* The naked contempt with which many immigrant groups now view founding-stock Americans is pretty striking.
Hey – you guys hate us – message recieved. And filed for future reference.
* This is like the Seinfeld version of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. Is it for real? Do white bread Americans not read these things? Or at least have someone to read it for them and report on what the minorities think?
* Having lived on the Westside since 1964, I can tell you that the Persian invasion was detested by all locals of every group and, over time, that detestation was proven correct.
Persian diversity is plain bullshit. None of my Jewish friends ever liked or trusted them.
The men stank of cologne while they clinked from gold neck chains. As for the women, most of their own men disliked them.
Frankly, we whites never needed no stinkin’ diversity. Still don’t.
* I can’t imagine why anyone would dislike Gina Nahai. She sounds like an agreeable, pleasant person, and highly grateful to the country that took her family in when they were unceremoniously kicked out of Iran.
I’m also sure that she didn’t write her own Wikipedia page, especially the line about how she arrived in L.A. the night Elvis Presley died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_B._Nahai
I also accept her thesis that Southern California was a sleep-inducing backwater in the mid-70s when she and her Persian relatives arrived. It’s not as though it enjoyed a worldwide reputation for being the most exciting place in the world or anything. That’s polyester history.
Finally, I appreciate her dig at the overrated Charles Dickens, who was, as we all know, “paid by the word.” At the above-linked Wiki page you can find some novels that are actually good, like how 2015 Los Angeles is good.
* What would an updated version of the Beverley Hillbillies look like? An unsophisticated family who struck it rich and then relocated from elsewhere who has to deal with the local elites. Perhaps a family from Baltimore (however improbable) or Mexico who won the Power Ball. To keep it current, Mr. Driesdale would have to be a Jewish Investment Banker and Jane Hathaway some sort of SJW. The possibilities are endless.
* In San Francisco the hippie/Puritan assimilated Ashkenazi, with their tasteful historically preserved houses and conspicuously old but perfectly maintained cars, feel the same way about the new BMW driving Russian and Israeli immigrants.
* Don’t Jews always view assimilation as bad? If they assimilate, they’ll cease to be Jews in a couple of generations. Can’t have that.
* Most of the visible Iranians in SoCal in the second half of the 1970′s were pro-Khomeini. Thousands of them went to Westwood to shout “Death to dee Shah! Death to dee Shah!” and “KHo-KHo-KHomeini!” in front of the Federal Building. Americans wished they would go demonstrate in Teheran instead of jamming up traffic in Los Angeles. By the late 1980′s the Khomeinites had left town in (vicarious) triumph and pro-Shah Iranians had taken on the perennial chore of demonstrating in Westwood. Americans still wished they would go demonstrate in Teheran instead of jamming up traffic in Los Angeles.
Gina Nahai claims that “If anything, [Iranian Jews like herself] were too assertive, too proud of their cultural heritage, too determined to remain distinct and separate from the rest,” and proves her case by insulting and deprecating everyone else in L.A.. There you have it. Iranian Jews are obnoxious and proud of it. Don’t you forget that, you elderly cranky Ashkenazim and dimwit badly-dressed ex-midwesterners.
* WASPs are a minority within a minority in Los Angeles because the Non Hispanic White population there also consists of large numbers of Armenians and Persians. And than of course there are the Italians, Ashkenazis, and the Irish. And than there are the Germans who could go either way as some people consider them to be WASPs and some people do not. Either way Americans of either predominantly or entirely English ancestry are still a minority within a minority in Los Angeles just like in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, etc.
If you want overwhelmingly English stock White Americans, you have to go to fly over country.
* It’s petty stories like these that reminds me of Socrates’ saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, in this case, maybe it is. In other words, if a group or people are constantly, obsessively examining every single tiny little thing that has happened to them personally as well as on a larger scale (to their group) whether perceived or real, then….is it really all that worth it? Is that how humans really were intended to live their lives, examining every single petty thing that happens?
Really? Seriously?
From this vantage point, todays WASPS must really be the saps since they don’t spend most of their lives examining, delving into, obsessing over until compulsions develop into neuroses, etc. They just go about their lives and live, hopefully their request, to live as far away from as many of these obsessive weirdos as possible, is honored. But of course it seldom is honored.
