Just Seen & Heard on FOX: A Majorly Anti-Semitic Seth MacFarlane
MacFarlane to Borstein: How many Jews does it take to screw in a light bulb for a Nazi?
As someone who watches Family Guy on a fairly regular basis, I usually resort to rolling my eyes when the show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, incorporates a Jew joke into what has lately become every episode of the sitcom. MacFarlane, no stranger to controversy and pushing the envelope, is a masterful comedian in many ways, even if his jokes are most often vulgar to the point of no return. As a pop culture lover, my heart can only skip a beat when he pokes fun at society’s cultural trends and riffs poetically on the mundane minutia that the media throws our way every day – every nanosecond of the day.
So you see I’m already conflicted, but no longer after tonight’s episode.
Tonight marked a special event on FOX in which MacFarlane, along with Alex Borstein (voice of Lois) did a variety show act intermittently splicing episodes of Family Guy to fill in the gaps. No doubt the half-hour show was a plug for MacFarlane and Borstein’s show, which showcased at Carnegie Hall last year.
At one point in the show MacFarlane insists on singing a song about Austria. Borstein refuses and says something alongs the lines of, “You always say my people don’t fight. So I’m putting my foot down. I’m not singing.” (I’m paraphrasing mildly but you get the drift) Borstein then goes onto talk about her grandmother and mother who barely escaped Austria from the Nazis to which MacFarlane replies, “You should consider yourself lucky (again, slight paraphrasing). If the Nazis hadn’t happened, imagine how many Jewish female comedians you would have had to compete with. So instead it’s just you and Sarah Silverman.” Borstein responds with a laugh and joins in the jokes. After all, it was made at her expense. And that’s funny, right?
I think I may just have to be done with Family Guy once and for all…
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did you not see “family goy” ?
the amon geoth scene ala schindler’s list did it for me.
I missed that episode…
Hate to tell ya this, but not EVERYONE who makes a jew joke hates jewish people. Same with any other joke about race and religion. (as an aside, did you know that ‘jew’ and ‘jewish’ are spellcheck-flagged by chrome?)
If you want to take undying offense every time you hear a joke about your personal demographic, thats your call, but it’s a surefire way to make you a more angry, bitter person.
If you’re willing to take some advice, save your disgust for the people who truly deserve it. Save it for genuine holocaust deniers or aryan-nation asshats. Save it for the fundie pricks who spend half their time talking about how much they hate jews, and the other half picking the next schoolbus to blow up.
That is all.
Zach-
Although I agree with you up to a point I have noticed him taking Jewish jokes above and beyond. There is a difference in funny and shock value and I think his value has run out.
Its hard to compete with 20+ years of simpsons and 13+ of south park.
Zach-
Did you happen to catch the joke I was referring to? And people like MacFarlane are responsible for contributing to one of the more insidious forms of discrimination. This can be just as damaging in the long-run as those you suggest I should save my disdain for.
Shame on you for being so blind to the fact that each time someone cracks a joke like this and elicits a positive response, it just paves the way for harsher attacks the next time.
Sadly Beth this is the new trend in hollywood.I think the worst episode was when Louis found out she was jewish.
What do you expect? Self-hating Jews run Hollywood.
I must be a self hating Jew then because I think Family Guy is hysterical. What’s wrong with laughing at some stereotypes? Have you seen The Cleveland Show? I don’t feel singled out by Family Guy…they make fun of everything. So, it was cool too laugh at Micheal J. Fox’s Parkinson’s or Britney using her child soft spot as an ashtray, but last night’s special was too far? I don’t get it.
It’s one thing for Jews to be self-deprecating and to laugh at ourselves. It’s another thing when Jew jokes become a norm and in every episode and when written by others than Jews. I can tolerate Larry David making fun of Jews, but Holocaust jokes from Seth McFarlane (who, IMO, isn’t the least bit funny) I can’t appreciate. Sometimes, gentiles who are around a lot of Jews think they may have a pass but to other Jews who don’t know them, it could be offensive. A great Seinfeld episode about the Dentist who converts so he can make Jew jokes comes to mind.
Lastly, I don’t know if Tiff is a self-hating Jew but it doesn’t change the fact that Hollywood is full of them and run by them.
There’s also an episode where Lois’ biological parents are found out to be wealthy WASPs.
There must be something to the rumour that the show is written by manatees.
I think “anti-Semitic” is a stretch: comedy exists to dispel our discomfort, to give voice to the things we sometimes refrain from expressing, and MacFarlane has made a career of poking fun at things beyond our daily comedic comfort level. Obviously there are some people who will never find the Family Guy funny.
