Elder elder gays tell me about Paul Anka

He's from a Lebanese Xtian background. They've been migrating to places like Canada, Australia, Central and South America since the 1850's. Anywhere that gets them as far away from the Middle East as possible. The first generation blend in, open small businesses or take low level public sector jobs and push their kids like crazy to get an education and establish themselves. So the kids speak English at home, go to good Catholic Schools, take on the smooth bland appearance of the comfortable middle class have in their new home.

So that was Paul Anka, a nice middle class Catholic Canadian boy.

As Arab as Danny Thomas.

They called it puppy love.

Personally I don't believe he would have met the height requirement to be a US Army Ranger

I'm more fascinated that "Diana" didn't get canceled -- he was all of sixteen years old, and singing about getting with a much older woman?

Different times, for sure. (It's a really fun song, though)

Massive pussyhound. Big Dieffenbaker supporter.

He was Greek Orthodox, not Catholic, R1, but yeah.

I think it’s implicit in R1’s response, but I doubt many of Anka’s fans at the time knew much if anything about his ethnic background.

He passed for Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Jewish etc. Lebanese Arabs are pretty fair skinned like many Armenians, Israeli, Iranians, Egyptians and Turkish. So they can just be "ethnic whites" if they are westernized and assimilate. The worst thing was to be Black or brown skinned like Native, Gulf Arab, Indian, etc. DL lives in a parallel universe, olive skinned Mediterraneans as long as they were Christian could gain whiteness. Jews were a tricky picture but they could be tolerated if assimilate enough. Catholic and Jewish discrimination died down by the time of Anka. If he was Muslim then that be a different story

Freddie Mercury never hid his Parsi background either. I think people just assumed he was white and ethnically British because of his fair skin. Slash from Guns N Roses never hid being mixed race and identifies as Black but because he always wore sunglasses, was in a predominantly white band and had long hair people assumed he was white with a tan. Then there's foreign people who didn't know Prince or Beyonce were black because of their light skin tone or facial features. Race is really socially informed and people see what they want to see.

Sal Mineo looked more Arab than Paul Anka and Sal was Sicilian.

I remember this song pissing of a lot of feminists back in the day. Though, if you pay attention to the lyrics, he does take a pro-choice position.

Is he dead?

I wash gonna have hish baby, ash a lovely way of letting him know how mush I LOVED him, ya know? But it fell out. On the floor. At a conshert. Show embarrashing!

R11 one of the cheesiest songs EVER.

He did it his way.

Love how he couldn't tell if Liza Minnelli was a boy or a girl on What's My Line.

He wrote that song about me. But false alarm. I was just late.

His daughter is married to Jason Bateman

R11 One of the worst songs ever made.

Even my conservative Catholic mom hated it. I remember being a kid and riding in the car with her one day when this song came on.

She was like, "Oh, really? I'm having YOUR baby? Call me when you experience labor pains for 14 hours."

I'll never forget that. :-)

Despite so many people hating "(You're) Having My Baby," it spent 3 weeks at #1. From Wikipedia:

Despite its commercial success, the song has been criticized for its maudlin sentimentality and perceived sexist undertones, and has appeared in many "worst songs" lists. It was voted the #1 "Worst Song of All Time" in a poll conducted by CNN.com in 2006.

Peter Reilly, in a February 1975 review of the album from which it originated, for what was then known as Stereo Review, stated that the song "defeats critical evaluation with the same brashly sure grasp of the popular mood as his equally dismal "Diana" of years ago. Everybody knows Anka can do better (he proved it easily with "My Way"), but he still composes and sings as if he were working on his first million and his fondest wish was an appearance on Dick Clark's show. '(You're) Having My Baby' is (really) The Worst. He grunts out the unforgettable lyrics, 'Yuh're havin' muh baybee/Whad a lovely way of sayin' how much yuh love me . . . Oh the seed inside you baybee/Do you feel it growin'?' in an Elvis-like roar while what sounds like Mantovani's orchestra swoons around him. Yet I'll admit, dammit, that after hearing it only once I caught myself vacantly humming it, exactly as I did years ago with "Diana". All of which probably proves that Anka has some powerful natural gift of communication no matter how much one objects to the message."

