danbloom's Open Salon Blog

Jim Laughter, author of POLAR CITY RED, 'cli fi' novel

Fri, 11 May 2012 23:05:47 -0400

ï»¿from the PREFACE:

The year is 2075 and humanity must survive!

The crown jewel of creation, humanity is the only species on the planet capable of destroying itself and bringing about its own extinction. It doesn’t really matter whether that destruction come through war or pestilence, neglect or invention, genius or stupidity; human beings are the only species that seeks ways to save their environment while inventing new ways to cause its demise.

From his earliest history, man has found ways to pollute the Earth. Clouds of smoke rose from wood-burning communal fires long before the advent of fossil fuel-burning modern machinery, and before factory smokestacks spilled their noxious fumes into the atmosphere. Whaling ships sailed the open seas in search of their elusive prey, each one belching carbon dioxide from their processing fires. Countries bent on growth and commerce mined coal from the Earth, filling fireplaces in homes and factories. Great passenger liners set out to sea, their holds filled with coal to burn, or their tanks full of kerosene to power their great engines. Oil-drilling platforms littered Europe’s North Atlantic, the Bering Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, draining billions of barrels of crude oil from deep within the Earth. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and members of OPEC such as Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela, robbed the Earth of her fossil fuels and provided the refineries of the world with their precious cargo, enabling man to transport and heat himself into oblivion.

Humanity must survive! Or must it?

Global temperatures began to rise in the mid-to-late 20^th century due to unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gasses trapped in the upper stratosphere, just a degree or two at first; nothing to worry about. A decade of extreme heat blanketed the United States at the turn of the 21^st century causing drought and wildfires, destroying millions of acres of timberland throughout the western, central, and southern United States. Floods ravaged the Midwest and eastern states. Carbon dioxide levels saturated the atmosphere, trapping cold air in the higher elevations and creating blanketing heat waves at ground level. But we didn’t care. Weather fluctuations were nothing new. They happened in the past and would happen again. They always worked themselves out. Humans always adapted.

Politicians prated their rhetoric about environmental concerns and that if their constituents would reelect them; the first thing they’d do is launch a full-scale investigation and vigorously pursue the companies spilling pollutants into the air and waterways.

Automobile manufacturers developed more eco-friendly models, some of them able to produce only half of the carbon dioxide pollutants as their competition. Millions of new cars and trucks flooded the cities, highways, and countryside. A billion cars and other fossil-fuel burning machines filled the Earth in the year 2010 then doubled by the year 2040, each one adding its small amount of pollutants to the fragile atmosphere.

Fossil fuel machinery continued to burn to keep business alive and money flowing to the industrial giants required to keep the world on track for profitability and commerce. Deforestation of great timberlands to make room for man’s ever-increasing need for expansion devastated the Earth’s tree-cover, dangerously depleting the production of oxygen and the forest’s ability to absorb nitrogen from the air.

Cloud cover never before witnessed by mankind reflected valuable sunlight back into space, trapping dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide in the troposphere, causing the Earth to turn into an oven just waiting to overheat.

Seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century carbon dioxide levels increased from 100 parts per million by volume to 20th-century preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million by volume, then to levels greater than 380 parts per million by volume by the year 2000, increasing by 1.9 a year after that. The scientific community warned politicians and industrial leaders that 350 parts per million by volume was the absolute maximum concentration of carbon dioxide the Earth could handle without overheating.

But they wouldn’t listen. The drilling and mining of fossil fuels continued and the global concentration of carbon dioxide rose at a steady pace, projecting carbon dioxide levels to exceed 1,260 parts per million by volume by the end of the 21^st century, three and a half times the Earth’s ability to absorb the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, an increase of 350 percent above the pre-industrial concentration, far exceeding the natural range of carbon dioxide present over the last 650,000 years. Environmental failure was certain.

