Mixed Feelings

What happens if one learns that one’s child is actually Jewish-Israeli and you are a Muslim Palestinian mother and father? And if you learn that your child is actually Muslim-Palestinian and you are a Jewish-Israeli mother and father? You love them. You love them just as much as you always loved them. You love them through the confusion and awkwardness and tortured emotions of knowing that they are not literally your biological child, but you have raised them since birth as you...

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A Hollywood Rescue Mission

A recurring joke in Argo is that no one knows what ‘Argo’ means. It is the title of a script for a Flash Gordon-style space opera, but beyond that no one has a clue. At a read-through in the Beverley Hills Hilton, a grizzled and jaded Hollywood producer tries to answer a journalist’s questions but is clearly flummoxed. What is the problem? Has he not even read the script? The point is that no one needs to read the script because no one is ever going to make the film. The story of how t...

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