Posted on 12/14/2001 5:35:30 PM PST by wimpycat
...Voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo... Thanks for the great contribution you've made to America!
Other well-known Americans born in 1933 according to The World Almanac include F. Lee Bailey, Michael Dukakis, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Louis Farrakhan, Dianne Feinstein, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Larry King, George Mitchell, Ann Richards, Louis Rukeyser, and Pete Wilson.
I don't know if babies born in 1933 were more likely to grow up as leftists, or if The World Almanac is simply more likely to consider someone noteworthy if they lean left. I don't count Falwell or Rukeyser as leftists. I'm not sure where Pete Wilson belongs, other than in obscurity.
Wow! There are Irish-Americans, Greek-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Arab-Americans, and the rest are what Archie Bunker referred to as "regular" Americans! LOL!
MOST OF THESE PEOPLE ARE CHRISTIAN, NOT MUSLIM AND THEIR FAMILIES HAVE BEEN AMERICAN PROBABLY LONGER THAN HALF THE FAMILIES OF THE PEOPLE ON THIS THREAD AND THEY'RE JUST AS AMERICAN AS I AM AND THEY DIDN'T REFER TO THEMSELVES AS ARAB-AMERICANS--CASEY KASEM DID!
YES I AM YELLING! I DON'T APPRECIATE PEOPLE CASTING ASPERSIONS ON THESE AMERICANS BECAUSE OF THEIR ETHNIC ORIGIN, MANY OF WHOM WE'VE ALL KNOWN AND LOVED FOR YEARS AND YEARS!
Paula Abdul - The bubble gum hit machine from the early 1990s. She had huge success as a singer, dancer, and choreographer from 1988 to about 1995. She has cooled off since then. The most frequently "found" biography says her is father is not Jewish and her mother is a Sephardic Jew. She married a religious Jewish guy in a ceremony that got wide publicity, but the marriage lasted just 17 months. Her father, most bios say, is an Arab and she is cross-listed on Casey Kasem's ("America's Top 40") web list of famous Arab Americans (others Ralph Nader, F. Murray Abraham, Danny Thomas, Paul Anka, former Senator Spencer Abraham and Casey, himself).
However, there is something odd about Abdul's background. A Canadian visitor tells us that a Canadian Jewish paper says her father is a Sephardic Jew and her mother an Ashkenazi Jew. And her mother has an Ashkenazi last name. She may be "all Jewish"; but she has no interest, for whatever reason, in clarifying her background.
Little update: Several visitors have told us they have seen a profile of Harry Abdul, her father, in the Jewish press and that he is a Sephardic Jew. Abdul may hold the record for varying descriptions: Syrian and Brazilian (where her father lived); French Canadian (her parents lived in Quebec); Arab; Jewish. Anyway, we are pretty sure she is just plain Jewish.
Little note--Casey has the interesting problem of defining "who is an Arab?" Funny, huh? Anyway, Casey does not count famous Jews from Arab countries as Arabs. However, he does include persons of "half Jewish"/"half Arab" background like "he thinks" Abdul is. F. Murray Abraham is, by the way, half Italian Catholic. Except for Casey, all the famous persons listed above are, interestingly enough, Christian Arabs--a small minority in the Arab world; but they form a substantial portion of the Arab community in the United States and most Arab American "celebrities" are Christian Arabs--usually from Lebanon. Casey, however, is a member of the Druze sect. A sect that many Muslims view as "heretics". Druze who live in Israel have pledged their loyalty to Israel and serve in the Israeli army. Christian Arabs have their own issues and problems with the Muslim majority in the Arab countries where they live. The world is a very complex place.
Of the four Moslem Arabs doctors in my area, (none of which are related.) All four lost their medical licenses, for bizarre behavior and poor medical skills.
I am sure that there are fine Moslem-Arab-Americans, but I haven't come across any yet. Doesn't mean they are not there.
They are Americans. When are they required to do something? Where is it in the Constitution? Does the following describe you (From James Jabara: Hero ) :
Jabara stood out among his group of fighter pilots almost as much as if he really had been a Knight of yore on a quest for the grail. Veteran of over 100 European missions flown in a P-51 before he was twenty, he had a very hot start in Korea when in weeks he downed four MiGs, only one short of the total necessary to become an 'ace'. But instead of resting on an accomplishment in advance of any other pilot in the war, Jabara was worried about a 'dry spell' that had lasted almost a month.For more : Google Search of James Jabarasnip
The mission of May 20 was no milk run. About five p.m. two flight of Sabres, twenty-eight planes, engaged fifty MiGs near Sinuiju in northwest Korea. Because the Sabres dropped their wing tanks when entering battle to achieve better aerodynamics, fuel limitations meant battles seldom lasted over ten minutes. Jabara's time was busy.
