Iranian’s are terrified. Soon, MTV will reveal some of our darkest secrets. We are not at all the model immigrant group many of us want ourselves and others to believe. Rather, we have just as many trashy brutes among as do other groups. Thanks to the Persian version of Jersey Shore, we will soon be outed.
I am not happy about this. Not because I think we could indefinitely hide the embarrassments among us. But because for many Americans, this will be their first introduction to the Iranian-American community. And I have not yet met an Iranian who doesn’t think this will be the worst possible introduction. And we all know that even though these brutes exist among us – and tend to be concentrated in LA – they do not represent our community or our culture.
So how do we address this? Well, if we had some proper Iranian anti-defamation organizations, they would be busy 24/7 trying to defend our reputation, our name and our image. But we don’t. We have PAAIA, the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, who claims to stand up for our image, but have decided to sit out on almost all issues of importance to our community.
So perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when PAAIA’s editorial staff – it seems as if no one wanted to put their name on the article – wrote a piece in which they did little more than to summarize arguments in favor and against the MTV show. The editorial stayed away from actually taking a position – it just declared that some people are against it and some are in favor of it.
Not sure we needed a $3million organization to tell us that. What many of us are looking for is leadership. An organization that claims to fight for our image should be all over this – instead of viewing it as an “interesting precedent because Americans will now be exposed to a group many have little familiarity with,” PAAIA should do what any Jewish organization would do: Go on the offensive and fight vigorously for our image and prevent any trashy minority from defining the image of our community as a whole.
Now, if you don’t care about our image, or if you like me believe that there are other issues more important than image, then fine. But if you sell yourself as THE organization that will fight for our image, then you better live up to the standard that YOU set for yourself.
By now there is a pattern: PAAIA’s comfort zone is not to fight for our image, or to fight for us at all. Their comfort zone is to play it safe and produce cute videos about how great their board members are. That’s what they are good at and they should continue to do that – and sell themselves as such. But they shouldn’t tell our community that they will fight for us, only to avoid every important challenge our community faces.
Now, to their defense, I know they are going through some hard times. Instead of selling memberships, they are giving them away for free. This became a necessity after the organization failed to even recruit 1,000 members in its first year. (The sentiment that PAAIA underperforms may be a vicious cycle which has caused their membership to stagnate). They have a high turn-over at the board, and the founding staff members all left the organization within the first 18 months.
But that’s life. PAAIA is at the end of the day well funded and must live up to its responsibility and really take on the challenges facing our community. A friend of mine who is close to a board member of the organization told me that PAAIA is planning to influence the cast members to mention PAAIA on air. I am not sure if this is true or not, but I certainly hope that it isn’t.
The Jersey shore production can do irreparable damage to our community. No organization should use it to get free publicity. If it’s free publicity you seek – then start organizing against the program. That will give you publicity, while bringing some value to the community as a whole.
In the absence of any other organization that claims to do image protection, our options are few. We can either start a new organization, or we can pin our hopes to PAAIA, in spite of its many flaws and shortcomings.
Next week, PAAIA will hold an event in NY to promote some of its board members and a few other Iranian Americans. (It will be an interesting evening, mindful of the fact that one of the awardees is from Goldman Sachs who was just accused by the US Gov of fraud, and another – the chairman of PAAIA – is an executive of Citibank with ties to Hassan Namazee, the PAAIA board member who just landed in jail for defrauding Citibank!)
I intend to attend with the hope of being able to ask them what they will do about Jersey shore. If I don’t get a chance to ask– they usually don’t permit questions from the audience – I hope someone else in the audience will get to ask.
At the end of the day, we need to have a conversation about our image – and how to best improve it. One can easily dismiss the Persian shore as unimportant in the larger scheme of things. But it’s not so much about the impact as our responsibility of not failing to act when we can make a difference. Many times, we don’t even have that option.
