Lena Dunham’s dog vs. Jewish boyfriend jokes fall flat
The 28-year-old “Girls” star’s New Yorker magazine piece, “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz,” asked readers last week to choose whether statements referred to her pooch or her boyfriend.
She lists off a series of would-be zingers such as, “He doesn’t tip,” “He has hair all over his body, like most males who share his background,” and, “He comes from a culture in which mothers focus every ounce of their attention on their offspring.”
The article sparked outrage from Jewish groups and other critics.
“Just read Lena Dunham’s article. She is one of the most vile people in every sense of the word,” political consultant Lisa Boothe fumed.
But Dunham’s biggest mistake may be that her tired jokes about stereotypes fell flat, critics said Saturday.
“Lena Dunham’s real crime against the Jewish people was not being particularly funny,” San Francisco Magazine editor Rebecca Flint Marx slammed on Twitter.
“She isn’t anti-Semitic — that’s absurd. She’s just not funny,” author Aaron Sigmond declared. “There’s no punchline or point,” griped Milt Shook of Denver.
On Friday, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, called Dunham’s “stereotypes about cheap Jews offensive.”
“The piece is particularly troubling because it evokes memories of the ‘No Jews or Dogs Allowed’ signs from our own early history in this country,” the group said in a statement.
New Yorker editor David Remnick fired back, saying the ADL was “howling in the wrong direction.”
“The Jewish-comic tradition is rich with the mockery of, and playing with, stereotypes. Has [The ADL] never heard Lenny Bruce or Larry David or Sarah Silverman or read ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’? Lena Dunham is a comic voice working in that vein,” he said.
A rep for Dunham declined to comment.
http://nypost.com/2015/03/29/lena-dunhams-dog-vs-jewish-boyfriend-jokes-fall-flat/
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