His initial problem was that one of his wing tanks failed to release, requiring him to fly with both hands on the stick. The Air Force rule was that in such a situation a pilot was to disengage and return to base. Jabara instead attacked a group of three MiGs and got on the tail of one of them. No evasive maneuver would shake the American pilot and the MiG eventually took three machine-gun bursts in the fuselage and wing. The enemy plane did two violent snap rolls, began to smoke, then to belch flames and fell into an uncontrolled spin. Jabara and his wing man saw the pilot bail out and went into a tight 360 degree turn to follow the plane all the way down to confirm its destruction. "All I could see of him was a whirl of fire," said Jabara. "I had to break off then because there was another MiG on my tail." With no time to think about having become America's first jet ace, Jabara accelerated his airplane back into the battle above him. But as he reached 20,000 feet, he noticed a difficulty perhaps more serious than the drag of his wing tank. His companion had gotten diverted by enemy fire and was no longer with him. Fighting in pairs was essential in jet fighter battles, as the speed and g-forces in aerial maneuver were so great that the attacker had to concentrate fully on the target and rely on the wing man to cover him and warn of other planes approaching. The rule was that if you were separated from your wing man you disengaged and returned to base. Jabara instead attacked another group of MiGs.
Whatever titles are appropriate, however, what is remarkable is that for Jabara May 20 wasn't a terribly unusual day. It was his sixty-third Korean mission of an eventual 163: he was to have two other days when he was to down two planes, and would become in that war a triple ace. He won a Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second highest decoration, on May 20, but he was to add a silver star and oak leaf cluster to that for repeat performances. He earned a stateside leave for a publicity tour which he did not want, and media attention that had not been the object of his quest. He wanted to return to his canopied cockpit and carry on his business as soon as his back muscles recoved from the strain of in-flight maneuvers. "I can hardly sit down," he told reporters who met him in Japan on his way home to Wichita, "my fanny is so sore." They gave him a press biography form then containing the question, "Anything that might be of news interest?" Jabara wrote, "None".
snip
"I don't want to sound corny, or like a hero, or a flag-waver, or war monger. But I think there is something we have to fight back at, or it will destroy us. It's something that used to fly Messerschmidts over Europe, and flies MiGs over Korea. Call it Fascism, Nazism or Communism, its something that can't live with freedom. My children, and your children, will not be allowed to grow up in peace if it grows stronger . . . I just want to clobber a few more MiGs in Korea --- before they clobber all of us --- in Wichita. " Jabara turned down job offer from aircraft firms at many times his Air Force salary, and once called his own family "imperialists" because they concentrated on their business instead of volunteering for military duty. It was patriotism that drove him hardest.
While serving on the USS MEREDITH in the Solomon Islands, the ship was struck by a massive Japanese air raid and rapidly sunk. Naifeh, lieutenant, junior grade, worked for two days and nights to locate his wounded shipmates and place them aboard life rafts. On the third day, he died of exhaustion after fighting off shark attacks and rescuing many shipmates. Naifeh was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and the Purple Heart for his heroics.
Those two alone have done more than probably everybody in this little thread that wants to try and pull the leftist wool over our eyes by somehow saying that these Americans are different than you and I because of the color of their skin. I'm sure your fans of affirmitive action as well, because you know black Americans need a step up, because they are not as good as white Americans.
People can make all the little leftist/racist comments they want, but when you go trashing American heroes, you went a little bit too far.
I'm not, I've had Syrian and Lebanese roommates, priests, friends. I always thought they were as common as Italians or Greeks or Germans. I think everyone knows a lot of Lebanese and Syrians but they don't think of them as Arabs. They're just typical white people you see anywhere, which is one reason it seems strange foreign Arabs are crying racism ---they're white.
Keep on yelling wimpycat!
Glad to see somebody else tired of people bashing their fellow Americans, or saying they are different, because they happen to be a little darker than most. It's this same little liberal lie that has kept affirmative action alive and well.
We're Americans. It's too bad some people are too short-sighted to see that.
According to the New York Times article dated 11/1/98, Abraham is Orthodox Christian, not Catholic. Funny, I always assumed he was Jewish.
Maybe Paula Abdul doesn't know what she is. Or maybe she wants to be like Yul Brynner, who told wild tales about his origins, but to this day, nobody knows where he came from.
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