Don’t cry, baby. I know you don’t mean it. I know you still love me.

The Nazi salute has gotten a bad rep.

Most politicians should be on the internet trolling the Gawker comment section. Politicians are loud, abrasive, and their understanding of hyperbole is meek at best. Sometimes, when they can’t get their fix trolling on Huffpo or sending dick pics to their lady and/or dude friends, they take their trolling to the real world. You know, that place which generally frowns down upon misguided and exaggerated Nazi comparisons.

A Republican lawmaker in New Hampshire was physically removed from the state House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon after he made a Nazi salute during a contentious debate about limiting what is considered valid voter identification.

Rep. Steve Vaillancourt (R-Manchester) shouted, “Sieg Heil” and moved his hand in the air after House Speaker William O’Brien (R-Mont Vernon) restricted what he could address during a floor debate on an amendment to a state voter ID bill. O’Brien had restricted what Vaillancourt could say about the full bill, saying that he could not reference the House Election Law Committee’s discussion, only the issues presented in the committee report.

PEOPLE! This obviously means he was being I-R-O-N-I-C to make a very clear point! Democracy is for Nazis. Vaillancourt not being allowed to reference his 9th grade American history essay on voter turnout is equitable to Hitler being voted as Chancellor of Germany, taking power over all branches of German government, and killing 13+ million people.

This DEFINITELY wasn’t some childish tantrum based on a misguided historical understanding of WWII. But maybe Vaillancourt was a gentleman, apologized, admitted his reaction was an embarrassment to New Hampshire, America, and common decency, and the House of Reps continued on their way?

House members then voted 238 to 103 to allow Vaillancourt to apologize to the full chamber in order to be allowed back in, setting off further debate when Vaillancourt did not apologize in the manner that O’Brien had expected.

“Part of the apology is to get the record straight. I did not use the word ‘Hitler,’” Vaillancourt said before O’Brien ordered him away from the podium.

Point goes to: Vaillancourt. He didn’t say the ‘H-Word’, so he didn’t do anything wrong. He just said ‘Heil!’, which I think is German for ‘death upon you, my friendly neighbor’? Can anyone out there validate this for me?

One Democratic member said that Vaillancourt’s statement was only a German phrase. “All he said was ‘victory’ in German,” the lawmaker said.

Whoops! My mistake. ‘Heil’ is just a German phrase (or what some people would call a single word?). It has no historical meaning and by itself is a totally appropriate word. If you wanted to use the swastika, it would be okay because it just means ‘national socialism’ or something. And Shylock was just some literary character in a Shakespeare movie play. Just like ‘shifty’, ‘cheap’, and ‘swarthy’ don’t have any negative connotations; they’re just words. Words were never historically used to negatively stereotype or insult a group of people.

New Hampshire sounds like a wonderful place to live and be involved in politics.

/ Thank God I live in Vermont, the whitest state in the Union?
// The debate is still on for the appropriateness of Hitler ‘stache.

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He’s Like the Jewish James Bond of Comedy…Kinda…

People on the internet are haterz, yours truly included in that group. But I’ve been nothing except excited for The Dictator. Sacha Baron Cohen has never let me down (except in the movie Da Ali G’s Indahouse, but enough weed can even almost make that movie funny). Every other character he has portrayed with a ridiculous accent has been hilarious, including Talladega Nights. For some reason the internet (and Rotten Tomatoes) has been doubting The Dictator and whether it will be funny. Which is like doubting whether The Marx Brothers would be funny back in 1936. They’d already made some amazing films (Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, and Night at the Opera), and only an asshole would still doubt their greatness.

Well, naysayers out there who would rather spend their hard earned money on foreign indie films in locally run art-house movie theaters, get off your high horse. Sacha Baron Cohen is a charming nice Jewish man. He laughs in the face of terrorists that he himself pissed off. The Dictator makes the Marx Brothers weep with pride for their boychick. It’s like you all forgot why supposedly silly/stupid movies like Billy Madison or Slapshots are seminal works of art. Poop jokes and slapstick comedy, done correctly, can always be worthy of my $10.

