Hollywood and its campaign of bigotry

Hollywood is picking on me.

I didn't realize this was true, until I heard about the recent uproar by UNICO and other Italian-American organizations regarding "Shark Tale."

"Shark Tale" is the newest computer-animated movie from DreamWorks SKG. The movie, which debuted at theaters on Friday, debases Italian-Americans because it includes a shark mafia whose members speak with Italian accents and use Italian phrases such as capisce and consigliere.

Even though the film actually is spoofing the genre of mob movies, and even though the sharks end up being portrayed sympathetically, this film is a wholly undeserved ethnic smear. Everyone knows that Mafia crime families actually speak Swedish, not Italian, and like crime families from other nationalities, they are pleasant, law-abiding groups that enjoy a nice round of croquet after dinner.

That "Shark Tale" follows so closely on the heels of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which depicted Italian soldiers as a bloodthirsty, sadistic lot who tortured the Son of God to death, just adds insult to injury. Everyone knows the soldiers who killed Jesus Christ were actually French.

It really shouldn't surprise anyone that Hollywood has it in for Italian -Americans. If you look at a history of the movies, it's obvious that movie studios will hate anybody if it boosts box office receipts.

I'm not Italian, but like many other Americans, I have a wide and varied ethnic heritage because of our nation's legacy as a melting pot. Every ethnic group to which I can claim some connection by blood has been tarnished by the cultural elite behind movies and TV.

Think about all the movies you've seen about World War II. Whether it's "Saving Private Ryan," "Band of Brothers" or "Force 10 from Navarone," you'll notice a common thread woven throughout them all: Germans are bad guys. German soldiers routinely kill American troops and support the evil regime of Adolf Hitler.

Watch a movie such as "The Pianist" or "Schindler's List," and it gets even worse. Now Germans are linked with the Holocaust and the extermination of 6 million Jews.

"Gladiator" started at a battle line where the Romans were about to fight against German barbarians. The Germans appear nowhere else in the movie, and are present only for one reason: to be denigrated, and further the director's racist agenda.

What's the message we're supposed to take away from all this? Clearly, it's that when German-Americans aren't mindless barbarians running around the woods in animal skins, we're all Nazi sympathizers who hate Jews. As a German-American, I take great exception to that, and think that the next time Hollywood sees fit to do a movie about World War II, it should forget the spin just for a moment and remember all the nice pretty flowers that grow along the Rhine.

In addition to my German heritage, I can trace my roots back to England. My English heritage gets just as thorough a drubbing as my German side.

In "Braveheart," we follow the exploits of folk hero William Wallace as he fights for Scottish independence from the English King Edward Longshanks. Longshanks is portrayed as a ruthless man who maintains order in Scotland through rape, through brutality and through the wholesale slaughter of whoever gets in his way.

He has no qualms about giving orders to kill his own soldiers in order to take out the Scots, he heartlessly bludgeons his own son and pushes his son's lover out the window and offers peace with one hand even as he moves his other to attack. The English in "The Patriot" display the same complete lack of virtue.

And in "U-571," the entire British contribution to capturing the U-boat not only was ignored, it was supplanted with fictitious accounts of American involvement.

Rather than celebrating the beauty of English culture and England's contributions to history, Hollywood treats us again and again to supposed barbarity so that when someone sees an English name, they don't see a person, they see an ethnic identity.

This is an unconscionable thing to do to my children, who must now grow up under the stigma of being German-Americans and English-Americans, rather than being accepted as full-class citizens in their own right and on their own merits.

I could go on. I also have a French ancestor, a nation disparaged in "The Pirates of the Caribbean," and an ancestress who was an American Indian, a race disparaged in everything from "Rin Tin Tin" to the films of John Wayne.

No matter where you turn, people have a reason to complain about popular entertainment depicting them in a negative light.

I wish it would stop.