The song was also criticized for declaring the child was the man's, rather than the couple's. Anka defended his choice in a 1974 interview, saying, "it's not meant to alienate anyone. I could have called it 'having our baby', but the other just sounded better. It's not a male ego trip—my baby." Anka did sometimes sing the line as "you're having our baby" while performing in concert. While reviewing a 2005 concert, Dan MacIntosh of PopMatters noted that while Anka had "covered most of his career highlights", he had "wisely neglected to include 'You're Having My Baby.'"

Others criticized a line stating that while the woman could have "swept it from [her] life" (a euphemism for having an abortion, which had recently been legalized across the United States through the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling), she had not because it was "a wonderful way of showing how much she loves him". In response, Anka said the song was "a love song". He also explained in 1974, "what I'm saying in the song is that there is a choice. The libbers will get on me; I can't help that. I am into the antihuman thing, and I do understand the other side of it. There are those who can't cope, and it's not in the cards for them to have kids. I'm a libber myself, in the sense that ... if you've got to abort, you do. Some people just can't cope."

The National Organization for Women gave Anka (and, for the unrelated album Unborn Child, Seals and Crofts) the "Keep Her in Her Place" award during "its annual putdown of male chauvinism" in the media on Women's Equality Day. Ms. magazine "awarded" Anka their "Male Chauvinistic Pig of the Year" award.

"I'm so young and you're so old ..."

I'm only 17!

He's short, wears lifts in his shoes, has a ramp on the stage to look taller and wears a toupee.

Daaa daa daa daa daaa

Dada Dada da daaaa

back when he performed regularly at Trump Plaze in AC his backup band used to eat in the employee cafeteria.

I thought he was kind of sexy when I was a budding young gayling. He had a nice chest. I always imagined he had a nice, thick cock, too.

He looked like a lesbian when young just like Donny Osmond. The Biebers of their day.

Let's update the lyrics to "You're Breeding My Mussy".

The way his mouth moves in this Ed Sullivan appearance singing "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" makes me horny. I know I can't be the only one.

R28 He had those sleepy puppy dog eyes as a young man.

I'm sure the bobbysoxers swooned over that.

It was during the 50s/60s Italian cultural invasion of Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Claudia Cardinale, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, et alli, that moved Italian from the Other category and made them white. It moved Catholics from Mary worshiping Papists to the white category as well. How many white racist supremacists wished they were Sinatra while jerking off to La Loren?

It made JFK electable as president.

I use to despise him because that annoying song Bad Blood played 24/7 forever. Same with Mariah Carey and her music. The overplay of their music made me hate them, 🤢. I understand that isn't very fair, but it feels like some mind-fucking torture after a few weeks when you are trapped and can not change the station when at work, driving, etc. I get like taking up the practice of voodoo and making a Mariah Carey voodoo doll so I could duct tape her mouth.

R31 That was Neil Sedaka, you dumbass!

R32 Uh, I sang on that record, too, bitch!

R31- My point still stands. 🤷‍♀️

R32- Well that explains it then, you bitchy drama queen.

He also sang a jingle on a Simpsons Halloween Special. A freak lightning storm made the city's advertisements - billboards, giant donuts, Mr. Peanut - come to life and start rampaging. Anka sang a song to get people to "Just Don't Look," until the monsters lost their powers and died.

He does a genius jazzy cover of The Cure’s “The Lovecats”. It’s dreamy and cheesy and 70s. I heard it in a store and it was bugging me that I knew the lyrics but didn’t know the song. It was HIM!

Remember that time they tried to make him happen as a teen idol? Yeah, neither do I.

He cowrote this Partridge Family gem:

R37 his album on which Lovecats appears, Rock Swings, is amazing. Swing style covers of pop and rock songs from the 80s and 90s. My other faves on it are covers of Smells Like Teen Spirit and Spandau Ballet’s True.

R40 We did it better with "Black Hole Sun.

[quote]Sal Mineo looked more Arab than Paul Anka and Sal was Sicilian.

