Mideast Piece

Billed as “co-existence” comedy, Dean Obeidallah (an Arab) and Max Brooks (a Jew) have joined forces to bring some levity to a post-9/11 America where fear of “the other” is at a fever pitch. Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks, so he knows a thing or two about ethic humor and making persecution, um, funny.

The two men’s efforts have grown into “The Watch List,” comedy performed by Arab and Persian American comedians. For example: comedian Nasry Malik’s divulged his family’s plan for seeming more patriotic post-9/11. “We want to be more patriotic, more American than Americans,” Malik declares. “So my family and I have been discussing it and we’re actually thinking about turning in my father. It’s not because he did anything wrong; it would just make us look so patriotic.”

It’s interesting to see Arab/Persian Americans take a page from the Jewish playbook about coping with prejudice and making ‘em laugh to disarm them. “I’m not inventing the use of comedy to try to effect social change,” said Obeidallah. Whether it’s laughs or hot men, we at Mideast Piece stand in favor of anything that gets people laughing instead of killing each other.

To view some of “The Watch List,” click here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 9:04 am and is filed under Art, Human Rights, News, Funny. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.