New York, NY – There’s a limit on how much you can insult an ethnic group. Former prisoners of World War II German concentration camps who belong to the Polish American Congress (PAC) felt CBS-TV went beyond it.
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What upset them so much was a mean and nasty wisecrack by one of the actors in the CBS series, Two and a half Men who had the line, “You don’t have to tell me twice. I’m not a Polack.”
The PAC’s Anti-Bigotry Committee took up the cause of the angry survivors and presented a statement on their behalf to CBS President Leslie Moonves and also to Sumner Redstone, chairman of the board.
In response, a CBS spokesman contacted the PAC’s anti-bias unit and assured it that the offensive segment will be pulled off the CBS replay schedule.
In its protest statement to CBS, the PAC had characterized the slur as “a gratuitous insertion of nonessential material. We and every other Polish American can interpret it only as an attempt to insult our intelligence.”
The PAC also made it clear that those who felt most insulted were survivors of the German concentration camps and were mistreated there by the SS. They thought CBS was just as racist as the Germans by trying “to depict Polish people as mentally deficient and intellectually inferior.”
During the Holocaust, “Hitler and his Nazis arrogantly classified Jews, Poles, Gypsies and some others as untermenschen, the German word for subhuman. Their tormentors treated them accordingly as ‘Polish swine’ or ‘Jewish vermin.’”
The PAC’s committee emphasized, “it is not appropriate for CBS or anyone else in the entertainment industry to portray any people as inferior. The world cannot forget how Germans once claimed they were a superior people and a master race while, at the same time, declaring Jews and Slavic people like the Poles to be inferior.
“Since both you and Mr. Redstone are Jewish,” the PAC told Mr. Moonves, “we trust we can rely on you not to permit the remnants of this abhorrent and perverse Nazi ideology to worm its way into programs CBS offers.”
After being contacted by CBS spokesman Martin Franks, the chairman of the Anti-Bigotry Committee, Frank Milewski told him that the term “Polack” is just as offensive to Polish Americans as the N-word would be to African Americans. “We refer to it as the P-word,” he said.
Milewski also noted that some of the most effective comedians attribute their success to making fun of themselves instead of someone else. “It would be nice if CBS took that advice and left us Polish Americans alone.”
These polish-Americans are 100 percent correct. There is too much racial and ethnic stereotyping where yidden are usually the victims. Poles are a proud ethnic community and deserve to be treated with the same respect by the media.
kind of silly to compare the poles under hitler ym”sh to the holocaust, but how angry would we be if they said like this about Yidn on tv
I have a friend who is half German and half Polish—he hates the jews, can’t remember why
Polish people are the target of more hateful jokes and insults than any other ethnic group including jews. Hopefully, whoever was resonsible for this will be fired and there will be a zero tolerance atitude towards polish humor.
This CBS show is very vile, the entire premise is how Martin Sheen beds a different woman every week. So if it takes the Poles to get the show off the air, more power to them.
You just can’t make jokes anymore because there’s always somebody who’s gonna be upset. Like the recent lawsuit from a mother-in-law against her comedian daughter-in-law upset about her mother-in-law jokes.
No. 10 and No. 11: You are so hopelessly wrong, that one may honestly wonder where you’ve been hiding. Suffice it to say, that if you don’t know by now, you’ll never know.
Speak to the few survivors. Speak to anybody who lived there pre-war. You’ll begin to get an inkling of the extent of the murderous hatred that was aimed at the Jews of pre-war Poland by the vast majority of their neighbors. (To use Pilsudski as a sample of all Poles, is a sad distortion of history).
Granted, the “witty remark” on “Two-and-a-half men (and Zero Brains)” was ill advised and quite offensive to all decent people in general, and those of Polish descent in particular. The comparison to the “N-word” and its affensiveness for African-Americans is quite appropriate.
However, when the Polish American Congress started focusing on @olish World War 2 survivors, Germans, Jews, Holocaust, etc. my eyes started rolling and glazing over at the same time. This is a classic case of over-reaching, or as say in yeshiva: “kol hamosef – goraya” (whoever adds – subtracts). The “joke” is offensive now because it offends all of us NOW. Is PAC implying that in a few years, when there won’t be any Polish World War 2 survivors to offend, that it will be “okay” to make such “jokes”?
NO. 11. You should apologise to the very few Jewish – Polish survivors .
Charlie Hall : have you lost your voice ?
Granted, the “witty remark” on “Two-and-a-half men (and Zero Brains)” was ill advised and quite offensive to all decent people in general, and those of Polish descent in particular. The comparison to the “N-word” and its affensiveness for African-Americans is quite appropriate.
However, when the Polish American Congress started focusing on @olish World War 2 survivors, Germans, Jews, Holocaust, etc. my eyes started rolling and glazing over at the same time. This is a classic case of over-reaching, or as say in yeshiva: “kol hamosef – goraya” (whoever adds – subtracts). The “joke” is offensive now because it offends all of us NOW. Is PAC implying that in a few years, when there won’t be any Polish World War 2 survivors to offend, that it will be “okay” to make such “jokes”?