This week, let’s go for some schadenfreude shall we? With thanks to the LATimes as the source of these snippets.
“Republicans run as the ‘anti-Arnold’”, trumpets a March 29 headline atop a piece about the two moneybags running for the highest office in California on the Republican side of the political divide. Remember, this is the party that brought the incompetent Governator to power by spending a former car-alarm salesman’s (and now congressman) money to vilify and recall former Gov. Gray Davis. In the process, Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor and steroid-using body builder took that office. There is a third candidate who at least has a government background but no chance against the two loaded former-executives from private industry, one of whom only found time to register to vote after some five decades of life. The juicy irony of what this once grand old party has wrought makes me SMIRK.
From the July 18 paper, we learn, in one of those almost invisible five sentence news bits, that the inaptly named “Museum of Tolerance” is having a run-in with the neighbors. It seems this institution, originally pledged to provide space for and education about the Armenian Genocide but instead inviting denier Stanford Shaw and being subjected to a hunger strike by the AYF for its transgressions, wants to expand into the realm of holding large events. The neighbors have filed suit because that would upend the original permits issued. May the neighbors prevail! SMIRK.
August 17th showed what a great place Turkey is. In news relating to Afghanistan’s election, it is revealed that an Afghan warlord was allowed back home by President Karzai as an electoral ploy. Guess where this great humanitarian (alleged to have been responsible for the deaths of up to 2000 Taliban PRISONERS) was hanging out prior to his return. This guy is so bad that even the U.S. protested his return. What kind of country hosts such vermin? The same kind that accepts the visit of the genocidal leader of Sudan. SMIRK.
Former California Assemblymember Mike Duvall resigned after being caught bragging about his sexual escapades with two women (he’s married and one of the “family values” types). Of course he later claimed he hadn’t really done those things, he was… well, I can’t repeat such silliness here. But he resigned after being stripped of his posts in the Assembly, and, oh-how-lofty, to prevent this matter from distracting from the business at hand. What a pompous creature. SMIRK.
In what is probably one of the poorest uses of real estate imaginable, the City of Los Angeles built a brand new jail in the heart of its downtown, its civic center. But on September 30, we learn that putting the new facility in use would be much more costly than operating the current jail. Consequently, this $74 million piece of foolishness will remain unused, at least for now! SMIRK.
Good riddance! Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu, the 97-year-old, and last, grandson of the Bloody Sultan, Abdul Hamid, died September 23 according to an October 1 obituary. While he seems to have had no children from the bit of research I did, that cursed, mass-murdering bloodline does not seem to have been extinguished since Wikipedia names a “successor” as sultan, a title Osman held since 1994. Of course the Ottoman royal family had been exiled by the “Republic” of Kemal Ataturk. But unsurprisingly, that same republic gave this guy citizenship and a passport, eight decades later in 2004. Of course, we all know there’s no connection between Ottoman and Republican Turkey, right? SMIRK.
October 27th’s paper heralded the closure of the only three McDonald’s “restaurants” in Iceland. I was cheering. That cesspool of the food world deserves no more! But what makes this truly delicious is the reason. It seems Icelanders are spending less money these days. They don’t seem to have much. Why? They too were bitten in the rear, in a very big way, after allowing and profiting from the financial shenanigans that struck such a blow to the U.S. economy. SMIRK.
Misery, when afflicting those deserving it, can be good.
While a bit off topic, the other day I was at the local theatre catching a flick and came across this gem of yet another display of anti-Armenian propaganda. The preview is for the upcoming major motion picture “Kick-Ass” based on comic book characters created by Mark Millar. The comic book story line and cast of characters have in no shape or form ever depicted a character that is Armenian nor have they ever made mention of Armenians within the context of the story line.
Fast forward to the Hollywood translation of this comic title and what do we see in the preview for the movie? A character jumping off a building thinking he will be able to fly like a superhero but instead plummets head first into a car below. There is a co-notation of stupidity attached to the character’s jump off the building through narration in the movie, what was VERY surprising is what was said about the character’s act of stupidity. . .
http://www.kickass-themovie.com/
The narrator in the movie says, “That’s just some Armenian guy with a history of mental health issues”. While there were some giggles in the theatre at the narrator’s comment, my two friends and I did not find anything funny about the scene. It was nothing less than a blatant attempt to use motion picture propaganda to hurl a degrading insult at Armenians everywhere by associating us as an ethnic group to an act of stupidity.
If we take a moment and replace the word “Armenian” in the narrated phrase in the movie with the words “Jewish” or “Black”, it becomes obvious as to exactly how insulting this type of propaganda would be. . . .
“That’s just some JEWISH guy with a history of mental health issues”
“That’s just some BLACK guy with a history of mental health issues”
The ADL or Reverend Al Sharpton would be all over the above two comments had they been placed in a major motion picture. Jewish groups would be jumping out of the woodwork crying “anti-semitic” at the blink of an eye.
What adds insult to injury is that the the comic book was translated and written into a screen play by Jane Goldman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/), a Jew, scratch that, a hypocritical Jew with an obvious aim at creating anti-Armenian sentiments within the general public. If this was a comment in a major motion picture attempting to attach to Jews a co-notation of intellectual stupidity, Jewish organization would harass both the studio as well as the screenplay writer into social oblivion until the scene was edited to remove the slander.
Yet somehow, in another crisp example of double standard, it’s okay for Jewish writers to poke fun of cultures/ethnic groups that pre-date them in world history by 1000 years, but had it been a Jew at the receiving end, it would be deemed “bigotry” and “anti-semitic”.
I point this out because Mr. Yegparian wrote a previous article stating that we Armenian should pursue and punish those that move against us more aggressively while also establishing accountability. The notion is absolutely true and necessary, the ANCA along with all other Armenian organizations should take issue on this scene; we are far too lax on issues of ethnic persecution and negative propaganda and the above I’ve described is a perfect example of this and it should not be taken lightly.
Jane Goldman should never have singled out any group of people to be the butt of her screenplay’s degrading comic relief in the first place! However what’s amazing is that of all the hugely more popular cultures and ethnic groups on Earth, Jane Goldman, a Jew from England somehow magically thought of the miniscule ancient ethnic group known as Armenians (that typically are unknown to the common joe on the street) to characterize in a degrading manner in her screen play. If this is not negative propaganda against our people then I don’t know what is!
Given how the whole thing has been orchestrated, only an idiot would not recognize this inclusion of Armenians within the context of a motion picture in such negative light as nothing more than an attempt to demean and degrade us by characterizing us with an act of stupidity, then making an inclusion of such characterization within a movie preview to be seen by the masses.
The question I will ask for all hypocritical Jews that are like Jane Goldman is this, why not depict Armenians in motion pictures as physicians, lawyers, and other prominent figures of society which many of us are? Or are those depictions only reserved for Jews? I guess bigot and hypocritical Jews like Jane Goldman assume that only Jews become prominent physicians, lawyers, and scientist, other ethnic groups only like to jump off buildings in superhero costumes.
Shame on the studio, and shame on that cesspool of a person, Jane Goldman! It’s high time all of us Armenians nip propagandistic negative characterizations of us in the media in the bud!