PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
-
Culture Dropping Potato Head’s ‘Mr.’ doesn’t erase the brand’s Jewish roots
The discourse boiled over Thursday with the announcement that Mr. Potato Head products would be rebranded as the gender neutral “Potato Head.” Knowing that potato plants are hermaphroditic anyway, I welcome this inclusive marketing change. But let’s hash out one thing: I would like for Potato Head to still be Jewish. Yes, Mr. Potato Head…
-
Culture The obvious biblical beef with the Golden Trump
Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, two men were seen hauling a gold statue of Donald Trump through the Hyatt Regency Orlando lobby. Clergy, coreligionists and people with eyes for easy metaphors all asked: Where’s the beef? The golden calf jokes aren’t subtle and wry when they make it all obvious like that https://t.co/mNQzwjgGsh…
-
Culture Klingon Hanukkah and ‘Rugrats’ Purim — our wish list for Paramount+’s reboots
Mere weeks after a Super Bowl ad showed Jeff Probst, Dora the Explorer and DJ Khaled summiting a twisted Mount Olympus of mixed intellectual property, the forthcoming Paramount+ platform has announced more familiar faces coming to its streaming lineup. Because there is nothing new under the sun, we’ll be graced with a fresh take on…
-
Culture In Tel Aviv, racial privilege gets a second look
We’ve seen this before. A street scene. A young man finds his stolen bike and calls the police. They ask him to find the thief and he thinks he does. Within minutes, the life of a Black person is destroyed. It could be cellphone footage from anywhere in America. But it happened in Israel. “White…
-
Culture Why a slice of pizza holds the key to ’90s New York
David Shapiro’s madeleine, the nostalgic bite that transports him back in time and space, is a slice of pizza made by a guy named Andrew Bellucci circa 1995. Or maybe it’s a casserole, consumed in a StuyTown apartment building in 1973, part of a “reparation playdate” for when his schoolmate, Leeds Atkinson, called him a…
-
Culture ‘Jesusland’ won’t be good for the Jews. But the ‘United States of Canada’ might be good for bagels.
In a coup to graphic design sure to baffle cartographers, Andrew Torba, CEO of the far-right social media platform Gab, has laid out new borders for the United States, which he re-dubbed “Jesusland.” In case you were wondering what Gab CEO Andrew Torba wants, take a look. He posted this 3 hours ago. pic.twitter.com/kDotd9waW6 —…
-
Culture Attention Gina Carano: Jews weren’t passive, ‘gentle’ victims. They were fighters too.
Say what you will about Gina Carano, she’s a fighter. The ousted “Mandalorian” actor, who began her career in mixed martial arts before pivoting to drama (with mixed results) made this point clear on Sunday in a YouTube interview with right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro, her first since being fired for invoking the Holocaust in a…
-
Culture Sketches of Emile Zola and Alfred Dreyfus’ trials open a window to a scandalous past
History fated Emile Zola and Alfred Dreyfus to forever be footnotes in each other’s stories. Dreyfus, a military officer wrongly convicted of treason, sparked an antisemitism scandal that split French society into factions. Zola, the celebrated writer who penned the famed pro-Dreyfus open letter “J’Accuse,” would face legal trouble of his own for doing so….
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News What We Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Childhood
- 2
News This Jewish Olympian prays with her mom before every race
- 3
Culture What Carrie Prejean Boller tells us about Christian Zionism in the US
- 4
News An audiobook narrator told Zionists to kill themselves. A popular romance novelist hired him anyway.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The Jesse Jackson I knew didn’t just repent toward Jews — he became a hero for us
-
Yiddish World Confronting art and love as the Nazis close in
-
Art Rembrandt has been hailed for his love of the Jewish people — was it all a myth?
-
Fast Forward New U2 album includes Israeli poem and a song about slain Palestinian activist
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
