Articles originally posted on RawStory.com
Here are the best jokes from President Barack Obama and Cecily Strong during Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. They take on Hobby Lobby, Dick Cheney, sexism, racism, police brutality, Islamophobia and Obamaphobia.
For some weird reason, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) wasn’t keen on running ads which read “Killing Jews is worship that draws us closer to Allah.” But thanks to a judge’s decision on Tuesday, these catchy anti-Semitic-seeming-but-actually-Islamophobic posters will be coming soon to a bus near you (if you live in New York)!
The ad in question was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a so called “Pro-Israel” organization, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labels a hate group, lead by Pamela Geller, whom the SPLC calls, “the anti-Muslim movement’s most flamboyant figurehead.” You may remember Geller from her previous tasteless and hateful campaigns like the San Francisco bus signs which compared Muslims to Nazis and said “Stop the hate… End all U.S. aid to Islamic countries.” Or the Washington DC-based billboards which read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”
An embarrassing email exchange published by Wikileaks reveals that the actor Ben Affleck did not watch Saved by the Bell, and certainly had never seen the transformative episode Running Zack.
Apparently, actor and liberal Ben Affleck asked for his slave-owning heritage to be cut from an episode of the soon to be released PBS show “Finding Your Roots.” Last week Wikileaks published several film scripts and emails amassed during a 2014 hack of Sony. Among the incriminating documents was an email exchange between Sony chief executive Michael Lynton and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, the host of Finding Your Roots.
The Uruguayan author and journalist Eduardo Galeano died in Montevideo of lung cancer at the age of 74. Galeano’s death, which was confirmed by the weekly publication Brecha, where he was a contributor, offers us a chance to celebrate the words, ideas and genuine political engagement of the leader Left wing writer.
Galeano was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940. In his youth, he toiled as a factory worker, a bill collector, a sign painter, a messenger, a typist, and a bank teller. At the age of fourteen, he began to contribute cartoons and articles to left-wing newspapers and magazines. He was briefly jailed, along with tens of thousands of his countrymen, in the months leading up to the Uruguayan coup of 1973, after which he fled to Argentina, where he founded the newspaper, The Crisis. When a dictatorship took power in Argentina in 1976, Galeano sought exile once again, this time in Barcelona. He returned to Uruguay in 1985, when civilian rule was restored.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist and former Black Panther convicted for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, had his death sentence reduced to life in prison without parole in 2011, due to faulty instructions to the jury. Now in general population in a Pennsylvania prison, Abu-Jamal, 60, could find himself close to death once again. But this time it may be through medical neglect instead of execution.
On March 30th, Abu-Jamal was taken to the ICU of the Schuylkill Medical Center, after having collapsed from diabetic shock. The prison did not notify friends and family or allow visitors, initially. After pressure from social media and grassroots organizers, the prison relented and allowed some visitors, including Johanna Fernandez, a professor of history at Baruch College, a friend of Abu-Jamal and a coordinator of The Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
It was disappointing, but not surprising that the Daily Show’s incoming host, Trevor Noah, be labeled anti-Semitic. He’s not, but that’s never stopped the Anti Defamation League . Of his 8,828 tweets, two have been called anti-Semitic—that’s .0002 of his twitterfeed. In fact, one jokes about Israel’s hawkishness ( not Jews’ ) and one joke references the Holocaust (which he acknowledges and does not endorse). While Noah says his mother is half Jewish, he is not perceived to be Jewish, for several reasons, including some quite racist ones. And as a perceived non-Jew, he lacks the Member of the Tribe protection that goes along with mocking your own.
The same cannot be said, however, of the other major alleged anti-Semite in the headlines, Lena Dunham. The outraged response to Lena Dunham’s Dog or Jewish Boyfriend: a quiz,in the March 30 New Yorker would have you believe Dunham penned a chapter in a modern-day Mein Kampf. The comedian and writer is far from anti-Semitic. Dunham is doing what so many comedians have done and will continue to do: mock their own. When Larry David or Woody Allen do it, they are geniuses. When Lena Dunham does it, she’s an anti-Semite. Dunham, who was raised in a very New York secular Jewish world (much like I was—full disclosure) and her mother is Jewish. So, she is between fully Jewish and half Jewish, depending on how you define Jewishness. Religious Jews say you’re a Jew if your mother’s Jewish. My own standard is JEH, Jewish Enough for Hitler. Dunham’s boyfriend is Jack Antonoff, the lead singer and songwriter of Bleachers and lead guitarist of the indie rock band Fun–and a Jew.
Katie Goodman, a musical comic, actress, comedian and “menace” is also… wait for it… a Feminist! And she has something to say, and sing, about all the powerful, successful, famous women who say they’re not a feminist: “Sorry Babe, You’re a Feminist.”
Full disclosure: I’m also a Feminist and I’ve performed with Goodman and we’re friendsies. FemiFriendsies? I dunno. Anyway, I asked Goodman to share her thoughts on the song she wrote with Soren Kisiel (a fellow Feminist and Goodman’s husband) and the reaction to the video, which is going viral:
Check out this photo of Ted Cruz checking off George W. Bush’s win in the Texas governor’s race in 1994. Cruz was then a student at Harvard Law School. But what you may not know is that Cruz was a thespian. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! During his first year at Harvard Law, Cruz was in a play. And not just any play. Cruz was what is arguably one of the most famous dramatic indictments of McCarythism… Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. True, he played Samuel Parris, a villainous character. But, still Ted Cruz endorsed the work of a Jewish, liberal, Blacklisted playwright.
To ensure a victory for himself and his party, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a race-baiting video, which he posted on Facebook. Here is what the video said.
The right-wing government is in danger.
Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.
Left-wing organizations are busing them out.
We have no V15, we have Order 8
![Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during an awkward speech to the International Association of Firefighters in Washington D.C. [MSNBC]](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Sen.-Ted-Cruz-R-TX-during-an-awkward-speech-to-the-International-Association-of-Firefighters-in-Washington-D.C.-MSNBC-800x430.jpg)
When a very understated Cruz said, “the whole world is on fire,” A three-year-old girl, already traumatized by hearing Ted Cruz speak, I’m sure, had to check that she had not misheard him, asking, “The world is on fire?” Cruz replied “Yes! Your world is on fire!” And it was adorable.
Continue reading and see the video…
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