Ferris Bueller, You're a Jerk

Jerk.

There's liberal Hollywood bias, and then there's lunacy like this...

I was flipping through the channels late last night and happened to catch The Late Show with David Letterman, just as Letterman was introducing a segment where he has an actor pretend to be Mitt Romney, under the guise of simulating how an interview with Romney might go, if the Governor were to come on Letterman's show.

This time, Matthew Broderick was in the role of pretending to be Romney. It was an odd routine from the beginning, since Broderick had made zero effort to look like Romney (he was wearing dark rimmed glasses) or sound like him at all.

Then the skit took a very disturbing turn.

[Click here if you can't view the embedded video above.]

Letterman questions Broderick as if he is Romney about his performance at this week's debate, and then asks how he will be preparing for the next debate. Broderick-as-Romney responds:

"I went out and hired some Jewish fellas to write me some real killer zingers." 

Broderick-as-Romney then drops a few other clunky attempts at jokes, insults Paul Ryan, and then fake-laughs at his own joke, saying:

"See, that's very funny, my Jewish guys are hilarious."

Huh? What was the point of all that? Broderick considers himself Jewish, so I would like to assume he wouldn't make antisemitic jokes.

It took a few seconds for me to figure out what Broderick was trying to do: he wanted to not just play Romney as the "stiff, out-of-touch, rich guy" stereotype favored by Saturday Night Live, but also to make Romney look so backwards and unenlightened that the idea of hiring a bunch of "Jewish fellas" would be novel. (It should come as no surprise that Broderick made sure to remind the audience that Romney is a Mormon.)

Never mind that Romney has spent many years in areas of the country like Boston with significant Jewish populations, and has a record of being a staunch supporter of Israel, Broderick clearly thought it would be funny to portray Romney as vaguely antisemitic. 

In Broderick's signature role as Ferris Bueller, near the beginning of the movie, he says the following as his character is discussing how he doesn't want to take a history test:

Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself.

Sounds like Broderick should have listened to his own lines from that script, because he is so entangled in his own liberalism and elitism, he can't even tell that he's not funny.