Whatever the case, Minadeo creates a spectacle. Or: He coaxes the child into making a heil Hitler salute, and attempts to groom them into adopting, and even promoting, his rancid ideology of racism and antisemitism. Either: Minadeo subjects the kid to a torrent of abusive slurs like “f-agg-t” “k-ke” and the n-word. It’s unknown if he’s watched “The Chair.When neo-Nazi Jon Minadeo II encounters children on the video chat platform Omegle, one of two things typically goes down. In the Times piece about Frisch, Jonathan Mahler wrote: “That no one has accused Frisch of being an anti-Semite was beside the point: His invocation of the Nazi salute in a classroom full of high school students, regardless of his intentions, was enough to end his career.” Without spoiling too much, this very same question - of intent versus action - plays a key part in the fate of the fictional Bill Dobson.īut back to real life: In the end, after a union-supported hearing, Ben Frisch got his job back he is once again teaching at Friends Seminary. Though Peet has yet to mention Frisch in interviews around “The Chair,” this story, of another Jewish Quaker at her alma mater, may have inspired her. In 2015, she wrote a children’s book about being Jewish during Christmas time. Peet’s Jewish identity is important to her: Born to a Jewish mother and a Quaker father, she’s married to Jewish writer and former “Game of Thrones” showrunner David Benioff. (Dobson, who is also a successful novelist, has an almost cultish student following.) Where the stories diverge is in the student reaction to the incident: In “The Chair,” after the salute is surreptitiously recorded on several students’ phones during the lecture (of course), the clip goes viral, devoid of all context, and starts a campus-wide protest for “No Nazis at Pembroke.” One Jewish student, a Professor Dobson devotee, even lists off statistics about the recent rise in antisemitic incidents in an attempt to help him understand why reactions are so strong.Īs mentioned, co-creator Amanda Peet attended Friends Seminary (though well before the 2018 incident with Frisch). Like Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), the charmingly disheveled and wildly popular professor who makes this gaffe in the show, Frisch was well-liked, as shown by the ensuing wave of support. Per the New York Times: “In a commencement address, the senior Benjamin Levine offered a thinly veiled critique of the administration: ‘It’s so much easier and simpler to decide someone is racist or ignorant or naïve - or anti-Semitic - than to engage in the messy work of trying to communicate and understand when conflicts arise.’” One protest sign read: “Firing a Trade Unionist Jewish Son of a Holocaust Survivor For Having a Mel Brooks Sense of Humor is Antisemitic.”Īnyone who’s seen “The Chair” will note where these stories align. They taped petitions to the principal’s door, staged sit-ins, wore “Bring Back Ben” pins and protested. Much of the student body rushed to his defense. This incident and its aftermath were complicated by Frisch’s own Jewish heritage: Though, like Friends Seminary, Frisch is Quaker, his father was Jewish, and two of his great-grandmothers died at Auschwitz. But soon after, Friends’ principal, Bo Lauder, fired Frisch. As in “The Chair,” that seemed to be that. The class moved on, resuming discussion of math. Now, of course, any reference to Nazism was taboo. Then, Frisch tried to explain: Until recently, making fun of Nazis was common, a Mel Brooks-inspired form of humor. Horrified, Frisch, grasping for a way out, called it out: “Heil Hitler!” he said. In demonstrating an obtuse angle, he found himself inadvertently in the posture of a “Heil Hitler” salute. In February 2018, Ben Frisch was teaching precalculus at the high school where he’d taught for three decades, Friends Seminary in Manhattan.
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