Jackie Mason, who died on Saturday at age 93, will forever hold a storied place in American comedy for helping introduce to the mainstream a brand of humor that was fearlessly, unapologetically Jewish. But the late comedian’s brazen style of commentary also carries a dark legacy in his history of racist remarks. In 1989, Jewish…
In the middle of the last century, American stand-up comedy became a subsidiary of the Jewish cultural-industrial complex. But the secret of its extraordinary success was that while its practitioners were obviously Jewish, their material was never too overtly Jewish. Except for Jackie Mason. The great names of the stand-up scene — Joan Rivers, Woody…
Oy vey. Jackie Mason’s apparent girlfriend was giving him some serious tsoris early last Friday morning. It was so bad that the 83-year-old Tony Award-winning comedian and former rabbi called the cops on her. The police put 48-year-old Kaoru Suzuki-McMullen in handcuffs at Mason’s West 56th St. apartment after he alleged that she had assaulted…
In 1987, comedian Jackie Mason anticipated the title of his 1996 Broadway show, “Love Thy Neighbor,” by fathering a child with playwright Ginger Reiter (best known, according to TheaterOnline, for the play “Pickles,” based on their 10-year affair). The product of that union is about to tell her own side of the story, The New…
So, what was a non-Jewish, non-Israeli Cuban doing organizing the NYC Israeli Jazz Festival, anyway? “Someone had to do it,” said Roberto Rodriguez who composes, leads and plays drums for the Cuban Jewish All-Stars. After 20 shows and over 1000 people passing through the doors at John Zorn’s non-profit jazz space The Stone last week,…
A U.S. District Judge in New Jersey recently ruled that comedian Sunda Croonquist can continue making fun of her Jewish mother-in-law. Croonquist, the AP reports, a half-Swedish, half African-American woman who married a Jewish man, was sued two years ago by her in-laws who were offended by her jokes. And just in case things weren’t…
Comedian Jackie Mason — former rabbi, self-proclaimed “ultimate Jew” and possessor of the world’s schmaltziest Borscht Belt accent — is topping the bill at Britain’s “Israel at 60” gala show at Wembley Arena. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg of the New North London Synagogue, for one, thinks he’s “a terrible choice.” Writing in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle, the…
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