'The Dictator' Racial Stereotypes Trouble Arab-Americans

Published: May 15, 2012

By Lucas Shaw

Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” opens in theaters at midnight on Tuesday, but the film already has some Arab-Americans complaining about its damaging portrayal of Arabs.
Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, a North African dictator who jokes about murder and repression.
While Baron Cohen’s shtick may be in good fun, some Arab groups and experts aren’t in on the joke, believing the comedian has perpetuated negative stereotypes that go back to the early days of Hollywood.
Also Read: 'The Dictator' Review: Laughs Keep Sacha Baron Cohen's Shaky Regime Afloat
“Arabs are being ridiculed again and again and again,” Jack Shaheen, author of “Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs After 9/11,” told TheWrap. “It’s unending and has been going on for nearly a century. [Baron Cohen] just advances the idea that it’s perfectly acceptable to ridicule Arabs in film.”
Shaheen has written extensively on the depiction of Arabs in Hollywood and the fact that movies tend to depict them as nefarious, dirty or moronic. In his book, “Reel Arabs,” he chronicles hundreds of movies with such portrayals. Continue

Reach out to Latin America

Obama: All Women Care About Is Fashion and Beauty

 

by Dana Loesch

Yesterday President Obama gave what I call a "car salesman cup holder speech" to the all-female graduating class at Barnard College. 

"You can be powerful and stylish, too" said Obama. "That's what Michelle would say."
Oh THANK HEAVENS. Whew! I don't know about you, but ladies, I feel completely at ease after hearing that I can be both powerful and stylish. I'm grateful that, in a commencement address to a women-only college, the President didn't condescend to his audience with a speech on fashion magazines and beauty.

Until there are women who tell her ignore our pop culture obsession over beauty and fashion and focus instead on studying and inventing and competing and leading, she'll think those are the only things that girls are supposed to care about.

Yes, in the year 2012, please imagine that your female audience cares for economics, please tell them how difficult it's going to be for them to find a job because one out of two college grads can't find employment. Tell them how you planned to secretly double their student loan rates anyway after the election. Please tell them, Mr. President, that on your watch women are hardest hit, so the odds stack up immeasurably against them. Hide from them, for the sake of your own reelection chances, how the female sex has been hardest hit by the unemployment numbers, with 324,000 of my sisters dropping from the job pool entirely because the prospect of employment is hopeless. Read more:

New Coast Guard grad was rescued at sea as a boy

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN - A.P.

AP Photo/NyxoLyno Cangemi

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Orlando Morel was 6 years old when he and his mother left Haiti on a crowded small wooden boat destined for America. Now 24, Morel remembers the blue of the ocean everywhere. And the hunger.

When a piece of bread fell into the water, Morel quickly scooped it up. "I will never forget that taste," he said, recalling the salty, soggy bread.

Nor will he forget when the Coast Guard showed up in a white boat and rescued him, his mother and other passengers.

Eternally grateful, the rescue led Morel to join the Coast Guard, and on Wednesday he will graduate from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut. He will serve on a cutter out of Florida whose mission will include migrant interdiction in the very waters where Morel was rescued nearly two decades ago.

"I can put myself in their shoes," said Morel, who can still speak Creole. Read more

There is always an opportunity out there...don't let the train pass by!