In the new movie Dinner for Schmucks, a financial analyst looking to move up in his firm is invited to take part in a cruel game, where an assortment of losers and lunatics are brought to a dinner designed to set them up for mockery. The analyst finds his useful idiot in the form of a doofy amateur taxidermist, whom he bonds with via a zany series of ensuing antics. In the feel-good ending, the analyst confesses that it was he who was acting like the true 'schmuck' all along. One is reminded here of the unusual game being played between Israel (and it's American supporters) and those wacky Christian Tea Party zealots. Their budding bromance is still in it's beginning stages, though it seems likely that this unlikely pairing also has two true 'schmucks'. Antics will surely ensue.
This past week, the Israel advocacy (formerly civil rights) organization the Anti-Defamation League, which had previously warned about the dangerous white supremacist potential of the Tea Party, has now made common cause with them over objections to the proposed Islamic community center to be built in downtown Manhattan (aka 'the ground zero mosque'). Their Islamophobia justifies itself with claims of protecting friends and families of 9/11 victims from "unnecessary pain" caused by seeing Muslims, warning the Muslims that their existence in the financial district will be "counterproductive to the healing process". Apparently, the proper way to heal a wound from 9 years ago is to continuously pick at the racist scab that has hardened over it. Some Muslim kids playing basketball at their community center causes some sort of irrational "pain" to racists, so the kids should obviously be the one's barred from the neighborhood. Perhaps the ADL doesn't realize that Muslim human beings feel pain too (such as when they're discriminated against), taking a stance akin to the one pescatarians have towards fish.