Maybe on some things Socrates was wrong. Maybe constantly examining things and finding new things of which to examine doesn’t make for healthy and stable living on a day to day basis.
* They are also arguably the most inconsiderate/aggressive drivers in LA. And they seem to be big on fraudulent handicap placards. Just about everyday, I see Persians in their 30′s and 40′s driving $100k cars parking in handicap spots.
* There is a subtext of propriety in many discussions about cultural direction and influence. That includes a consideration of how to deal with opportunism versus responsibility.
The US was founded on values such as the importance of ethical behavior. Those continue to be acknowledged, if more these days in the breach, by so many of its perceived leaders (e.g., politicians, businessmen). Nonetheless, the deeply-held beliefs of so many Americans continue to reflect that sense of propriety. Yankee ingenuity, for example, is not on the same spectrum as opportunism.
The instant case of Iranian Jews in Beverly Hills provides yet another example of how opportunism versus responsibility plays out in the public sphere. Here are a few driving anecdotes to illustrate the clash.
A shopper awaits a mall parking space, stopped with turn signal on. Another shopper swoops in quickly to seize the spot. The first shopper says “you took my spot”. The swooper says “no, you took my spot”, while getting out of her car in that newly-claimed spot. The patient shopper moves on. The mall parking lot security guard witnesses the interchange, and says that he now referees numerous such incidents daily.
A driver on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is stopped at a light behind another car. The car ahead somehow backs up into the stopped car. The stopped driver says “you ran into me”. The reverser says “no, you ran into me”, and eventually files a police report. The matter is resolved against the reverser based on witness testimony.
The swooper and the reverser are examples of personal opportunism in action. The lack of a sense of propriety evidenced in the flagrant lying is indicative of a type of decline in responsibility.
When people are guided more by a sense of what they can get away with (e.g., Wall Street) than what is right (e.g., common courtesy and self respect), then the social fabric gets frayed. A good question for Americans is whether they have stopped to consider the implications of allowing their society and that of their descendants to degrade further by being unduly influenced by uncivilized behavior.
* Don’t dwell on the negative. The author just taught us a valuable lesson in code words. We’ve just learned that “verve” is the wealthy, sophisticated version of “vibrancy”. Now you’ll know what kind of immigrants live in an area based on which V-word people use!
* As me sainted mum used to say, “They’ll never rest until every nice place is ruined.”
* Is it too late for a new “300″ to fight them off at Mulholland Drive and keep the Persians from Hidden Hills?
* It’s like the author is daring non-Jews to dislike them. “Come one, you can say it, Jews are difficult people, I’ll say it for you. Try it and see what happens.”
It kinda reminds me of my days as an undergrad at an Ivy League university when I worked part-time at the admissions office. One of the assistant deans there pretty much came out and admitted that he wanted more liberal, secular Jews and fewer “math nerds” (=Asians) and “Jesus-freaks” (= rural, non-Jewish whites). It was as if he wanted those of us near him who fit the category to hear him and do something about it if we could.
It struck me as both a confession and a public proclamation of power.
* High trust people think everyone is the same.
* People from that part of the world have the mentality of the near-Orient and think differently. Their psychology is really not compatible with that of people in the west. People who get to know their way of thinking often come away with negative impressions of them and their culture. Words used to describe them often are variations of ‘dishonest’ or of being ‘oily’ in some way.
* I had the misfortune of living next door to a Persian Jew when I was in high school. A garish monstrosity of a house filled with eight (or was is nine?) loud kids always hanging out outside, but they mostly kept to themselves.
One day, we come home and find half of the branches from our massive, beautiful tree in the backyard sawed off!! We look over at the Persian’s yard, and see a few stumps and naked trunks where there used to be trees. THIS MOTHERF**ER HAD THE GALL TO COME ONTO OUR PROPERTY AND TAKE DOWN A CENTURY OLD TREE, THE CENTERPIECE OF OUR YARD, WITHOUT ASKING. Why you may ask? Because the pine needles and leaves blew into his pool!! When confronted, he acted like he was doing us a favor, since we can now spend less time sweeping outside. Teenager me was fuming, pushing my parents to sue and wanting to deface his property. Adult me would do what my parents did — sell the house and move.
I’m European Jewish and I don’t know a single one of us who wants to interact with the Persians beyond buying the occasional rug and jewelry.
They do however fit in LA better than any other city…
