That Bad, Maybe Worse

The Rules of Proper Racial/Ethnic Casting in Hollywood, According to Liberals Who Are Not Hollywood Elite

So I ran across this article on Huffington Post yesterday about how The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia are racist because they cast white people in the lead roles.

Look, is Hollywood still racist? Undoubtedly. There's been a great deal of progress over time, there's still too little diversity, and too little portrayal of accurate diversity, despite cartoon-liberal cries to the contrary. Too many African Americans talk jive, too many Latins are lusty, and all Arabs who aren't Tony Shalhoub just want to blow things up. Aboriginal peoples all speak like Tonto (even if they're blue and from another planet) and always live in utopian paradises that middle-class white people like to daydream about when they're mowing the lawn or telling the kids to shut up. If only I could don a loincloth and frolic about Eden with the brown/blue people!

But the more I read of the article and comments, the more inconsistent and nonsensical the whole argument became.

Daniel Pipes, bigot, muses aloud

Last week Pat Buchanan was wondering what the deal is with all of the Jews on the Supreme Court.

This week, it's Daniel Pipes' turn to do the Archie Bunker routine.

Apparently Mr. Pipes was home last night, watching the Miss USA pageant with firm attention, and was disappointed that his favorite lost to Rima Fakih.

You see, it's very very bad that Ms. Fakih won. Why? Well, if you can't tell already by her foreign-y name, Ms. Fakih was born in Lebanon! Yes! And what's more,

Fakih grew up in Queens, New York, where she attended a Catholic school. Her family moved to Dearborn, Michigan, in 2003. Though Shiite Muslim, her family celebrates elements of both the Muslim and Christian faiths. (wikipedia)

Who let this woman on the plane to attend the event? Did they inspect her breasts for explosives?

Denied the explosive, climactic victory he sought for his favorite contestant, a dejected and slack Mr. Pipes wrote the following:

They are all attractive, but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action.

Now just in case you didn't quite get the message, Mr. Pipes thought this comment from a reader was worth quoting:

No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for  black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it's Muslims. That's why most people ignore these rigged "events." They are money losers and require controversy.

It sure as hell is an odd fucking form of affirmative action, Mr. Pipes. Because I'm always reading and hearing about these damn quotas for hot Lebanese women.

I mean, would you just look at her? Who in their right minds would have voted for this woman?

Get a burqa on that woman immediately!

You'd think since Mr. Pipes is so (rightly) worked up about the Danish cartoon controversy and the oppressiveness of the burqa, he might have something positive to say about a woman's act of independence against such oppression. But then that would require that he not be a bigot.

You know, earlier I referred to Buchanan and Pipes' bigotry as an "Archie Bunker routine," and really, that's terribly unfair to Archie. Pipes' sick bigotry is far more insidious, because he attempts to cloak it in the trappings of pseudo-scholarship. He's not just some rabble-rouser like Uncle Pat, he's a real thinker. Just look at his photo on his blog, with his turtleneck and arched eyebrows. "Hmm," he thinks, stroking his beard. "I believe this photograph best expresses what a serious, scholarly person I am." But where's the pipe, Mr. Pipes? Asshole.

The Good Stuff: Italian Beef Sandwiches

One of my greatest pleasures of living in Chicago for four years was discovering Italian Beef sandwiches.

According to Wikipedia,

An Italian beef is a sandwich of thin slices of seasoned roast beef, dripping with meat juices, on a dense, long Italian-style roll, believed to have originated in Chicago, where its history dates back at least to the 1930s.[1] The bread itself is often dipped (or double-dipped) into the juices the meat is cooked in, and the sandwich is typically topped off with Chicago-style giardiniera (called "hot") or sauteed, green Italian sweet peppers (called "sweet").

About 80% of the Italian Beefs I ate came from Portillo's. That's because when I first got to Chicago and lived in the city I was primarily interested in trying out as many different Chicago-style pizzas as I could. I didn't find out about the Beefs until I was in the suburbs. Fortunately Chicago suburbs are better than most suburbs because they have places like Portillo's. Just about everything is awesome at Portillo's. I discovered Al's #1 Italian Beef late in my stay, and their Beefs are at least as good, very possibly better. But Portillo's has something called the Beef and Cheddar Croissant, which is an Italian Beef with cheddar cheese in a soaked croissant. Not something you want to eat every day if you want to keep your arteries unclogged. But once you've had it, it's something you'll have to have on occasion.

Here in Columbia, Pickleman's makes a reasonable facsimile of an Italian Beef. Just order the Beef with peppers and au jus.*

*Now personally I don't think an authentic Italian Beef can really be associated with anything called "au jus." That's for a French Dip sandwich. The French Dip sandwich was invented in Los Angeles, where fancy Los Angeles people must like to take the tip of their little sandwich and dip it in their precious little cup of au jus. In Chicago, you dip your whole sandwich in the meat juice, or else pour the juice all over the sandwich. That said, whatever you call it, you need some to put on your sandwich.