Apparently back in the nineties Rahm Emanuel's father Benjamin was in a militant Zionist group that massacred some Arabs and did various other freedom-promoting actions.  Someone asked him whether he thought his son might influence the White House to more pro-Israel:

“Obviously he’ll influence the President to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”

via the always RReliable Gawker

The RR is certainly impressed with the Somali pirates who are wreaking havoc in the gulf of Aden. Here's what one analyst had to say:

The capture of the Star, carrying up to two million barrels of oil - more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily exports - is one of the most spectacular strikes in maritime history.

"It looks like a deliberate two fingers from some very bright Somalis. Anyone who describes them as a bunch of camel herders needs to think again," one Somalia analyst said.

Look, anyone who can poke a stick in the eye of the Saudi government is ok in our book. If they manage to unload any of those tanks they have sitting on the Ukrainian ship they hijacked a few months ago, and maybe take a drive down King Fahd road and take some potshots, well, go for it.

But does that mean we have to stop calling them towel heads, sand niggers, camel jockeys, and so on? Of course not. One swallow does not make a spring, as they say. As for twelve major hijackings in fifteen days, well, that's pretty good for a bunch of diaper domes. 

Here are three problems facing America right now:

-  the various demographic problems relating to a low birth-rate and an aging population  

- the financial crisis, caused by the credit crunch, caused by the bursting of the housing bubble

- the ongoing struggle against islamic fundamentalism

With respect to the aging population, in the absence of more babies the only real alternative is to increase immigration. When it comes to the financial crisis, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the bailout is not working; a number of reasonable analysts are starting to suggest that what the US needs to do is start bulldozing houses. The problem of Islamic terror is particularly intractable, but it is reasonable to suppose that a great many terrorists could be co-opted or bought off, if the price is right.

So here’s how to solve all three problems at once: Give the surplus homes to jihadis.

Clever, huh? It certainly helps with first two problems.  Some estimates put the number of excess housing units at 1.8 million. Put eight people (one male jihadi, four wives, three children)  in each home, you are looking at around 15 million new immigrants – compare that with the four million or so new babies born each year in the US. It also soaks up the excess housing and puts the bottom back in the market.

Ok, but what about jihad. Is this not insane, bringing fifteen million enemies of America right into the heartland? No. Because you add a rider to the contract: If there are any terrorist attacks against America, anywhere, the deal is off and everyone gets sent home.  One attack and fifteen million muslims lose their brand new homes.

This is what’s known as thinking outside the box. Of course, it might not all come off as planned. After all, France has already basically done this, given houses in the suburbs to thousands of muslims. Here's how things look these days:

Jesse Jackson, contemplating a lost opportunity to cut Barack Obama's nuts off:

In the ultimate display of affirmative action, America has elected its first black president. The RR would like to take this opportunity to celebrate this generous act of tokenism. Would everyone please stand for the playing of America's new national anthem.

Let's see B. Hussein Obama schlep his way out of this one:

A University of Texas poll to be released today shows Republican presidential candidate John McCain and GOP Sen. John Cornyn leading by comfortable margins in Texas, as expected. But the statewide survey of 550 registered voters has one very surprising finding: 23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim.

link

And of course:

We love these kids:

ST. LOUIS (AP) - At least four students from a suburban St. Louis middle school face punishment for allegedly hitting Jewish classmates during what they called "Hit a Jew Day."

link

It seems that the more he tries to bring his country into a post-racial future, the more the candidacy of Barack Obama seems to be simply reinforcing centuries-old stereotypes.

Take, for example, the great American tradition of the faked racially-motivated sexual assault.  Earlier today, a 20-year old John McCain volunteer from Pittsburgh named Ashley Todd went to police claiming that she had been robbed and sexually assaulted, and then had a letter "B" scratched in her cheek with a knife by a Barack Obama supporter who was enraged by the McCain bumper sticker on her car. And -- oh yeah -- he happened to be a 6 foot 4 inch black man.

The always-on-the-ball Pittsburgh police noticed a few problems with Ms. Todd's story, including the fact that the "B" in her cheek was written backwards; that is, they way it would look if one had carved it while looking into a mirror. Ms. Todd has now been charged with making a false report to police. 

The saga brings to mind the tall tale told by Tawana Brawley, who in late 1987  was found lying awake but unresponsive in a garbage bag several feet from an apartment where she had once lived. Her clothing was torn and burned, her body smeared with feces. She was taken to the emergency room, where various slurs and epithets were discovered written on her torso with a black substance described as charcoal.   She told police that she had been held in a wooded area for four days and repeatedly gang-raped by six white men, some of whom were police officers. A number of major black spokespeople took up Ms. Brawley's case, including Bill Cosby and RR favourite, the Rev. Al Sharpton. 