That's because a lot of us have North African DNA, which is predominantly Arab (according to the National Geographic DNA studies, only 3% of us are "black"). My aunt and uncle look like they could be extras in any Middle Eastern film.

Anyone know what he meant by this?

[quote]I am into the antihuman thing,

I'm 72, never heard or read the word "Arabic" in this regard until now, in this thread.

OP, you're an idiot.

I don't think anyone seriously thought Italians, Portuguese, Irish, Spanish, Greeks and French were not European whites except dumb fundie rednecks. I think it was more xenophobia, classism and anti-Catholic sentiment which made them "ethnic whites" along with Jews. Southern Italy and Ireland were poor areas at the time. White people basically treating each other like shit due to cultural, class or religious differences. Nothing new.

They were never seen akin to Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Desi or East Asian people who actually were legally discriminated by US law. Muslims and Jews are and were not seen as white based on the fact whiteness was always defined by being European Christian. That's why Muslims, Zoroastrians and Jews even if light-skinned and pass for white European will reject the "white" label because they aren't treated as white people.

[quote]moved Italian from the Other category and made them white.

Italians are white. They're Caucasians and European.

White terminology originated in Spain. It was used to distinguish Christian Spaniards from Moors ("browns") and Jews. Then when Spain became a colonial power it was applied against Indigenous people and later the term Negro came about to describe West African slaves they purchased from the Arab slave trade. Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, French and Canary Islanders were the white people in Latin America. Jews, Berbers and Arabs in Latin America were still out on a higher totem than Blacks and Indigenous peoples.

North American terminology was centered on Anglo-Nordic-Germanic descent often Protestantism. It tied to classism and eugenics especially when scientific racism took hold in the Victorian era. Blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin and such were perceived as highly evolved. Anti-Catholic sentiment was strong among the English. Irish were recategorized as "other" when many immigrants from Ireland which was a poor country at the time. It was really classism, xenophobia and Catholic prejudice at head. The Irish are the whitest of the whitest in skin color. Same deal with the Polish, they were Catholic. When Italians came many were from poor villages in Southern Italy or Sicily and had darker complexions. This played into racial panic of supposed black ancestry. Remember that during Jim Crow, many light-skinned blacks claimed Italian or Portuguese.

Black was used to describe Subsaharan Africans, dark-skinned American natives, South Asians like Indians, Australian Aboriginals and Pacific Islanders. In majority of the colonial world it was the lowest of the totem pole.

A lot of Arabs and Jews refuse to identify as white because of the historical context of it. Even if they pass for European and are legally defined as white now. Why identify with a term that was used against you?

He's a lesbian, like Danny Thomas.

[quote]Italians are white. They're Caucasians and European.

Southern Italy and especially Sicily were overrun by the Muslims in the early Middle Ages and substantial numbers of Arabs and negroes lived there. It’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be.

R50 Okay and French, Spanish, Greeks and Portuguese have Middle Eastern DNA too not just Italians and Sicilians. It's not because was overrun. It was due to close proximity to North Africa, the Levant and Persian Gulf and the mixture occured for millennia before medieval and after. Southern Europe was filled with ports and major trade centers. It was urban. It was never ethnically isolated or homogeneous. Northern and Central European tribes and MENA people mingled for a long time.

Also black people were not a heavy presence in Southern Europe unless you're talking East Africans like Ethiopians who were always present in the Levant and Gulf due to trade. Many did make their way to Greece and Rome but they were never a high number compared to North Africans or Levantines and Arabs.

[quote] Black was used to describe Subsaharan Africans, dark-skinned American natives, South Asians like Indians, Australian Aboriginals and Pacific Islanders. In majority of the colonial world it was the lowest of the totem pole.

This is true: I was a bit shocked as a teen in the 80s when reading a book about the British colonists in South Asia using the n-word with regularity.

And the tale of "Little Black Sambo" is about a South Asian youth, not an African child.

