NEW YORK — Arab-American comedians are treading carefully ahead of an annual festival taking place in New York two weeks after the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the organizer said Thursday.
Dean Obeidallah, a pioneering stand-up comic with Palestinian roots, said he'd done jokes about Osama bin Laden, the shoe bomber, and other sensitive topics linked to America's so-called "war on terror."
But the attacks of September 11, 2001, remain out of bounds -- as they have for all US comedians, barring on a handful of occasions.
"Our goal is to build bridges, not make it worse..., making light of people being killed," he said. "I don't think anyone's done jokes" about 9/11.
Obeidallah is organizing the 8th annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, which runs September 25-29, just two weeks after Sunday's national commemorations of the 2,977 deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.
If anyone did try a 9/11 joke during the improve routines, the festival would likely issue a press release distancing itself, he said.
Obeidallah, 41, is one of the founders of the festival and a lynchpin in the small, but growing Arab-American comedy tradition.
He promises plenty of edgy material at the festival, saying that jokes allow Arab-Americans to fight back against anti-Muslim prejudice and to address painful topics in a fun way.
"This whole thing is in a way a post-9/11 response," he said. "For our community it's almost catharsis."
Obeidallah noted that Jewish comedian Mel Brooks, one of his professional heroes, talked about finding "solace" in hilarious send-ups of Adolf Hitler. "Comedy is a great defense mechanism," Obeidallah said.
He said he'd thought the country was coming to terms with its Muslim minority until a bitter political battle erupted last year over plans to build an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York.
"It really took me by surprise, honestly," he said.
Another organizer, 20-year-old Ramy Youssef, said he had few memories of 9/11 but had been drawn to comedy after "growing up in an atmosphere that was very reactionary."
Also, he laughed: "We're funny people. We don't need to be funny because people don't like us -- we're just funny."
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