Hatin' on the Persians

So, if you hadn't heard, Mattel, which makes Barbie dolls, is suing MGA, which makes Bratz dolls, which appear to be the children of Barbie and angels which caused god to flood the earth. The reason for the suit is that one of the principals of MGA worked for Mattel, and Mattel alleges that he came up with the half-space alien strumpet dolls on Mattel's time.

A verdict recently came out in favor of Mattel, but it's in doubt now, because one of the jurors was making ethnic slurs about Isaac Larian, the Jewish CEO of MGA.

The twist: I think Juror #8 was an Ashkenazi Jew, because the ethnic slurs were not about Mr. Larian's Jewishness, but the fact that he's an Iranian. I, sadly, occasionally hear the sorts of things that Juror #8 said from New York Ashkenazim, who evidently think that being Jewish is not exclusive enough of a club, or maybe to pretend that rich European Jews don't also have their fair share of swindlers and jerks. I don't really hear it outside the Judaic bubble, as Jewish/Iranian is more of a dichotomy there, and Iranians are (also sadly) associated with something a little more sinister than dishonest business practices.

I was of the opinion that no small part of being a modern Jew was getting over all the ethnic insensitivity that we ourselves have suffered in no small measure, but hey, maybe it was only to become middle-class so we can be even more prejudiced than our non-Jewish neighbors when it comes to the Middle East.

Darkness

Saw The Dark Knight yesterday. Had trouble sleeping afterwards.

At the risk of sounding like someone's preachy rabbi, my take-away from the film was that the Joker is a catastrophe familiar to the Jewish people - no matter what you do, he comes with force, with malevolence, and destroys the virtuous just as easily as the condemned.

The only solution, it seems, is to accept that your virtue does not guarantee success, but that failure does not exempt you from the dictates of your conscience.

Od Yishama...

Not sure if anyone reads this anymore, but this seemed as good a place as any to post the news: CJ and I are engaged.

I guess that this is my equivalent of shouting it from the rooftops.