READ: Wikipedia entry on Tawana Brawley

Except her case, too, quickly fell apart. Ms. Brawley had been seen at parties in the neighbourhood, unharmed, during the period in question. She had been seen climbing into the garbage bag. The feces proved to have been sourced from a neighbourhood dog. A grand jury inquest concluded that no assault took place, and as for Ms. Brawley, she converted to Islam and changed her name to Maryam Muhammad.

So you might think, it's all Even Stevens in the race-baiting sweepstakes: Two extremely stupid girls, one white, one black.  Except note the crucial discrepancy: Tawana Brawley -- perhaps motivated by certain stereotypes about white men -- obviously thought that it would take six of them to give her a convincing going-over. Ashley Todd -- perhaps under the influence of similar sexual stereotypes about black men -- seemed to think that one buck negro was enough to throw the ancient fear into the white folk.  

All of which suggests that maybe the Founding Fathers were overcompensating for something deeply rooted in the American psyche when they insisted that slaves should count as three fifths of a white man. 

Ashley Todd sought to frighten people with the menace of one 6'4" negro squeezing her boobs.

Tawana Brawley knew that it would take six white guys four days of raping her to get black folks to sit up and take notice. 

The RR understands weakness of the will – the reluctance to get up at dawn and go for a run when sleeping till noon and eating a bag of M&Ms for breakfast is so much more pleasurable; the inability to turn down that fourth martini at lunch even when hard up against a deadline for a major client at work; the continually maxed-out credit cards because one can’t own enough shoes. Instant gratification is part of what it means to be alive (if not now, when?), and the RR loves life as much as the next Tom, Dique, Hari, Suzette, Marie, Sabine, Jose, Manuel, Igor, Grizelda, Shaniqua, Rondelle, Wang, Wong,  Li, Farouz, Samir, or Abdullah.

READ: A wikipedia entry on Akrasia, or weakness of the will

But the RR also knows that there’s a time and a place for everything, and that part of growing up and becoming an adult member of the human race is learning to put things off, that you can’t have everything you want whenever you want it. In Freudian terms, the child-like id is tamed by the fatherly super-ego, and you end up with a fairly healthy and mature ego.

Then there’s Islam. Has there ever been a culture on earth where the frothy and impetuous id  has so steadfastly refused to be tamed by the cultural superego? We understand that muslim women (especially Persians  -- grrr) are foxy little temptresses. We get the appeal of the chin-to-groin chest sweater sported by your typical Leb gym-rat. The middle east is a steaming cauldron of simmering desire, which is why the women need to be dolled up like Cylon raiders and made to walk a few meters behind the menfolk; otherwise, it’d be like the set of Caligula after someone spiked the craft truck water bucket with an industrial load of Cialis.

But man alive, what is one to make of this then? Last Friday, an Iranian group was just finished constructing the world’s largest sandwich – a 1500-meter-long hoagie stuffed with ostrich and chicken meat that was to launch the country into the Guinness Book of World Records, and, hence, the modern world. Except as the sandwich was being measured, chaos ensued. The giant snack was gone in minutes, as the assembled crowd rushed forward and devoured it before the Guinness reps could affirm the record.

READ: Iranians Eat World Record Evidence  

Photo:An Iranian man outreaches two compatriots for the last bite of the potential world-record sandwich

All of this would be mildly amusing – having muslims around on earth would be like hanging out with a billion and a half permanent toddlers – except that this major-league impulse control has its darker side. Last month, a hundred-strong mob of Egyptians felt moved to celebrate the end of Ramadan by going on a rape ramage through a nice middle class neighbourhood in Cairo.

According to eyewitness accounts, around 100 boys and young men attacked women on the streets, ripping at their clothes. Women reported being violently molested and groped. Some women wearing the hijab headscarf had their clothes torn off by gangs of attackers. One woman who wore the conservative niqab veil, that covers the entire head and face, reported that men grabbed at it in an attempt to tear it off her face.

The really weird part is that this is the second time this has happened in recent years, but at least this time, the Egyptian government and police admitted it happened.

"The police actually arrested people this time," said Engy Ghozlan of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights. "It is the first time the government is actually admitting that there is a problem, because it is very serious."

In a sort of intercultural big-brotherly spirit , the RR would like to offer some advice to the young men of Egypt: Enough with the making like a bunch of Puerto Ricans, alright?

The RR understands that Ramadan is tough on everyone. All that fasting and binging drives blood-sugar levels out of wack, and it can make you a little crazy. But why not take a lead from your Iranian co-religionists, and settle for gang-raping a sandwich? Who knows, maybe they'll make a hit movie out of it.

Matt Damon is a chameleon. He can disappear into the background, blend into the surroundings, no matter where he is:

(via TMZ)

Scene the First: Heading to their traditional hunting grounds, the donut shop, some white police men spy a suspicious looking negro and give chase:

Scene the Second: The overfed white men are unable to catch the naturally speedier black man,  and so they sit back and watch as their hound chases the suspect down:

Cornered, the negro makes a last desperate lunge for the safety of his dumpster, only to find a slower, but more intelligent, white man lying in wait.