OP, we just did Paul Anka -

Southern Europeans have North African and Middle Eastern DNA but it dates far back and it was ongoing through antiquity to medieval but until the Inquisition and adoption of a radical national Christian identity. They really have little Subsaharan African DNA. Black Africans did exist in Europe but they were a rarity and usually in urban areas working as merchants or tradesmen. Some were even nobility. Moors didn't just show up and rape everything to displace the population. They were simply a ruling class and a minority that demanded their taxes and stuck mostly to their own.

Modern North Africans and Arabs do have significant Subsaharan DNA due to the slave trade and later intermixing that occured over the past 600 years. But that has little to do with Southern Europeans like French, Spanish, Italians and Portuguese.

My mom used to *love* Paul Anka & I hated his schlocky, crappy music.

[quote]Southern Italy and especially Sicily were overrun by the Muslims in the early Middle Ages and substantial numbers of Arabs and negroes lived there. It’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be.

DNA testing has revealed that the North African admixture is not as pronounced as previously thought. The Moors were more of a ruling class and didn't mix much with the locals. Think the British in India.

I was almost going to post that Paul Anka and Richard Carpenter got into a big hissyfit after a concert in the early 70s and have hated each other ever since, but that was actually Neil Sedaka. I always get them confused.

[quote]Southern Italy and especially Sicily were overrun by the Muslims in the early Middle Ages

They were not "overrun." The native populations far outnumbered the invaders.

R58 "Overrun" can mean invade and occupy.

Paul Anka shaved his chest to fit the "teen idol" model. I'd love to see the likely forest around his cock.

I'm not elder enough for Paul Anka to be anything but an oldies act, but I don't remember his ethnicity being a topic of discussion when my mom played his music in the 70s or 80s. Danny Thomas was also Lebanese, and I remember that being talked about as a bit of trivia, but no one seemed scandalized that ***ARABS*** were invading popular culture. I guess it's because they were both Christian. Omar Sharif is another star from yesteryear with a much more Middle Eastern name, from Egypt, not Lebanon, who was also Christian. I think Christian Arabs got a pass in that era.

I knew a bodybuilder 30 years ago who had a French mother and a Lebanese father. He was gorgeous and let his body hair grow when he wasn't competing. He wasn't afraid of being in the locker room naked, or to stand full-frontal facing someone.

I was the manager of the gym, so I had to pull my desire back. In another situation, I wouldn't have hesitated to offer him a bit of pleasure.

I don't even remember his name....

Omar Sharif was born Michel Yusef Dimitri Chalhoub to a Christian family; he converted to Islam in 1955 when he married actress Faten Hamama (they separated in 1966 and divorced in 1974). I suspect he was not a very devout Muslim, what with his playboy ways and love of alcohol and gambling.

Rich or famous Middle Easterners are never religious. Young rich Saudi royals party like no tomorrow. Dubai is a sex trade capital. The strictest rules only seem to apply to the commoner population. And just like how some religious lower class Americans think, lower class Muslims think their rich celebs and royals are devil (jinn in Islam) worshippers.

R64 Not quite the ME geographically, but Brunei's Prince Jefri is the classic example.

I don't think "Having My Baby" is nearly as awful as a lot of people make it out to be. It's not a song I go out of my way to listen to, but I enjoy it when I hear it, especially the presence of Odia Coates. She sang on most of his 70's comeback hits, and made them better. It's a shame she never took off as a solo artist, she certainly had a unique and soulful voice.

Both Anka and Sedaka were both big stars in the 50's through the early 60's, both got swept away into obscurity with the British Invasion, and they both made big comebacks in 1974. It's not surprising people confuse the two.

R53, if you look at the start dates of the first post on both you will see that the one you put forth started a month after this one.

r11 One of the cringiest songs ever.

r28 He looks high.

For many years, Anna was married to the beautiful model Anne De Zogheb and they had several daughters, one of whom (as noted above) is married to Jason Bateman.

I would fuck him back then. I wasn't born until 1983. How far back do I have to go to have his lil ass still sitting UP? He had pretty lips and a beautiful round hairy ASS.

And he co-wrote this song for Frank - so much better than My Way. Let Me Try Again is a gorgeous, swelling, elegiac song - perfect for Sinatra.

