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March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

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.


BUY THE BOOK

Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.).


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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