Slowly, gradually, the temperatures of the Earth began to rise, unnoticed at first by everyone except a select number of scientists who had their eyes looking forward instead of their heads buried in the sands of the past. Sea levels began to rise as the polar caps melted and the Greenland ice sheets broke away from their permanent shelves, only a few inches a year at first then at an alarming rate of twelve, fifteen, twenty feet per year, surging trillions of tons of water into oceans not equipped to handle the vast amounts of fresh water which served to break down the sea’s saline content and its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

Island nations that stood only a few feet above sea level were affected at first, their coastlines disappearing under a surge of tidal encroachment, eventually to be buried beneath an infringing ocean. England, the Emerald Isle of the North Atlantic fell along with the European coastal countries – France, Holland, Belgium, and eventually the entire western seaboard. The rising tides overpowered coastal barriers and washed away in only a few decades the foundations of empires that had stood for two thousand years, pushing inland over their lush farmlands and countryside, leaving destruction of life and livelihood in its wake. In time, only the craggy high mountaintops of Scotland, Germany, Turkey, and Switzerland testified to the fact that Europe had ever existed. Whole populations were forced to seek shelter by evacuating their homes, surging by the millions northward into Russia and Scandinavia, overcrowding the continents of the world, seeking shelter where they could find it − or take it.

Normal weather patterns expanded. Instead of only a dozen categories 3, 4, and 5 weather systems, nature created hundreds of massive hurricanes every year that devastated Central America and all of the Caribbean island nations. Cuba, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the Falklands, and the Leeward Islands washed away under the ravaging onslaught of wind and surf. Millions of men, women, and children, unable to evacuate starved to death, drowned, or killed each other in acts of survival desperation. New Orleans, a city shaped like a below sea level bathtub, could not withstand the constant deluge of storms that pounded her into oblivion. Gulf coast cities washed away, forcing millions of people from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Texas to evacuate north, bringing with them the need for food and shelter, over-taxing the already struggling economies of America’s greenbelt that was itself suffering devastating floods, drought, fire, and famine.

Along with the western hemisphere’s adverse weather, the east fared no better. Typhoons in the Pacific and Indian Oceans ravaged Asia, destroying crops and the livelihoods of billions of people. Japan, India, China, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines suffered flooding that decimated their infrastructure and sent their financial markets into panic. Taiwan, Okinawa, New Zealand, Tasmania, Borneo, and hundreds of lesser islands disappeared under the tidal rise in ocean levels.

The African continent, most of it below sea level, felt the wrath of Mother Nature. Sri Lanka, Guinea, Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Somalia and all of the other low-lying coastal countries were overcome by the rising Atlantic and Indian Oceans, forcing their populations inland to seek refuge in the more mountainous African countries. Madagascar disappeared, leaving in its wake only the memory of a once beautiful island nation.

“It’s only nature,” the politicians said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Global warming is a myth,” protested the skeptics. “I saw a special on TV and it’s all just a bunch of crap! There’s no truth to it.”

The larger nations began to feel the wrath of Earth’s rebellion. Ocean levels continued to rise, overpowering man’s attempt to keep her out. Coastal barriers thought safe were inundated by nature’s call. Australia fell to her wrath since the whole continent is only a few feet above sea level. The Florida Keys withered under the rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Miami sank, followed by the whole Florida peninsula. A thousand times worse than the devastation caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011, New York City took on water, filling her great underground expanses and subway tunnels, shorting out Con-Edison electrical systems to the millions of souls that inhabited the city, bringing the great city to her knees, forcing a migration of people west and north. Manhattan Island sank; the Statue of Liberty toppled from her mighty pedestal. The rising waters of the world continued to move inland, creating new east and west coasts of the United States. Rising seas pushed over California, absorbed the Baja Peninsula, and covered all but the highest regions of Mexico, joining the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean. Central America was cut in half at the Panama Canal, a man-made waterway that by this time was an inland sea, not just a convenient passage from one ocean to another.

