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Here is an amazing YouTube video that defies belief. It is of an Iranian professor giving a lecture to students on the hidden meaning of the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Not only does the sheer idiocy of his premise fair take your breath away, but all the statements of fact underlying his idiotic premise are dead wrong.
He makes the case that the Tom and Jerry cartoons were made by the Jewish Walt Disney.
First, the Tom and Jerry cartoons were made by William Hanna & Joseph Barbera (Hanna Barbera), both good catholic boys.
Second, not only was Walt Disney not Jewish, he probably had more than just a little touch of the anti-Semite on him. According to Jay Epstein, in his great book The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood, Walt Disney always referred to the heads of the other Hollywood studios as “The Jews.” (BTW, this is a great book if you want to learn how Hollywood really works, and are interested at all in the history of the movie biz.)
The Iranian professor has conjured up his ‘scholarly’ theory that the ‘Jewish’ Walt Disney developed the Tom and Jerry cartoons to make Europeans overcome their distaste for mice. Why mice? Because the Germans had referred to the Jews as “dirty mice.” His theory is that since the Germans did this, Europeans connected dirty mice with Jews. The ‘Jewish” Walt Disney then made these cartoons about a cute, clever mouse to make mice, and by extension Jews, more acceptable to Europeans.
Unbelievable!
The most troubling aspect of this whole thing is not just the idiocy, but the seriousness of the students as they furiously take their notes.
A hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for this one.
[youtube]40VFcJTIduw[/youtube]

11 Comments

  1. Oh my. One wonders what sort of hidden agenda he’d come up with for Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner… Or Sylvester and Tweety Bird…
    As for mice, he obviously doesn’t know his Mickey from his Jerry.
    Yeah, those students busy taking notes are the most scary part of the clip.
    Real scary.
    Cheers–
    MRE 

  2. Did you notice that the male students all sit in the front and have desks, while the few female students are lined up against the back wall and have no desks? At least they have chairs!
    Scary indeed.
    Yep, I noticed. So did MD.
    And it is scary.  Makes me wonder what other nonsense they’re teaching that someone hasn’t captured on video. 
    Cheers–
    MRE 

  3. Sir thanks that..what other nonsense ?
    We may laugh at them and are rightfully amused and scared BUT looking closer to home there are Bush and Blair par example who ask ‘God’ for ‘his’ help in waging war and all manner behaviours all sanctified by “God” a ‘voice’ they hear within their biological brain that supposedly comes from without to within..or is there all the time given its omnipotency !
    I’ve lived in both Buddhist and Benedictine Monasteries and adore ritual(yet am a Darwinian quite obviously) BUT truthfully any person in this day and age who believes that when we die..well we don’t really die, and not in the thermodynamic sense…first law, but that consciousness goes on is truly lacking a few screws in the rationality dept.
    I adore myths but if a person believes a 2000 yr old myth that apparently wasn’t even started to be collated until many 100 years after the death of the main protagonist then please have a squizz at Alan Dundes Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore. Also just STOP and have a look around;all this majesty of nature, this exhalted profundity, the complexity of the human brain etc etc etc etc
    Miracles are we and live within a vast and endless ocean of such-like.
    The absolute immensity of this doesn’t mean when we die we don’t consciously die..thats gibberish and anybody who believes that is unquestionably thick and more than a little lacking in rationality and logic and i dare use the word stupid as offensive as it might be and nodoubt IS. A spade is sometimes a spade.
    Tolerance of certain things is SOMETIMES a good thing.
    Tolerance of all things and thought processes, i.e. beliefs that could be used to kill off OUR ENTIRE species are NOT such things for completely obvious reasons.
    People are always going on about NOWNESS ETC to cut through the discursive thought process (eat paleo, sunlight, bit of walking and one doesnt have this problem of course) and appreciate what we have. If a believer, YAAAAY, in an afterlife or soul etc were truly to embrace that we are smart yet tragic simians and this is a one shot affair it makes the poignancy and immensity of this life beyond breathtaking and not even solely cos we die..simply cos we don’t know when that death occurs.
    So lets laugh at the Mullah but remember we are much the same.
    Secular nations give more proportionally than non sec nations. One doesnt need a deity to be good, decent or kind..quite the opposite as it happens..quite quite quite the opposite
    Hi Simon–
    I’m afraid, my friend, that I’ll have to disagree with you on this one.  Not necessarily on your take on the situation, but on your intimation that anyone who might be religious or who might believe in life after death is a drooling idiot.  Two of the smartest people I know are devoutly religious while many other smart people I know aren’t particularly religious.  The problem is that life after death is a matter of faith, just as no life after death, i.e. when your dead, your dead, is a matter of faith.  No one any of us knows has come back to tell.  None of us can apprehend (to use Kant’s word) the afterlife, so no one really knows.  You don’t have the faith that anything except eternal sleep awaits us; others aren’t so sure.  But, in my opinion, one’s faith doesn’t have anything to do with being smart. 
    And to equate the religious beliefs of Westerners (whose religions have gone through the Enlightenment and Reformation) to those of the fundamentalist Islamic clerics who would have us all put to the sword given the opportunity is, in my opinion, a little off base.
    Cheers–
    MRE 