Celine does the best version of My Way, btw.

1983? Dude you're no spring chicken.

"You're Havin' My Baby" is Shakespeare compared to "Honey", by the talentless, grating Bobby Goldsboro, who is still actually alive.

Can't go right with lyrics like these:

She wrecked the car and she was sad And so afraid that I'd be mad But what the heck,

Though I pretended hard to be Guess you could say she saw through me And hugged my neck...

Spring chicken is some old gay man saying?

I'm handsome as fuck and hell yes, still young.

White men don't age well.

I ain't one of ya, R72.

I'd fuck Paul Anka though. He ain't really white. Or I wouldn't find him attractive.

R19, your mother’s response to that sickening, stupid, vile song was hilarious. She’s delightful.

Oh it's the ancient white fags troll, back again @ r71/r74. At least his insane ass confines himself to the music threads and doesn't infest the rest of DL. Oh well, no cure for a sick personality disorder unfortunately.

39 is not young, dear

39 is not young for a 72 year old ancient white fag such as yourself, True.

r78 you're actually just a hare younger than me. And totally insane.

White men all across this great land of our are weeping that you won't fuck us. We are SO upset!

Now excuse me, I have to go check my portfolio and review some invoices relating to my rental properties. Have fun posting from your shitty hovel.

[quote] DNA testing has revealed that the North African admixture is not as pronounced as previously thought. The Moors were more of a ruling class and didn't mix much with the locals. Think the British in India.

Yeah, no. Modern Indian DNA is not 4-8% British Isles. That’s the North African makeup on DNA in Sicily. A *very high* percentage, generically speaking.

Would you tell an American who is 8% African American that he’s white, and not part African American?

[quote]Yeah, no. Modern Indian DNA is not 4-8% British Isles. That’s the North African makeup on DNA in Sicily. A *very high* percentage, generically speaking.

r80 are you drunk? This doesn't make any sense. Modern DNA testing has revealed Italians don't have a lot of Arab blood.

Considering the autosomal admixtures and particularly the Y-DNA haplogroups present in South Italy (since the Arab/Muslim contribution was mainly through military conquest and rule, it was certainly a very male-biased migration), the main contribution seems to have been not directly by Arabs, but by Arabized Berbers of North Africa, carrying a high amount of E1b1b-M81 typical of the Mediterranean North Africa. Direct Arabian genetic inflow seems to have been much smaller, really tiny and mostly negligible even in Sicily.

The Arabs stayed in Sicily for less than 200 years. It is said to have been a military occupation rather than a colonisation. The Arabs brought many advances, making Sicily one of the most open-minded places in Europe, where Arabs, Sicilians and Normans lived together in peace and tolerance for decades. Then, everything changed. Even though the Arabs were tolerant, when the Normans from Scandinavia took power, they began the latinisation of Sicily. The Arabs were forced to convert and, like the Moriscos in Spain, the majority fled the island. They were soon replaced by thousands of people from Northern Italy, who came to Sicily and founded entire colonies in the middle of the island. That's how, nowadays, many Sicilian towns speak a Lombard dialect.

So, some Sicilians may have traces of Arabic blood, but it may be as much as Norman or French blood. The majority of Sicilians derive from Ancient Greeks, the Carthagenians and the original Italic populations living in Sicily before the arrival of the Greeks, not mentioning the next populations who occupied and ruled over the island (Byzantines, Catalans, Austrians, Spaniards, Anjou) who clearly mixed with the locals.

For the rest, Continental Italy was never Arab. Some cities have been besieged by them for some years but nothing more.

The Italians are a mixture of the original Italic populations who came from either the Balkans or Central Europe, with the Etruscans, the Romans (consider that, when the roman citizenship was given to every member of the empire (as before it was a privilege of those who lived in the Italian peninsula), from Northern Africa to Northern Europe, everyone could come to Rome, but they could settle in every area of the empire, so this applies to France, Spain and Britain as well), the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Scandinavians from Northern Europe (Goths, Normans, Lombards), the Catalans, the Spaniards, the Austrians and the French. Furthermore, those populations were mixed as well amongst themselves.

