Dear Commons Community,

In the past few days, there have been a number of reports of celebrities and others making comments that are at the least  incendiary and at the worst,  prejudicial, bigoted and biased.

Here are examples:

The actress, Susan Sarandon, called Pope Benedict XVI a “Nazi” because of his membership in a Hitler Youth organization, during an interview at the Hamptons Film Festival in New York on Saturday

HBO’s Bryant Gumbel likening  NBA Commissioner, David Stern to “a slave owner, whose bigger priority is to demean  players… Stern’s version of what’s been going on behind closed doors has, of course, been disputed. But his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys.”

A substitute teacher, Patricia McAllister,  at a recent Occupy Wall Street rally in Los Angeles said, “I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve … need to be run out of this country.”

Without a doubt we are living in a tense time but we don’t need any of the above.  These words and epithets do not help and can only be interpreted as trying to hurt “others”.

Tony