I saw the Dictator. While I wont give anything away, it is everything I hoped it would be. Incredibly offensive. Offending every possible group of people ever. Throughout the movie there is wonderful political satire. But you may only notice it if you have a terrible sense of humor. Truly, truly terrible.

If you have an hour of your life that you hate and don’t care for, you can spend it listening to a real interview with Sacha and Howard Stern, Jewwing it up like it’s 1927 on the Lower East Side.

/Atlantic Wire

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Are you hip with the new jives?

Do you want to be my BFFL?

Well then I have  the artist for you!

What a dapper young man!

Illa Straight is an up and coming Philadelphia performer whose rum I have had the pleasure of stealing ( leave it in my freezer for more than a week, it’s mine).  His stuff is catchy as hell aaaaand he’s been on MTV in India. Which is pretty cool, I guess.

Mr. Straight’s new song, “All Up to You” is the perfect song to seduce your young hipstette lover. It’s hook, “all up to you”, is the perfect way to seduce a JAP. What princess doesn’t like hearing that she can get whatever she wants? No princess that I know.

Also, B Free, the producer of “All Up to You” and Illa Straight’s other song, “Spazzin”  is a demi-Jew. And as Jews it is your responsibility to support one of The People so we can fulfill our goal of world domination. Duh.

You can check out “All Up To You” and get a free download of “Spazzin” here.

PS: Sorry for the rum, buddy. Also sorry that you found out about it here.

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Some promiscuous man (one who probably gets colonics and lives in Noo York City) is trying to make vibrators and sexual discussion commonplace.

We. Can’t. Let. This. Happen.

Ever.

Ethan “Sodom and Gomorrah” Imboden argues that the sex industry is full of shoddily-made materials because it is still considered taboo to purchase something that provides sexual pleasure. Mr. Imboden is right. It is taboo. And rightfully so! Generations of women in my family haven’t openly talked about their snatches and they all  managed to live a very full life: Full of milking dairy cows and whatever else people did back in the dizzay.

A simpler time. 

I don’t want to talk about my down-theres “with a straight face”.

I don’t want other people to talk about them.

Repression 2012! Let’s go ladies!

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On Monday, my fearless editor called the Internet out over the running debate over Lena Dunham’s show Girls in his article “The show ‘Girls’ isn’t racist; you are.” Sure, it may be a little bit late to the game, but we’re here now. And while Chicky makes a lot of good points about how the show is indicative of larger trends in society and television in general and how there are plenty of other shows, especially half-hour comedies, that seem to focus exclusively on white culture, I disagree with his central thesis that Girls shouldn’t catch flak for its lily-white characters and portrayal of Brooklyn, and I want to present a challenge to it in a way that’s just too long for a comment reply.

A couple of things before I lay on the hammer. First, if you have no idea what Chicky and I are talking about, I encourage you to read the articles about this. Here’s a piece from Gawker that outlines the whole dispute back when this was super fresh (and, frankly, when I stopped paying attention), so you’ll have to do some more research to find what’s current. Here’s a piece from the AV Club about the problems of categorically calling out whiteness as a problem.

Second, in the interest of full disclosure, I personally can’t stand Girls. Maybe it’s because I’m a man and the show is geared towards women, but I don’t think so. I don’t dislike it because the leads are in possession of vaginae. I don’t dislike it because it seems like a mumblecore sitcom. And I don’t mind that the characters are reprehensible (I was fine with that in Seinfeld and The UK Office). I dislike it because it’s not funny and the characters seem really thinly written. It’s a shame it runs back-to-back against Veep on Sundays, because that show is about 1000x funnier and it’s got much stronger (and better developed) female leads. Girls seems to approach humor like its imitating a particularly dry Britcom without any charming British people to sell the lines. And that’s not even particularly accurate, because I just mentioned The Office, a Britcom which is dry and hilarious, and Veep, which is written by the guy who’s made one of the funniest Britcoms (and television shows in general) I’ve ever seen: The Thick of It. I’m not surprised Girls is produced by the guy who made the incredibly misleadingly titled movie Funny People.