  4. Scary is this:
    The producing studio of Tom & Jerry cartoons and the originator of them is a fact that is easily established. easily is an understatement. Yet, this basic fact is misrepresented and will likely be repeated and believed in Iran as if Muhammed himself had uttered it.
    Ditto Walt Disney’s religious heritage and beliefs about people of other heritages. The old story goes that his dying words were “Don’t let the Jews have it,” speaking of WDP.
    Perhaps, since WD is the father of mass filmed animated entertainment, he is the creator of all animated entertainment. And since he died very rich and in the movies, he is an honorary Jew?
    Ignorance is one thing. Willful distortion is another.
    Hi Max–
    I wonder which it is in this case: ignorance or willful distortion.  It’s true that this professor could have easily taken the time to find the truth in this situation, but perhaps not too long ago he was one of the students scribbling away and is merely repeating what he himself was taught.  In either case it is sad and a little dangerous.
    Best–
    MRE 

  5. Without any perspective what can those students do? They are presuming that the professor did some real research, and did not make it up.
    This is one of the reasons why in Western universities students are required to write papers that require a certain amount of research; firstly that you learn to do it for yourself, and secondly, that you might discover that somebody else’s research was faulty, thereby correcting the general knowledge.
    I wonder if these students will be required to investigate the prof’s claims?
    Heck, the only reason I’m low carb is that after fifteen years of my personal failure on high carb/low fat and my general feelings of malaise, I was desperate enough to start research on alternative ways of eating. Like so many, I thought the mainstream medical profession knew what they were talking about!
    Hi LC–
    How true.
    Maybe in 15 years these students will figure out that their prof is full of it.
    Cheers–
    MRE 

  6. loool
    i didn’t see any girls standing as one of you blokes mentioned. : P
    i’m birtish
    but i can tell if something smells fishy!
    you probably wanted to make an excuse about iranians, who ever mentioned that they teach pathetic nonesense : P
    this iranian professor looks friendly
    and the girls are seated and comfotable hehe 😛
    looooool you’re so fussy
    ”the university is out of tables
    Sorry ladies but hey ofcourse we got chairs for you to sit on”
    what’s so scary about that mate!!!
    looooool hehe
    Be a man and not drama queen 😛
    BYE!

  7. Oh, by the way, any of you speak arab? Otherwise you’re relying on the translation that can be made by anyone with a real “hidden agenda”……hahahahaha, that question simply pop up in my mind after reading this.
    Be happy

  8. Imi plac la nebunie desenele cu Tom and Jerry, l-eam urmarit decand eram mica, am 19 ani, si cateodata daca le prind mai ma uit putin, le ador decand aram micaa!!! am si o multime de CD-uri cu e, si i le dau surori mele ca sa se uitee!!! Va pup pe totii!!!

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