The American farm belts began to produce less and less crops as the nitrogen levels in the soil rose to such acidic levels that it was no longer able to produce healthy grain. The cancellation of food exports caused widespread panic as nations around the world dependent on American surplus to feed their populations realized their source of sustenance was fading away. Heat waves unlike any ever witnessed in history burned farmlands around the world, overtaxing man’s ability to grow food and other vital necessities. Ice floes in Glacier National Park withered away from over two-hundred natural formations to only twenty-seven by the end of the twentieth century. Scientists in tune with the climate predicted the remaining twenty-seven glaciers would melt to none by the end of the 21^st century, sending trillions of tons of water into the heartland of America, burgeoning the nation’s riverbanks and lakes, creating inland seas that overpowered the already suffering environment.

Entire species of wildlife, both in the sea and on land, became extinct in only a few years instead of the million-year increments that usually determine the evolutionary span of living creatures. Pollinating insects such as honey bees and others that nature uses to bring life to oxygen-creating plant life died by the trillions, effectively stopping the Earth’s ability to sustain its environment.

Disease, pestilence, and famine were the natural steps that followed the breakdown of human control. Hunger ruled the day; violence the night. Nature turned against man, and man turned against man in a desperate attempt to survive, killing his neighbor for a morsel of bread or a half acre of farmable land. A worldwide human population that had grown to almost fourteen billion people by the year 2040 had been devastated to less than a half-billion by the year 2075.

Humanity must survive. But how? Where? For how long? Is mankind capable of surviving on a planet that no longer welcomes his presence? What hope can the remnants of humanity offer its children in the face of certain annihilation? Can the descendants of 21^st century survivalists living in outdated and pieced-together geodesic polar cities conquer the most northern tundra of Alaska, Canada, and what had once been the Arctic Circle? Would a region of the world that had once been a frozen wonderland but was now a tropical rain-forest, welcome the very species that destroyed its complex beauty and environmental balance?

Can mankind govern itself without destroying our species again? Do we have the will-power and self-control to overcome our own excesses and stop our own extinction? Is the need to pull more fossil fuel from the Earth more important than the survival of our species?

Humanity must survive. Can it? Will it? Must it?

David Mitchell Fail: Raise a Laugh from Anne Frank's Ghost?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:04:26 -0400

[Richard Ferrer reported in November 2009 in the UK, three years

before my OPEN LETTER to Ricky Gervais made headlines.]

Anne Frank's stepsister has expressed her shock and dismay after one of Britain's top comedians cracked a tasteless joke about the Holocaust diarist on a show broadcast by the BBC.

Around 50 complaints have been logged by the broadcaster after David Mitchell, who won a Bafta for his hit television comedy Peep Show, told listeners of Radio 4's The Unbelievable Truth that there was "absolutely no truth in the rumour that the last line in Anne Frank's diary reads: 'Today is my birthday. Dad bought me a drum kit'."

The 35-year-old comedian made the comment during his introduction to the panel show, in which celebrity contestants win points for slipping true facts into a speech full of falsehoods without the other competitors noticing.

Anne hid from the Nazis with her family in an Amsterdam attic for two years before dying of typhus in Bergen Belsen concentration camp only months before the end of the Second World War. The diary of her time in hiding is one of the world's most widely-read books.

Eva Schloss, 80, whose mother married Anne's father Otto Frank after the war, has dedicated her life to educating people about interfaith tolerance.
She told the Jewish News: "It's amazing that this comedian dared to make such a thoughtless remark. The Holocaust and its victims is no subject for comedy, especially on a show broadcast by the BBC. It's an outrageous and insensitive comment to make."

Gillian Walnes, executive director of the Anne Frank Trust, said: "I don't believe that this joke was made out of any malicious or racist intent, but was simply thoughtless. I am, however, very surprised there has not been any statement of regret for the offence caused.

"There is a powerful poignancy in referring to the teenage Anne Frank's last diary entry before her arrest and journey to her terrible death. In this entry Anne talks about her struggle between her two selves - the frivolous Anne and the good Anne, and how she hopes that the better one will overcome in the future.