Cut the middle guy out and it might be true!

So, I’m not a Lena Dunham fan, so far. I realize I’m in the minority of reviewers here. I want it noted that I don’t like the show based on the content of its character, not the color of its skin. I didn’t hate it, then tried to justify that hate by calling it racist.

But Girls does have a serious problem with racism. Not racism in the way that we, as white people, conceive of racism. It’s not the oppressive “Bull Connor, fire hoses and dogs unleashed on women and children” form of racism that was the hallmark of the Civil Rights movement. No one can accuse Lena Dunham and her writers of infringing on their rights with an HBO show about white girls. Certainly, no one’s rights have been violated.

Instead, Girls is indicative of a different troubling trend: a refusal to even confront and deal with race. Bull Connor hated black people, but at least he engaged with them, even if it was just to hit them with fire hoses, sick dogs on them, and throw them in jail. I’ve just mentioned a slate of shows that have exclusively or almost exclusively white lead casts: Seinfeld, The Office (British), and Veep. And every single one of them has confronted race directly, in at least one episode. Seinfeld did it over and over again, and controversially (“The Puerto Rican Day”). Hell, Veep is only four episodes into its first season and it’s tackled race twice (Ep.2: “Frozen Yohgurt” and Ep. 4: “Chung”).

But Girls, on the other hand, won’t even touch it. And it bends over backwards to do so. You could be forgiven for not realizing that Brooklyn is only 40% white, given how it’s portrayed in Lena Dunham’s television show.

And let’s be clear: the women behind the show have not exactly reacted with grace and quality in response to the criticisms. Yes, some criticisms are less valid than others (I, for one, had never heard the stereotype that Asians are proficient at Photoshop) and don’t warrant a response. But when NYTimes Jenna Wortham writes that she wishes she “saw a little more of [her]self on screen, right alongside” the characters in the show, it’s not okay to tweet “What really bothered me most about Precious, was that there was no representation of ME” as Girls writer Lesley Arfin did. What a fucking asinine response.

Chicky points out that society is to blame, and I totally agree with him on that. The society in which Millennials like myself, Chicky, and Ms. Dunham were born and raised in is the most segregated in US history since the time of Jim Crow, done without any of the intentional discrimination. And white people of our generation are quickly becoming defined by their categorical opposition to dealing with racial inequity. Nearly 60% of white Millennials (laughably) believe discrimination against whites is at a level comparable to that of blacks and Latinos. Just ask George Zimmerman, amirite? Where my disgruntled whiteys at?

There they are.

Now, despite the above image, I’m not calling what Lena Dunham and her writers are doing comparable to the cross burning, murder, and intimidation of non-whites that the Klan was guilty of during the height of institutionally segregated America (although, she is lynching comedy). But I do believe she’s helping perpetuate an idea of an All-White America that shouldn’t exist. And I don’t buy her dismissive hand-wave argument that Girls‘ race problem is unintentional. Yes, I can understand how an all-white group of writers would not think to include characters who weren’t white. And how a bunch of white execs would approve that show. But here’s the thing: writing and casting, those are two things you just can’t do without intent and without making intentional choices. They were certainly made white because someone decided to do that, even if no one decided that they shouldn’t be black or Latino (those might seem to go hand in hand, but believe me, they don’t). And you can’t say you don’t see color when doing those things, but that’s bullshit when Stephen Colbert says it, and it’s just as much bullshit when someone says it sincerely.

Now, I’m heading towards 1500 words, which is way too long for Hipster Jew, so I’ll wrap this shit up. Lena Dunham’s show is not any more racist than 90% of television. Hell, every CBS comedy is a walking poster child for whites-only television. As Chicky touched on, there are plenty of places to take your entertainment needs that don’t have nearly the same problem (off the top of my head: Community or Happy Endings could always use more viewers). Girls shouldn’t attempt to correct itself and get more diverse. It’s got its strata of gentrified white children of privilege that it’s portraying and that’s fine. Also, it sucks at portraying people who aren’t white, such as the stereotype nannies in Episode 4 “Hannah’s Diary” who are surprised to learn one lead character isn’t a movie star (Read my lips: Fuuuuuck Yoooou), so I’m not sure I’d even want to see what crazy hijinks Dunham and her writers would get up to in that department.

