White Terrorists

Once Again, Hollywood Stretches Credulity -- This Time With 'Sleeper Cell'

Here we go again. Showtime will run a series called "Sleeper Cell," about an American Muslim who infiltrates a terrorist cell. He's an African-American, not Arab-American. The cell's members are a Frenchman named Christian, an Egyptian-American, a white rich American, and a Bosnian. There was probably a Hmong Muslim terrorist, but he tested poorly with focus groups.

Frenchmen. Bosnians. White boys. No Saudis?

Please. Who do the producers think the Marines are fighting in Iraq?

Oh, it's entirely possible that the real secret weapon of Islamist terrorism is disaffected Gauls, and someday Jacques Chirac will blow the Louvre to protest infidel cheese tariffs. It's also possible that pigs, given an aerodynamic profile and a nuclear-fueled jetpack, will break the Concorde's transatlantic speed record.

It's come to this: Hollywood confronts jihad and gives us "Tommy," a "Causasian, all-American rich kid who reinvents himself as a Muslim extremist."

Those kids today with their wacky reinventing, skullcaps on sideways, wearing their bomb belts hanging down so you can see their drawers. Yes, most all-American kids with lots of money can't see a hot sports car parked in front of a restaurant without wishing it would totally explode and like, completely kill all the hot chicks inside. If that's the true face of the threat, start rounding up the junior Kennedys and building them a wing at Gitmo. Something with a field so they can play touch football.

The face of modern Islamist terrorism is mostly Arab. There are the Persian paymasters, of course, but the blokes doing the heavy lifting are mostly draw from Arab lands. Apparently it's unhelpful to note this in polite company. Or on soundstages. It's the elephant in the tent. And he's got a bomb!

One could safely say that Islam, as interpreted by a troublesome number of Arabs, is the present problem. So casting "The Sleeper Cell" as a multi-culti group is like making a World War II movie in which all the Yanks have German names and the Nazis are redheaded Irishmen (Lileks, "Free Republic," July 7, 2005).