I wonder if everyone would have thought he was gay from his voice. Oh wait. That's Neil Sedaka. My mistake. Carry on.

Neil Sedaka did sound kind of fruity. Laugher In the Rain isn't a bad song.

His flared nostrils and simian jaws were mesmerising. You can't take your eyes from them.

Pre-Nose Job.

He wrote one of the worst songs of all time, "Having My Baby." He's a really shitty songwriter.

I looked up Having My Baby on Youtube because of this thread and OMG what a piece of shit. How was that abortion of a song a #1 hit?

Having My Baby was even worse than You Light Up My Life, and that's really something.

Anka was handsome! I never saw picture of his younger days. Wow.

The guys get shirts!

Nose job and dental veneers (and fake tan?) as of 25 years ago

Anka and Avalon weren't as pretty as Fabiano Anthony Forte.

[quote] the song "defeats critical evaluation with the same brashly sure grasp of the popular mood as his equally dismal "Diana" of years ago.

Oh, bullshit. Diana was MUCH better than Having My Baby.

Diana was more syncopated than Having My Baby.

That is all.

I'm a woman in love and I love what's going through me.

He was cute in this:

R92 Wow. What a complete asshole. He actually compared himself to Jesus Christ.

If I'd been one of those band members, I'd have told him to fuck the hell off and walked out.

R93, he looks like an old Italian there, the same type as Berlusconi.

It might be hard for youngsters here to believe, but Danny Thomas (father of Marlo) was one of the biggest TV stars of the late 1950s/early 1960s and indeed of Lebanese extraction and he never hid that fact. There was even a semi-recurring character "Uncle Tonoose" from the old country (played by Hans Conried with a big prosthetic hook nose and a curly greasy wig) on his popular long-running sitcom The Danny Thomas Show, in which Danny played stand-up comic Danny Williams, Lebanese in spite of that last name.

I'm surprised Paul Anka was never brought onto the sitcom in, at least, a guest appearance, as the pre-nose job Anka looked remarkably like Danny Thomas. Or was he and I'm mis-remembering?

He’s still putting out music and thinks of himself as a contemporary artist.

I cannot explain it

Uncle Tannous.

Or, I suppose, Uncle Tannoush. (--Liza)

R28 you’re the only one still alive to remember

No one cared about Paul Anka's ethnicity.

And yes, Danny Thomas made his Lebanese ethnicity a part of his act.

[quote]It was during the 50s/60s Italian cultural invasion of Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Claudia Cardinale, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, et alli, that moved Italian from the Other category and made them white.

Total know-nothing bullshit.

Frank Sinatra was already a heartthrob back in 1939. The teen mania surrounding him was comparable to the Beatles and Elvis.

Perry Como's appearances at the Paramount in the early 1940s had lines around the block. Como went on the be the 1950s highest paid man in television.

Mario Lanza was a huge recording and film star...concerts and opera.

And before them there was Rudolph Valentino. Cinema's greatest romantic lead in the 1920s.

I could go on but your claim is absurd.

People didn't care about this as much as every young and outraged person believes. Yes, some few extremists did crazy things but many did not care about race, ethnicity, religion or sexuality as much as stupid films and insane actions of the lunatic fringe would have you believe.

People weren't embracing and singing Kumbaya, but most people got on with their lives and didn't fuss over everything at every moment as the media is trying to train everyone to do now, like Pavlov's dogs. Most people had a "that's their business. I have my business" attitude about a lot of this.

I really like Paul Anka's "Times Of Your Life" (1976).

The song was written for a Kodak commercial.

Imagine the money Paul Anka earned from writing this little ditty.

R106 This is an important point. Of course there's long been an element of ethnic identification in America, especially in NE urban politics and comedy, but it's different today. Would probably take a book to discuss how and why it's different, though.

His last hit in 1983, featuring Peter Cetera on backing vocals. Peaked at #40 on the Hot 100, but was a big hit on Adult Contemporary stations, spending 3 weeks at #2 on that chart.

^ thanks wikipedia^

We tend to think of 70s music as being all-around great, but there were a lot of 70s songs that were utter shit. We only seek out the good stuff.