The RR is getting pretty tired of the media's endless yipping about the "racism" of the Spanish sports teams that pulled chinky-eyes for a national ad campaign.  

Let's be clear:

Slit eyes are the internationally recognized symbol for Chinaman-- a simple shorthand. Making them is no more racist than the placing of grapefruits side by each under a man's shirt is sexist. Juvenile, yes. Impolitic, no doubt. But not racist.

So why is the RR even talking about it?

The trend became interesting when it emerged that the Argentinian soccer team, near-simultaneously, before the original Spanish Chinkgate had even been outed, had also released a slit-eyed photo on the internet.

Now when a bad idea spreads between two groups of meatheads in a single country, it's a meme. When it spreads to group across the globe that is completely unrelated aside from its shared ethnic roots, it's... well, you tell me:

Is there something bred in the spare rib of a Spic that compels him, against all good sense, to make Chink eyes in front of a camera?

We are all familiar by now with the stories of Japanese businessmen who, instead of commuting for three hours at the end of a 19-hour workday, instead bed-down in these little drawers that pass as hotel rooms. Unpleasant but completely understandable, given that fully one quarter of Japanese couples never have sex anyway. (And even the RR finds that fully understandable, since she wouldn't dream of having sex with a Japanese man.) 

But more mysterious is the sleeping habits of Iranian couples. Between 1986 and 2001, the Iranian birthrate dropped from a high of 3.2 percent to a record low of 1.2 percent, where it has remained ever since. This is an astonishing drop, to levels that are positively European in their distaste for having children around. Some observers argue that this is a good thing, a sign of the increasing emancipation of Iranian women - a function of increased employment levels amongst women and liberalized divorce laws.

The RR knows better. An investigation by the RR's middle-east bureau reveals that the reason for  the collossal drop  in the birthrate in Iran is, to put it bluntly, that Iranian women are frigid. Not that they don't like sex, no -- they love it, the Persian minxes do. It's their ridiculously sexist husbands who make them sleep in the refrigerator. Here's a photo we had smuggled out of a Tehran appliance store, showing an Iranian couple shopping for a new boudoir:

What the hell?

During the US Open a few weeks back, NBC sports announcer Johnny Miller -- in an admirable  fit of recreational racism -- opined that Italian-American golfer Rocco Mediate "looks like the guy who cleans Tiger's swimming pool," and went on to suggest that "guys with the name of Rocco don't get on the trophy."

 
RM: "Hey Tiger, if I clean your pool can I watch your wife sunbathe?"

TW: "Sure.  Just don't drip olive oil on her lovely Swedish skin."

 Well, did the eggplants get hot under the  collar or what. Mr. A. Kenneth "Three Fingers" Ciongoli, head of the National Italian American Foundation, wrote to the head of  NBC Sports:

"We are certain that NBC and Mr. Miller meant no harm and was simply having some fun at the expense of Italian Americans. Nonetheless, this type of humor is problematic as it reinforces a demeaning and damaging stereotype about an entire ethnic group."

What stereotype -- that wops don't golf? Look, the only book shorter than "Negroes I have met while Yachting" is "Guidos Who  Golf," and all Miller was doing, as the RR sees it, is pointing out a fairly easy-to-grasp demographic fact. Namely, that there are no guys named Rocco with their names on the US Open championship trophy. There's a Billy and an Alex and a Horace and yes, a couple of Tigers. But nope, no Roccos.

But the NIAF doesn't let demography stand in the face of moral outrage. In today's NYTimes, the foundation ran a half-page ad not only complaining about Miller's remarks, but bellyaching about the lack of respect accorded Italian-Americans in the media in general. In the ad, Ciongoli goes on to list everyone fromYogi Berra and Gay Talese to Nancy Pelosi and Bon Jovi as somehow evidence that  the  eye-ties deserve better than to be known primarily for making spaghetti and knowing guys who know guys.

"We have been waiting for more than a hundred years for the American nativists and media elites to become educated about our people," the NIAF writes. "We are  losing patience."

Well, just who among the media elites would be responsible for promoting negative stereotypes about Italians. Let's think.... well, there's the actor Rocco Sisto, who has  made a career playing gangsters in movie's like Carlito's Way, Donnie Brasco, and the Sopranos. There's Francis Ford Coppola,  who has made a career directing films about mobsters. Ditto Martin Scorsese. Both of these directors were heavily influenced by the  work of Luchino Visconti, who directed the classic mob film Rocco and his  Brothers.

In fact, it would appear that the people most responsible for the popular understanding of wops is, well, wops themselves.  Of course, the NIAF is doing its best to change that. Indeed, once upon a time someone as disrespectful as Johnny Miller might have found himself swimming with the fishes in the East River. Today, he finds himself called out in a whiny little ad in the New York  Times. 

Yes, Italian Americans sure are helping change their image. And the old members of the Cosa Nostra are rolling in their shallow graves at the shame of it all.