"She also expresses a feeling of hope for the future - one which we impart to young people in Britain today so that they can use the opportunities given to them to make a better future."

A Radio 4 spokesman told the Jewish News: "We have received 46 complaints in response to the show. The joke was a ludicrous and far-fetched way of illustrating the rules of the game. Regular listeners to the comedy panel show are familiar with its style and tone which can be, on occasion, irreverent.

"The programme was not removed from the BBC internet iPlayer and was available to listen to again for seven days after the first broadcast on 26 October."

Walnes added: "The joke may have been made without malicious intent, but to Anne's stepsister, who lives in London, and her first cousin who lives in Switzerland, she remains a very real person and a much-loved family member."

David Mitchell's agent said the comedian had no comment on the matter, adding that the decision as to what was broadcast was the responsibility of the BBC.

A Second 'Open Letter' to Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 04:04:15 -0400

A Second ''Open Letter'' to Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington
(and Joan Rivers and David Mitchell and Jon Stewart)

Dear Ricky Gervais:

Your response to my first "open letter" to you was recently published
in the UK media, and I was glad to see you take
the time to respond to me. I know you are a good man, and I know you
value your career in show business, and you are good
at it, too. But in your letter to me, titled "Why it's kosher to joke
about Anne Frank," I feel you miss the point and that there
is still a disconnect going on in your mind. Maybe the disconnect is
with me? It's possible. But let's wait and see, since
the jury is still out on this one. Maybe all this can be a learning
experience for everyone involved, on both sides of
the Atlantic.

Ricky, let's be honest. You wrote: "I have had that [Anne Frank joke]
routine for nearly 10 years now. It is about the misunderstanding and
ignorance of what is clearly a tragic and horrific situation. My comic
persona is that of a man who speaks with great arrogance and authority
but who along the way reveals his immense stupidity."

But Ricky, you know and I know, and every comedian worth his salt
knows, as does every newspaper drama and TV critic, that
your Anne Frank schtick is a scripted, rehearsed, staged "joke" that
your stage persona tries to pass off as comedy, taking Karl
Pilkington in with you, too, as part of the game. You know as well as
I do, Ricky, that Karl is not stupid or dumb and he knows full
well the real history of the Holocaust and the real backstory of the
Anne Frank family. So the "they just wanted to avoid paying rent"
joke does not work sir. Unless your intent is to encourage
antisemitism and Jew-hatred, which I am sure is not your intent.

I am sure some of your best friends are Jews in Britain, and in the
USA, too. Jon Stewart, your good friend in New York, is Jewish.
So I am sure you have no animosity towards Jews and that your staged
and scripted Anne Frank jokes routine, which you
recently repeated on Jon's TV show in New York, much to his uneasiness
when you fobbed off the "rent" joke as part of your sidekick
Karl's stupidity.

Ricky, face facts, mate. Stop pretending. Grow up, sir.

Ricky, you are not stupid and you are not ignorant of history, and I
appreciate your response to me in the UK media.

"I can see if you took this routine at face value as my real opinion
on this profound and heroic tragedy, it could be deemed highly
offensive," you sincerely wrote -- or your savvy PR person wrote for
you. "However, this is obviously an absurd comic position with the
audience well in on the joke, fully aware that I am saying the exact
opposite of what every right-minded person thinks."

Ricky, you must be careful when you joke about the Holocaust. Go to
google and see how many people who still hate Jews and feel the
Holocaust didn't go far enough lap up your Anne Frank jokes as more
ammunition to use against Jewish people today! Wake up, mate!