Oh, fuck off, r111. Some of us just remember useless trivia like that.

R111 is happy to be ignorant.

I think people would have cared if Paul Anka or Danny Thomas were Muslim and not Catholic. Let's be real. Muslims were not assimilated into American culture then. Even Catholics still faced some animosity then, but it was still more acceptable to be a Catholic than to be a Muslim.

I don't think at all that those were better times or more tolerant times. They were [italic]different[/italic] times, when the airwaves weren't filled with a trillion polarizing news channels and talk radio shows, when all information was much more tightly controlled, and when organized religion played a much bigger part in people's everyday lives, even if they weren't religious themselves. If someone could pass for what was a still expanding definition of whiteness, and they also went to church and celebrated Christmas and Easter, they assimilated. But it wasn't a more tolerant time than now.

Well, is now the right time to bring up Arab sizemeat possessing Carl Nassib?

[quote]I think people would have cared if Paul Anka or Danny Thomas were Muslim

No one would have cared.

You all keep confusing the attitudes of today with how things were back then.

Have you ever heard of Aly Khan?

Married Rita Hayworth in the 1940s. Dated half of Hollywood. He was a huge pop celebrity. No one gave a rats ass that he was Muslim.

And Omar Sharif...Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and romantic lead in Doctor Zhivago (1965). No one cared that he was Muslim.

Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson.

My granny (white trash raised in the segregated south) loved them all.

Muhammed Ali and Ellen Burstyn are both famous and beloved converted Muslims. Ice Cube, Cat Stevens, Dave Chappelle ditto

DJ Khaled and the model Iman are both Arabic and Muslim.

Zayn Malik. Sexy ass fucked up guy. Muslim 2.

And she knew who the gay guys in entertainment were (those that did not beard successfully. She was prone to believing men with kids and wives were essentially straight) and didn't care.

She still like Rock Hudson and even Liberace in her cornier moments.

How many of those people were Muslim and famous in the 50s and 60s, R120? No one is saying Muslims aren't accepted today (although in some circles they absolutely are not).

Are you seriously claiming that Muhammed Ali didn't face discrimination and backlash in his early career?

Who even knows that Ellen Burstyn is Muslim?

R120 isn't even correct about Ellen Burstyn. She's not Muslim. She's just an old hippie.

From Wikipedia:

[quote]Burstyn was raised Catholic, but[bold] now affiliates herself with all religious faiths.[98] She follows a form of Sufism, explaining "I am a spirit opening to the truth that lives in all of these religions...I always pray to Spirit, but sometimes, it's to the Goddess. Sometimes, it's to Jesus...Sometimes, I pray to Ganesha if I need an obstacle removed. Guan Yin is one of my favorite manifestations of the divine, the embodiment of compassion...So, I have Guan Yin with me all the time."[/bold][99] In her late 30s, she began to learn about spirituality, under the instruction of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who gave her the spiritual name Hadiya, which means "she who is guided" in Arabic.[99]

There's not a mosque or an imam on earth who would accept Ellen Burstyn as a Muslim. She doesn't even identify that way.

Grandma didn't give a shit that Muhammad Ali was Muslim.

She just wasn't into prize fighting very much.

I only liked him after Odia Coates. He was a hot little guy with BDE though.

I doubt that most people would have known Paul Anka was a Muslim, even if he were one. Religion wasn't such a huge topic. Yeah, it was because everyone was assumed white or Christian unless proved otherwise, but "personal identities" weren't objects of obsession. I'm not saying no one would ever know, but most mainstream talk of celebrities in those days had to do with their family life (Who are they dating? are they married? where did they grow up?) and public appearances.

Even with Prince Aly Kahn, most Americans didn't give much thought to his religion. Those were different times for celebrity watching and worshiping. It would have been like being overly concerned about the religion of Ali Baba or Sinbad the Sailor.

[quote] Even with Prince Aly Kahn

Did he hate homosexuals? Did Rita?

The turning came with the emergence of the Black Muslims in the '60s. A good argument can be made that this also set off polarizing identity politics in America.