I empathize with the terrorist "equation" that Arabs have to endure, admire 
their Anti Defamation Web Site to the point of envy, applaud their Scholar 
Shaheen's recent books, "Reel Bad Arabs", and "The TV Arab.", the fact that 
they were clever enough to put Offices in both Washington (the seat of 
political power), and Hollywood (the seat of media power).

I do however take great exception to Rosenbergs statement: 

But Muslims and Arabs seem to be the only people stereotyped 100% of the 
time. People point to the negative portrayals of Italians in 'The Sopranos' 
[HBO's series about Mafiosi in New Jersey], but there are 20,000 positive
ones elsewhere."

Howard, Are you blind to the Unrelenting Torrent, which coincidently this 
week included USA's Mob Sunday, yesterday and Bill Maher's 5 part Mob probe 
series starting today. And where in the HELL are those 20,000 Positive media 
images hiding??? 

NEGATIVE STEREOTYPING DISTORTS ARAB'S IMAGE
Howard Rosenberg
July 30 2001

Caring Americans wring their hands over stereotypes in the U.S. that haunt 
blacks, Latinos, Asians, Italians, Native Americans, Catholics, Jews, gays 
and (you fill in the blank). Just as nasty, though, is the stigma that 
usually goes unmentioned.

An estimated 3.5 million Arab Americans live in the U.S. What would you say, 
about 3 million are terrorists? Well, half anyway.

Why wouldn't you think that? Why wouldn't it be in the minds of knee-jerk TV 
newscasters who reported immediately after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing 
that the FBI was seeking three males, two of them "Middle Eastern with dark 
hair and beards"?

Why wouldn't the security officers who ejected Abdullah Al-Arian from the 
White House annex think it too? Al-Arian is the Duke University student and 
congressional intern who was there for a meeting with Muslim leaders on 
President Bush's faith-based initiative last month when he was removed after 
a false tip that he was linked to terrorists.

You know, the shadowy guys we see again and again in movies and on TV. 
Because there are no other Arabs, right? Except, that is, for harem girls and 
bearded, limousined, oil-rich sheiks in dark glasses, wielding their billions 
like spiked clubs.

With violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians again raging in the 
Middle East, their media images assume even greater weight and loom 
especially large. It's hard telling which side is winning the crucial public 
relations duel in the news, as bitter charges fly back and forth between 
these Jews and Arabs, each blaming the other for fomenting violence in the 
most recent intifada, estimated to have killed more than 600 in the last 10 
months, mostly Palestinians.

As for PR points in opinion-shaping TV shows and feature films, though, Arabs 
still are nearly shut out.

"There's an unending barrage of the same hate-filled images portraying Arabs 
as less than human," said scholar Jack G. Shaheen, whose excellent new book, 
"Reel Bad Arabs," is a valuable, detailed, fast-reading compendium of 
theatrical movies that follows his incisive earlier work, "The TV Arab." "Not 
only are they bashed and vilified on a constant basis," Shaheen added from 
his home in South Carolina, "the religion [Islam] is thrown in too."

Shaheen mentions a minority of feature films he feels contain positive 
portraits of Arabs. And on TV? "Zilch, nunca, nada, zero," he said. "You 
never see Arab families. You never see people who look like and act and 
behave like other people."

One very, very rare exception is "The Kitchen," Andre Degas' aching small 
film about conflict between an assimilated young Egyptian American and his 
Old World-ish father who wants his musician son to one day take over his 
small grocery store in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York. The 
Independent Television Service production, which was shown on Father's Day on 
many PBS stations and Sunday on KCET, uses its Arab characters to explore 
universal family themes.

More typical is the pilot for a new CBS fall series, "The Agency." It opens 
with a CIA agent giving a briefing on terrorists "sworn to wage holy war" 
against the U.S. and its friends. The rest of the story has the CIA 
scrambling to block a bombing planned by these foreign Arabs and learning 
that they control even a non-terrorist Arab diplomat posted in Washington.

Coming to CBS as well is "The President's Man: Ground Zero," with Chuck 
Norris reprising his role as a secret White House operative, this time aiming 
to stop "an Islamic terrorist," in the network's words, from taking out a 
major U.S. city with a nuclear device.

Why is "Islamic" relevant to his terrorism? Using it in this context ignores 
the enormous diversity of this religion, whose followers number more than 1 
billion globally, the overwhelming bulk of whom are not fatalistic zealots or 
suicide bombers.

CBS agreed to drop "Holy War" from the original title, "The President's Man: 
Holy War," after a meeting with activists, said Salam Al-Marayati, executive 
director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.

The network also promised to add an Arab American attorney general character 
to the movie and drop all references to religion but one reference to "Allah" 
(Arabic for God), Al-Marayati said.

A CBS spokeswoman confirmed the new title and the attorney general figure and 
said all "Allah" references were out.

She denied that the network had promised the activists anything specific, 
however, and added that script changes were underway even before the meeting 
with Al-Marayati and his group.

Latino drug lords are always an option as heavies.

With no more Soviets for U.S. heroes to fight on TV, thanks to the Cold War's 
ending, however, Arabs have become the clay pigeon of choice.

CBS is hardly the only TV culprit here. Almost from its inception, the medium 
has been an equal-opportunity stereotyper, distorting or exaggerating the 
images of just about everything and everyone from gender types to ethnic and 
racial minorities. After all, it's much easier to reach for a cliche in a 
card file than dig for creativity.

The difference is that ugly smearing of other minorities is increasingly 
balanced, at least somewhat, by positive portrayals, the result of intense 
lobbying by advocacy groups. Not so Hollywood's evil Arabs.

"Whenever they can, they blow off Muslim concerns," said Ibrahim Hooper, 
spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. "If 
they [portrayals] were neutral even 20% or 30% of the time, it might not be 
so upsetting.

But Muslims and Arabs seem to be the only people stereotyped 100% of the 
time. People point to the negative portrayals of Italians in 'The Sopranos' 
[HBO's series about Mafiosi in New Jersey], but there are 20,000 positive 
ones elsewhere."

It's time to note that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was no dream and 
that Arab terrorists are no fantasy. History and news headlines tell us they 
are every bit as real and scary as Italian mobsters. The issue is balance.

Arabs are depicted as disgusting or they're invisible.

"I'm not saying an Arab should never be portrayed as a villain," Shaheen 
writes. "What I'm saying is that almost all Hollywood depictions of Arabs are 
bad ones. This is a grave injustice [because] repetitious and negative images 
of the reel Arab literally sustain adverse portraits across generations."

Many of the feature movies mentioned in "Reel Bad Arabs" get extended 
exposure, Shaheen notes, when "repeatedly broadcast on cable television and 
beamed directly into the home." And the proliferation of "billionaires, 
bombers and belly dancers" that he cited in earlier TV shows resurface 
evermore in syndicated reruns shoveled into that deepening infinity known as 
cable.

Still true is what Shaheen wrote in his earlier book: "The present Arab 
stereotype parallels the image of Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, where Jews were 
painted as dark, shifty-eyed, venal and threateningly different people."

Americans should wage war against that. But not holy war.
==============================================
Howard Rosenberg's column appears Mondays and Fridays. 
He can be contacted by email at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com. 
 Los Angeles Times