” act. Like I said, I just don’t get it! Do some people have a suicide gene?
Jewish anti-semitism is the exact same thing as American anti-Americanism, Danny.
If you get anti-Americanism in Hollywood, Danny, then the Jewish kind is easy to understand.
No, humans don’t have a suicide gene. The problem is, as I said with the Darwin Award Bookworm post, is civilization. When you become too civilized, you become “unhinged” from reality and nature. So you know that common sense nature evolved in us, by killing off the stupid, so that anyone without the common sense would become uncommon? Well when civilization gets up high enough on the level, we go beyond nature’s limitations. So nature no longer can affect the human race by natural selection. This means that a lot of those genetic desires and triggers, are going to go haywire, because the environment has changed so dramatically.
Back when humanity was under nature’s care, anyone that tried to attack his or her tribe in order to become a traitor in the enemy camp, would get eviscerated if caught and then probably gotten rid of after the enemy camp has won. That not only decreased the gene pool of traitors, but it also triggered stimuli that affected human behavior in not doing things that are destructive for themselves and their team.
However, when civilization becomes democratic and free, then people start to be able to do things and not suffer the consequences for their actions. So you have a military that protects Hollywood crack, but Theo Van Gogh who supported the US military’s mission of liberating Arab women, got killed cause he didn’t get that protection. So you have created this Artificial system of rewards and punishments, independent of nature. Hollywood gets rewarded for self-destructive behavior, Theo gets punished for liberal democratic behavior.
What I mean by that is, is that it is uneven. We are beyond nature, and yet not all humans are living in America and under American protection. This causes the same friction that two plates of the earth’s crust would do when they rub against each other.
Because societies like Israel and America are so robust and safe, the self-destructive elements in those societies can accrue temporary power by betraying the nation that protects them, and yet not suffer the consequences of being without that protection (what happened to Theo).
It is two plates grinding against each other, eventually something will break either way, but in the meanwhile, you are going to see stuff like that.
Mama, as Neo said, the South is an honor culture. Those who believe in honor, act differently than those who believe in power or material things (Hollywood).
But there are two different codes of honor, generally. The Jacksonian code of honor which says that if you treat me honorably, I will treat you honorably, but if you mess with me, I’ll stab you in the back nine ways to sunday.
The other kind says, “we will treat anyone with honor, regardless of how crazy, evil, or vindictive they are towards me or my own”.
America as a whole has both kinds, more or less. The Geneva Conventions in WWII, honor played a big part in how Americans treated German and Japanese POWs.
The Arab honor is not either of the two Americans believe in and adhere to. The Arab honor says, “lie to your enemies if they are powerful, then stab them in the back”. While the American honor says “if your enemy is too powerful, then you must negotiate in good faith and surrender in order to protect your family from being killed needlesslly”. Arabs will surrender, but unless you keep their families hostage, the moment you turn your back on them, they will stab you in the back. There is no concept of prisoner parole based upon word of honor in the Arab culture. No Chivalry either, if you notice how they treat their women. The code of chivalry, knights honor, duty, liege lord, feudal relationships, affected Western and American culture more than most people realize.
Look at Japan, another nation with a lot of feudal based history, they value honor as well. But the Arabs were either a bunch of city-states fighting amongst themselves, or an Empire united under the Grand Caliphate master Mohammed or some such. There was no real feudal system going on there. Either absolute monarchy, or sectarian strife and clan warfare (raids, kidnappings, etc).
The Jewish thing is… well, it is Jewish.
Sasha Baron Cohen happens to be very funny Bookworm, just ask your kids. You know that song they sing, “I like to move it move it, you like to move it move it…” the one from the film “Madagascar?” Well, that is Cohen too. He plays the king of the Lemers.
The Blood Libel is alive and well, and that is Cohen’s point. He shows it, he exposes it. How you missed the exchanges between Borat and the state of Kazaksan I don’t know.
Kasakstan threatend to sue Cohen, and he issued a press report “as” Borat saying, “I fully support the state of Kasakstan in it’s lawsuit against the jew, Sasha Baron Cohen”
Brilliant. See the movie if you like to sqirm and laugh.
The question is, when does satire cross over into something offensive? Over at Over at the Britannica Blog, Michael Levy wonders if Borat is a modern day Archie Bunker.
[…] down well (sort of, only worse) September 13th, 2007 — Bookworm Almost a year ago, I did a post attacking the Sasha Baron Cohen ditty “Throw the Jews Down the Well.” Here, in pertinent part, is what I said: What I do know is that the whole sketch seems to have […]