The Chosen People

It has occured to me lately that many of my personal heroes are Jewish. Of course, my heroes also include Christians, atheists, and even a Muslim. Still, it seems as though the Jews have had a disproportionate influence on me. Now, I realize that they control the media and the international banking cartels that are set on controlling the world, (in case you're stupid, I'm being sarcastic) but I can't imagine what my world would be like if all the Jews had disappeared before I was born.

For starters, there's Stan Lee. Even people who aren't fans of comic books have heard of him. He's often cited as the "creator" of many comic book superheroes like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Daredevil, Thor (not the Norse deity, of course), etc. That's not entirely true, as he was the writer and his co-creators (most notably Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby - another Jew!) drew the comics and created the visual designs. To say that Stan "The Man" Lee has had an impact on my life is an understatement. Obviously, I'm a fan of comics, and my all-time favorite hero is Spider-Man.

I was even lucky enough to meet Stan on a couple of occasions (comic book conventions, to be exact). He was a real friendly guy, and he signed a couple of comics for me - a couple of comics that I will absolutely never part with, of course. Even though Stan's stories were written for a different era, and even for a younger audience than the average comic book fan of today, much of it still holds up. I reread the early run on The Amazing Spider-Man not that long ago, and the stories are fantastic. One of the reasons why Spider-Man 2 was such a great film was that it borrowed heavily from many of Stan's stories. (And likewise, one of the reasons why Spider-Man 3 sucked was because it borrowed more heavily from much later works by other writers.)

Next up, there's Steven Spielberg. Now, the guy can be a bit of a hack at times, but there's no denying that some of the best films of all time have been made by him. Even when he's not on his game, his movies are still at least interesting (like AI: Artificial Intelligence) or just plain old entertaining (like War of the Worlds). Okay, Hook just plain sucked, but the man did make three of the best action/adventure films of all time with the Indiana Jones series. Shoot, those movies pretty much redifined what an action movie is, and even recent films ape that style. Of course, who didn't cry when they first saw ET? All right, I was a little kid, but if you were a little kid and you didn't cry at that one, that was the sign that you were the anti-Christ. Oh yeah, there's also this little film called Jaws and apparently he did something called Schindler's List which inspired a really funny episode of Seinfeld. (Jerry Seinfeld - also Jewish, and another favorite entertainer of mine).

More recently, there's Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. I wrote a whole blog on his show, but suffice it to say that it's one of the few things in the world that makes me feel as though I'm not crazy. I've actually been a fan of his for some time, even back when he did that show on MTV called something like You Wrote It; You Watch It. He's a funny man, and a pretty smart one at that. His interview on Crossfire proves both.



I'm sure that I could go on, but my Jewish overlords have told me that's enough praise of them for now. (Again, joking.)