Not to get all super-semantic and midrashic on you, but watch the clip again. Some of your paraphrasing above is actually how the clip landed in your ears/area of sensitivity, not the way it happened, which is in itself kind of revealing.
MacFarlane’s actual “let me just ask you this” is very different from your paraphrase of “you should consider yourself lucky.” The song isn’t a song about Austria, it’s a song from his favorite movie; Borstein is the one who makes a big deal about it. And at the end, she doesn’t laugh at the end of MacFarlane’s point about Silverman – she joins in because she feels she has to. And maybe there’s a level of satire there that says, as integral as Jews are in creating content for Hollywood, there’s still a pressure to fit in.
Maybe. If you’re interested in more on this (and in the clip in question, embedded from Hulu), check out my post at Beliefnet.
ESTHER!
OMG I can assure you Tiff is not a self hating Jew. My sister only hates certain Jews. Justifiably so I might add. Family Guy makes me laugh. Maybe I’m a moron, I dunno. And the best Holocaust joke ever is the fucking notion, promoted by some, that inordinately commemorating or deifying the Holocaust is an adequate replacement for, you know, actual Jewish values. And the best joke relating to Anti-Semitism? That American Jews have to remain eternally vigilant to the extreme for any signs of a resurgent anti-Semitism lest jack booted thugs start marching down 5th Avenue chanting “Juden Raus!” tomorrow.
American Jews being “eternally vigilant to the extreme for any signs of a resurgent anti-Semitism”? Hahaha. You’ve got to be F’in kidding me! They, 75% of them, elected and campaigned on behalf of Barrack Hussein Obama, a guy who sat and listened to 20+ years of his anti-Semitic pastor rant about Them Joos, was buddies with Rashid Khalidi, Farrakhan, et al. American Jews are soo busy hunting for Jew haters in southern GOP districts that they let real haters walk in the front door and even handed them money and credence. And when Jewish kids in college are afraid to say they are “pro-Israel” and worship cretins like Noam Chompsky, what do you expect?
Of course I am not a self hating Jew… Esther, I completely agree with you.
Lighten up.
Muffti is pretty self-happy and he likes family guy. Making comedy that treads upon sacred cow lines and dares to draw the sacred into the profane always runs the risk of offense and will frequently turn people off who thinks it has gone too far. But ‘going too far’ and ‘being anti-F’ for whatever parameter F someone has gone too far with should not be as easy a slip as suggested above. You may not like the joke but to say that someone who tells it, who has CLEARLY taken on the role of parodying and joking in areas that are sensitive is truly a disgusting thing to do and regretably lends credence to the claim that jews will use the charge of ‘anti-semite’ all-together too quickly.
In other words, offensive jokes don’t the anti-semite make, even if anti-semites make offensive jokes.
Let’s clarify that I said I found the joke and his jokes in general “anti-semitic”- I made no statement that he’s an anti-semite. Anyways, judging by his humor he probably is the latter so I guess you bring up a sound point.
Not sure how any Jew out there can defend MacFarlane’s Jew jokes after a while. But, there is particularly not funny something about Jews dying in the Holocaust.
Disclaimer: Not Jewish. I think McFarlane is a bigot. It’s easy to use the weak excuse “I make fun of everybody” when you are in the dominant group. It’s like me grabbing a little white guy (I’m a fairly big Latino) and starting a slap fight and saing, “what? You can slap me too. It’s fair”. So, I’m down with wanting to bitch slap McFaggot for taking Jew jokes too far. BUT, not that I’m always around Jewish people, when I have been I have never really heard any sympathy for extremely crude humor against, for example, Jesus. I’m not a big devout Christian, I just find it hypocritical. I submit that the most honorable thing is just to be down on anyone that just pointlessly and irresponsibly slams anybody’s sacred beliefs or their identity as human beings. I’ll stand with anyone in that fight. Criticism is cool, poking fun is cool, but trying to denigrate while hiding behind the “comedy shield” is not cool.
Well said.
You guys grow up! Alot of the Staff members on family guy are Jewish!!!!!
Alex Borstein, David Goodman, Alec Sulkin etc.
They’re jokes and yes they make a lot of them but, i believe a lot of people take things to heart or take it too seriously!
Really? People are still complaining about racist and prejudice satire on a comedy show? When will people understand that comedy is comedy and thats where it usually stays (sure some crazies out there will take it to heart but then again there are always some radical in any group or situation).Do you mean to tell me that because someone makes a joke about another’s way of life that it is immediately fueled by hate? Cmon, lighten up, the point of comedy is to take life and exaggerate it to make it humorous, never take it to heart.