Dear Ricky and Karl,
Can you guys maybe start to leave Anne Frank out of your comedy routines? Okay, some of your fans are laughing, but I'm not: why did the Holocaust diarist become a subject for mirth?
Yes, that Anne Frank, the teenage girl who became a symbol of the Holocaust. The claustrophobic years in hiding. The terrible mystery of betrayal, the horrific last weeks, dying of typhoid in a concentration camp.
The poignant way in which her diary was found, its restoration to her father, all that was left of a sensitive, intelligent talented child, all that remained of his entire family. Good subject for a joke, eh, Ricky and Karl?
The fine line between funny and offensive is one that TV comedy show producers should be able to judge. It seems though that they sometimes put as much thought into matters of taste and context as a Twittering teenager.
TV comedy producers’ taste is like Twittering teenagers’
So Ricky and Karl, enough already. It's time to grow up and throw your genteel British antisemitic snark away. In the gutter. Where it belongs.
Okay?
Dan Bloom is the Taiwan bureau chief for the San Diego Jewish World