Ricky, a friend of mine in New York, Rudy Shur, a veteran book publisher and
the son of Holocaust survivors, read your letter to me and said:
"Ricky misses the point. Perhaps he wouldn't think it's so funny if it were
his parents being pursued by the Nazis or having almost all of his
family shot and killed or dying in concentration camps -- such as my
own mother's family and my father's family. I was born in 1946 in an
American-run Displaced Person's Camp outside of Munich, Germany. I
grew up never quite seeing the humorous side of the Nazis. In terms of
comedy, I myself often get accused of finding comedy in places where
no comedy is to be found. And I feel you can make a joke about
anything. It just depends on what the joke is. Comedy comes from a
good or a bad place, and the problem is in its interpretation, with
some people confusing the subject of a joke with the joke's real
target. The target of these Ricky Gervais 'rent' jokes and
'typewriting in the attic' jokes about Anne Frank is Mr. Gervais'
ignorance."

Rudy goes on to say: "The fact is that stupidity in some cases is an
excuse for insensitive or lame jokes, however not in this case
of the Ann Frank jokes told me Gervais and Pilkington. Why not crack a
joke about African-Americans being hung from trees in the
American South or gay teenagers being murdered in Britain or America
or of children in India dying of AIDS.
Maybe Mr Gervais' stupidity knows no bounds? That's why they pay him
the big bucks,
right? Or maybe an apology might be in order to the millions of relatives
whose families wound up being slaughtered by the 'stupid' Nazis?

Danielle Berrin, writing on this topic in a newspaper in Los Angeles
the other day,
commented also on how uncomfortable Jon Stewart was with your Anne
Frank routine.

"What I think Stewart detected in Gervais’s comedy was
blatant dispassion towards the Holocaust, a cool, impassive
detachment," Berrin wrote. "This does not, by any means, mean Gervais
would have been
a Nazi, but it does make you wonder if he might have been a bystander.

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in times of
moral crisis, do nothing,” the Italian poet Dante Alighieri once
wrote, Berrin reminds us. "Ignorance leads
to indifference which permits moral atrocity to go on unchallenged."

So Ricky, mate, I feel you still don't get it. One more time, sir,
please think about this, off in a corner, without
your public relations crew around to keep you calm and collected.
Ponder all this one more time, and read
what my friend Rudy said above.

You don't owe me an apology at all, since we hardly know each other.
You might, however, offer an apology to
Anne Frank and her family. And at the same time, Ricky, you might also
offer an apology to Jon Stewart
in New York, not just in writing but maybe face to face, mano a mano,
on his Daily Show stage in Manhattan
for all the world to see. How about it?

Then we can call it a day.

Cheers,

Danny Bloom

PS:

By the way, Ricky, if you are still reading. A friend of mine in Beijing, China, a British newspaper
reporter and editor there, he tells me today re this tempest in a Gervaisian teapot: ''Dear Danny, you know, it's people like you who give Gervais (a very funny man, btw) the oxygen of publicity, and every time someone like you gets on a moral high horse and gives him a bigger profile, he then thinks he must be doing something right and looks for the next hot button issue. Just friendly advice. If you don't like his schtick, don't encourage it. The worst thing you could say, from Ricky's point of view, would be nothing. ''

And another observer of all this meshagus tells me: "Danny, the real acid test should be: Are these jokes that a Jewish person would tell to another Jewish person? I think clearly these Anne Frank jokes are not. Real Jewish jokes are not based on assumed ethnic stereotypes like "not wanting to pay the rent" or jokes about the Holcaust. Ergo: Ricky's jokes about Anne Frank are not appropriate jokes: Ricky and Karl and Joan Rivers, too, wit her tasteless Anne Frank jokes are laughing at us, not laughing wish us."

And Simone Schweber, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in the United States, offers her take on this brouhaha: "Anne Frank jokes are made possible, in part, by a political culture that trivializes the Holocaust writ large. When the Wisconsin Secretary of Agriculture, in March of 2011 referred to peaceful protesters gathering at the state capitol as creating a "Holocaust and a horror story," you know that people no longer really know what the Holocaust entailed and that its icons have become petty currency in a struggle to get media attention. But Danny, to object to the use of the Holocaust as humor, though, is as likely to be effective as tilting at windmills."

So Ricky and Karl and Joan and David and Jon, am I tilting at windmills here, and have we all learned something here today?

