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The ADL Responds to Seth MacFarlane

Tick tock like clockwork

by
Adam Chandler
February 25, 2013
Seth MacFarlane(Getty)
Seth MacFarlane(Getty)

Well, it’s been roughly 12 hours since the Academy Awards wrapped up and the Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement about Seth MacFarlane’s smirky Jews-control-Hollywood sketch with “Ted” that I mentioned earlier today. Here’s the central point of the condemnation:

For the insiders at the Oscars this kind of joke is obviously not taken seriously. But when one considers the global audience of the Oscars of upwards of two billion people, including many who know little or nothing about Hollywood or the falsity of such Jewish stereotypes, there’s a much higher potential for the ‘Jews control Hollywood’ myth to be accepted as fact.

I get that MacFarlane’s bit was in poor taste, but so were his jabs at women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, the Christian right, the poor, and other groups. It seems a little much to isolate this one sketch in a four-hour stretch of comedy that was defamatory toward literally everyone.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.