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Dec. 3, 2008
Steven Emerson: Yes, the terrorists are winning
Don Terry: Lifetime, no see
Dec. 2, 2008
Melanie Phillips: The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared world
Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack
Dec. 1, 2008
Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings
Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?
Nov. 28, 2008
Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be
Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?
Nov. 26, 2008
Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership
Andrea Simantov:
Shades of life
Nov. 25, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence
The Kosher Gourmet
by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!
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Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'
Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends
Nov. 21, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?
Caroline B. Glick:
Civilization walks the plank
Nov. 20, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness
The Kosher Gourmet
By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto
Nov, 19, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality
Elliot B. Gertel:
'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?
Nov, 18, 2008
Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason
Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?
Nov, 17, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason
Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?
Nov, 14, 2008
Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia
Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead
Nov, 13, 2008
Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic
The Kosher Gourmet
by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla
Nov, 12, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers
Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks
Nov, 11, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?
Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate
Nov, 10, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?
Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist
Nov, 7, 2008
Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality
Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy
Nov, 6, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism
The Kosher Gourmet
By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes
Nov, 5, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors
Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie
Nov, 4, 2008
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law
Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East
Nov, 3, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?
Jonathan Tobin:
Was He Wrong About Everything?
March 22, 2007
J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
Nov. 9, 2006
/ 18 Mar-Cheshvan, 5767
Can Borat save the world?
By
Michael Graham
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The two most important people in America today don't work in Congress. They work in comedy.
Not that the two are mutually exclusive.
Mark Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is far more profound than anything Nancy Pelosi has to say. And Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan will do more to save America than any plodding pseudo-documentary by Michael Moore.
Plus, unlike Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell and every episode of Studio 60, Steyn and Cohen are actually funny.
Two comedians. Neither of them Americans. But they may be the last hope of Western civilization.
Yes, things are that bad.
You'd know just how bad if you'd read Steyn's hilarious-yet-horribly depressing American Alone. I would summarize the book this way "Holy crap, we're screwed! but I hate to sugarcoat.
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Because Europeans have stopped breeding (17 European countries are at what demographers call "lowest low" birth rates), Steyn notes that "Islam is now the principal supplier of new Europeans." The result will be "Eurabia," a continent that, within our lifetime, will have Muslim majorities in some countries (Spain, the Netherlands) and sizeable Muslim minorities in others (France, Great Britain).
This would merely be interesting if the second and third generation of European Muslims were doing what other immigrants have done and integrated into European society. But they aren't.
Steyn again: "Seven percent of British Muslims consider their primary identity to be British, 81 percent consider it to be Muslim….Second- and third-generation European Muslims feel far more fiercely Islamic than their parents and grandparents."
Which is why Muslim populations in uber-liberal nations like Sweden, Canada and Germany are demanding and getting recognition of sharia law and Islamic courts. It explains why England's Foreign Minister is under political assault for refusing to meet with Muslim women wearing the veil. And why France, where 2,500 cops have been injured fighting their own intifada in its streets this year, cannot fight Islamic extremism abroad.
The true enemy of the West, in Steyn's opinion, is our slavish devotion to one virtue over all: Tolerance. We don't have the cultural cohones to say to the Islamic world "Sorry, but we just won't accept burkas, burning books about Mohammad and beating homosexuals to death. We're right and you're wrong."
And then, just when Western civilization is about to tolerate itself to death, who should appear? Borat the Magnificent!
Borat is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and yes, it's also one of the most disgusting, too. I assume you know the premise: Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen plays the bumbling Kazakh TV reporter interviewing people, prominent and obscure, who think Borat is a real person one who just happens to be utterly clueless. Borat says and does things that civilized people find wildly inappropriate (calling a panel of feminists "chicky" and "sweetheart" was one of my favorites) to test the limits of our tolerance.
Some reviewers have focused on the Americans Borat discovers who share the character's worst prejudices (like the redneck USC students longing for a return of slavery Go Cocks!). But that misses Borat's most profound point.
What Borat mocks is tolerance itself. Borat screams anti-Semitic rants or roams into a woman's dining room with a baggie of his own feces, and the first reaction of the good, multicultural Americans around him is to find a way to accommodate, to understand, to (as one clueless woman in the film did) be fascinated by our cultural differences.
Watching Borat, we begin to wonder if there are any Americans left who haven't been achieved total p.c. wussification. What we want is what Mark Steyn wants: For someone with the cultural confidence to stand up and say "What the hell's wrong with you, boy?" and throw Borat out on his ear. Three cheers for intolerance!
One day in the near future, some city council in San Francisco or Detroit will consider allowing sharia courts here in America. Normal Americans who, alas, would never read a book like America Alone will glance at the nightly news and see earnest Muslims insisting that all women not just Muslims must cover their heads in public places. And these post-"Borat" Americans will laugh. "What is this, a put on," they'll wonder?
The Islamists will be laughed out of the room. Western civilization will be saved. All because a couple of funny guys were willing to tell the truth.
Proving yet again that, in comedy, timing is everything.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Michael Graham is a talk show host at 96.9 FM TALK in Boston and author of the highly acclaimed "Redneck Nation: How the South Really Won the War." To comment, please click here.
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