But the problem with art is that it both reflects and reshapes the society that produces it. It’s a mirror that changes you slightly every time you look into it. I could wax poetic about the doll experiments and other sociological studies that demonstrate the serious detriment the false portrayal of a disproportionately white America in media has on people of color. So, when a show like Girls is made that mishandles race and then wildly mishandles the fallout to their mishandling, of course people should holler and raise a fuss. This is America, damn it. We deserve art that reflects who we are as a society, not art that reflects what our white coddled liberal arts minds perceive to be who we are as a society. Some white critics have criticized white people who criticize the white writers of Girls for being white (threatening the creation of a critical white mass that finds Tyler Perry trite and knows the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” by heart–don’t even pretend like that doesn’t describe you), but I think it’s great. We live in a prejudiced society; maybe enough white people saying they’re tired of lily-white TV will get some attention from white execs that hasn’t been paid to the people of color who’ve been saying it for decades.

I just wish somebody had raised a fuss about the CBS comedies as well, because they too have overlooked the central tenet of comedy: humor. And now, because one critic said you should listen to him if you were gonna write about race in television, here’s white boy Phil Ochs to show how funny is done:

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Being the crotchety old man I am, and in homage to the crotchety old man Maurice Sendak was, I thought it only fitting that I find someone on the internet who hated him. Because I certainly couldn’t bring up that much hate myself. This is coming from the guy who thought the movie Where the Wild Things Are molested his childhood in unspeakable ways.

After scouring the internet on Maurice Sendak, I learned that everyone loved him, even the Christians who hate gay people. And how could you not? You’d have to be a heartless Nazi not to.

Famous artists like Jewish artist Art Spiegelman (Maus) paid tribute to Sendak.

He influenced musicians such as Metallica, Carole King, Plain White Ts, Fall Out Boy, etc. Most importantly, old man Sendak even influenced modern rappers. Aesop Rock, Tyler the Creator, and even Killer Mike.

I this I can speak for everyone who ever read a Sendak book when I say I wish he was my grandfather. In a sense, he kind of was everyone’s Jewish grandfather.

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It is the day of the birth of the sandwich.

I want to eat thissssssssss.

On this day, 250 years ago, the Earl of Sandwich asked for some meat between two slices of bread.  Who knew that his genius invention would lead to such brilliances as McDonald’s, jokes about women’s rights, and the concept of making a “Schlitz sandwich between two slices of Winkleman”?

Thanks Mr. Sandwich.  You will not be forgotten. At least until the (Ed: inevitable?) nuclear holocaust.

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// via Tablet Mag

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It’s sad that a once powerful man is reduced to flying around the U.S. just to get a little action. But this is an issue that all old Jewish people are having. No one wants to be near them. No one wants to listen to them. And no one wants to tough their old wrinkly skin (gross). This is why projects such as Old Jew Telling Jokes is helpful, but not complete. Old people need love too. Not a single point in the Washington Post story did you read Kissinger yelling out “Do you know who I am!? Do you know what countries I bombed!? I’m Henry Fucking Kissinger. I will have your ass on a platter!” Very unlike young hot stud Rand Paul’s argument with the TSA.

So next time you go visit your grandparent in their nursing home, give some random old person a hug. Cup their balls for old times sake. Just let them feel alive for a moment. We all need some lovin’.

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Then there was THIS grave insult wherein they priced this probably poorly made (like all of their merch) shirt at $100.

ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS?! Highway robbery.
…No but really…that’s only vaguely offensive.

AND NOW, Urban Outfitters has the audacity to insult my people? My other people.

The Irish have been trying to dig themselves out of this extremely accurate depressing alcoholic stereotype for a long time and here goes Urban setting them back the equivalent of at least five best-selling Irish memoirs about depressing childhoods and alcoholic fathers.

Thanks for nothing, Urban. Also, you forgot my spring catalogue, assholes.

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