A friend of mine who is a newspaper columnist in Chicago told me that he wrote his own Anne Frank "joke" a few years ago, and this man is Jewish, Ricky. Here goes:

"The death this week [in 2010] at 100 years of age of Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who helped
shield Anne Frank and her family, emboldens me to print this . . .
well, it's not quite a joke, more like a wry line or, if you prefer,
an incredibly tasteless and unfunny line. But I've used it a lot, and
I find it humorous, in a dark sort of way. I don't know if this will
translate into print. Maybe you have to deliver it like I do, the
first part of the sentence said with an air of earnest, hopeful
intensity, the second with a what-can-you-do shrug: "Like Anne Frank, I consider people to be good at heart . . . of
course, look what happened to her.''

FINAL PARTING WORDS: In fact, Ricky, this wry line by a newspaper reporter in America might be good for YOU to use one day, too,
rather than the tasteless and rather vulgar jokes you like to tell about poor Anne Frank. Her birthday falls every year on June 12 and you are also a June baby, June 25. So how about it, Ricky, try a new schtick. You'll feel better, and your fans will love you for it. There's always room for improvement. Do it!

A Second 'Open Letter' to Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:04:54 -0400

A Second ''Open Letter'' to Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington --
(and Joan Rivers and David Mitchell and Jon Stewart...)

Dear Ricky Gervais:

Your response to my first "open letter" to you was recently published
in the UK media, and I was glad to see you take
the time to respond to me. I know you are a good man, and I know you
value your career in show business, and you are good
at it, too. But in your letter to me, titled "Why it's kosher to joke
about Anne Frank," I feel you miss the point and that there
is still a disconnect going on in your mind. Maybe the disconnect is
with me? It's possible. But let's wait and see, since
the jury is still out on this one. Maybe all this can be a learning
experience for everyone involved, on both sides of
the Atlantic.

But Ricky, you know and I know, and every comedian worth his salt
knows, as does every newspaper drama and TV critic, that
your Anne Frank schtick is a scripted, rehearsed, staged "joke" that
your stage persona tries to pass off as comedy, taking Karl
Pilkington in with you, too, as part of the game. You know as well as
I do, Ricky, that Karl is not stupid or dumb and he knows full
well the real history of the Holocaust and the real backstory of the
Anne Frank family. So the "they just wanted to avoid paying rent"
joke does not work sir. Unless your intent is to encourage
antisemitism and Jew-hatred, which I am sure is not your intent.

I am sure some of your best friends are Jews in Britain, and in the
USA, too. Jon Stewart, your good friend in New York, is Jewish.
So I am sure you have no animosity towards Jews and that your staged
and scripted Anne Frank jokes routine, which you
recently repeated on Jon's TV show in New York, much to his uneasiness
when you fobbed off the "rent" joke as part of your sidekick
Karl's stupidity.

Ricky, face facts, mate. Stop pretending. Grow up, sir.

Ricky, you are not stupid and you are not ignorant of history, and I
appreciate your response to me in the UK media.

"I can see if you took this routine at face value as my real opinion
on this profound and heroic tragedy, it could be deemed highly
offensive," you sincerely wrote -- or your savvy PR person wrote for
you. "However, this is obviously an absurd comic position with the
audience well in on the joke, fully aware that I am saying the exact
opposite of what every right-minded person thinks."

Ricky, you must be careful when you joke about the Holocaust. Go to
google and see how many people who still hate Jews and feel the
Holocaust didn't go far enough lap up your Anne Frank jokes as more
ammunition to use against Jewish people today! Wake up, mate!

Ricky, a friend of mine in New York, Rudy Shur, a veteran book publisher and
the son of Holocaust survivors, read your letter to me and said:
"Ricky misses the point. Perhaps he wouldn't think it's so funny if it were
his parents being pursued by the Nazis or having almost all of his
family shot and killed or dying in concentration camps -- such as my
own mother's family and my father's family. I was born in 1946 in an
American-run Displaced Person's Camp outside of Munich, Germany. I
grew up never quite seeing the humorous side of the Nazis. In terms of
comedy, I myself often get accused of finding comedy in places where
no comedy is to be found. And I feel you can make a joke about
anything. It just depends on what the joke is. Comedy comes from a
good or a bad place, and the problem is in its interpretation, with
some people confusing the subject of a joke with the joke's real
target. The target of these Ricky Gervais 'rent' jokes and
'typewriting in the attic' jokes about Anne Frank is Mr. Gervais'
ignorance."

Rudy goes on to say: "The fact is that stupidity in some cases is an
excuse for insensitive or lame jokes, however not in this case
of the Ann Frank jokes told me Gervais and Pilkington. Why not crack a
joke about African-Americans being hung from trees in the
American South or gay teenagers being murdered in Britain or America
or of children in India dying of AIDS.
Maybe Mr Gervais' stupidity knows no bounds? That's why they pay him
the big bucks,
right? Or maybe an apology might be in order to the millions of relatives
whose families wound up being slaughtered by the 'stupid' Nazis?

Danielle Berrin, writing on this topic in a newspaper in Los Angeles
the other day,
commented also on how uncomfortable Jon Stewart was with your Anne
Frank routine.

"What I think Stewart detected in Gervais’s comedy was
blatant dispassion towards the Holocaust, a cool, impassive
detachment," Berrin wrote. "This does not, by any means, mean Gervais
would have been
a Nazi, but it does make you wonder if he might have been a bystander.

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in times of
moral crisis, do nothing,” the Italian poet Dante Alighieri once
wrote, Berrin reminds us. "Ignorance leads
to indifference which permits moral atrocity to go on unchallenged."

So Ricky, mate, I feel you still don't get it. One more time, sir,
please think about this, off in a corner, without
your public relations crew around to keep you calm and collected.
Ponder all this one more time, and read
what my friend Rudy said above.

You don't owe me an apology at all, since we hardly know each other.
You might, however, offer an apology to
Anne Frank and her family. And at the same time, Ricky, you might also
offer an apology to Jon Stewart
in New York, not just in writing but maybe face to face, mano a mano,
on his Daily Show stage in Manhattan
for all the world to see. How about it?

Then we can call it a day.

Cheers,

Danny Bloom (1949-2032)

Ricky Gervais owes Anne Frank a big fat apology

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:04:14 -0400

Getty Images

From the Forward, slighted edited for impact:

Jon Stewart Leibowitz seemed rather uncomfortable with some of the tasteless things that his TV guest Ricky Gervais was saying so vulgarly about Anne Frank on the Daily Show back on April 11. But while Jon took it no further than trying to humorously push back at Ricky during the show, a lone blogger in Taiwan took Gervais’s remarks far more seriously and maybe made a mountain out of a molehill.

The dude is calling for a worldwide rickcott of any TV shows showcasing the sick sick humor of Ricky Gervais and [Gervais’s sidekick] Karl Pilkington, both handsome and cosmopolitan gents.

What upset our lone blogger in Taiwan so much was Gervais’s telling Stewart that Pilkington thought that Anne Frank and her family were hiding in the attic ''to avoid paying rent to their landlord.'' Oops. Not funny on this side of the Atlantic!

Gervais claimed -- as part of the scritped stqage act, repeated since 2005 --- to have had to teach Karl about the Nazis and World War II, but from what he was telling Stewart about how he thought the Nazis searched for hidden Jews, it was clear that he really didn’t know what he was talking about. Or maybe he was just trying to be funny. But was he?

Our lone blogger has invited others to join him in the rickcott.

“I am taking this rickcott campaign to the news editors of the Jon Stewart Show, Comedy Central, CNN, the New York Times, the Guardian, and 25 other major newspapers in the world,” he wrote. “This is not a religious rickcott or karlcott. This is a ickcott of all lovers of comedy and humor who HATE comedy and humor that belittles the dignity of all human beings, whatever they race or color or religion and nationality.”