Uncategorized
I’m going to miss the ‘Marty Supreme’ press tour
Lately, the internet hasn’t been able to stop talking about Timothée Chalamet. First, an account clipped a dismissive statement he made during a town hall event about opera and ballet. The next was a video of him, in China, playing an elderly woman in ping-pong. Then, there was a clip of him serving tofu from a street stand using a ping-pong paddle.
All of these moments were absurd elements of his press tour for Marty Supreme. And every piece of this has been so fitting for Chalamet’s louche and chaotic ping-pong star, Marty Mauser that it almost feels as though he is still doing some sort of Method acting.
Fittingly, a lot of this press tour has made people mad.
Take the opera and ballet comment, in which Chalamet said that “no one cares” about those art forms. In context, he was stating an objectively true fact — indeed, opera and ballet are not popular mass entertainment. Out of context, however, he sounded like an anti-intellectual who hates the fine arts. Yes, Chalamet, who went to the renowned Manhattan performing arts school LaGuardia, and who comes from a family steeped in ballet.
“I’m just taking shots for no reason,” he laughed after dissing ballet.
This kicked off a truly absurd news cycle in which operas and ballets across the country projected “We Care” across their stages in response to Chalamet’s comments, used his name as a discount code for tickets to their performances or otherwise threw shade.
As this was unfolding, Chalamet was ignoring the drama to focus on what really matters. Which is to say he was in China playing ping-pong against elderly people who seemed to generally be kicking his ass. People presented him with gifts emblazoned with “Sweet Tea,” his nickname in China. In honor of that nickname, he drank some sweet tea. He cut tofu with a ping-pong paddle.
It’s just so pitch perfect. Mauser, in the movie, is charming, yes, but wildly arrogant. He also leaves a trail of injuries — both physical and emotional — in his wake all in the name of pursuing greatness. Chalamet is pursuing an Oscar. Potato, po-tah-to.
This year, the complaints about the opera and ballet comment are not the only things that have plagued the Marty Supreme Oscars bid. The movie has been catching strays in the general discourse that has grown since Oct. 7, with a whole host of viral posts accusing the film, which is very Jewish in feel but makes basically no mention of Israel, of being Zionist propaganda.
One could rail against this, point out all the ways it is both stupid and antisemitic. Like that Marty is a fairly despicable character so as far as propaganda goes, it wouldn’t be very effective. Or that making a movie by and about Jews doesn’t mean anything about a movie’s political message. Have people totally lost the ability to watch and interpret movies? Maybe Jewish stories are in just as much trouble as opera and ballet, though obviously in a different way. They are so constantly read as a metaphor for or commentary on Israel that people can no longer appreciate them for their own merits.
Chalamet, however, has simply been ignoring the noise and having fun. The actor has become somewhat famous for his oddball press appearances. Before Marty Supreme even came out, he dropped a nearly 20-minute long surreal parody of his own marketing tour, in which he spent a video call pitching his team on ideas such as dyeing the Statue of Liberty orange.
It’s an unusual strategy in an era of constant statements, apologies and explanations. Whether or not it will be successful we will find out this weekend at the Academy Awards. It wasn’t last year, when he made sports predictions during his press tour for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic; Adrien Brody ultimately won for The Brutalist, a movie I still have not seen. (I want to, truly, but it is just so long.) Brody had a much more traditional press tour, giving interviews about the importance of his role, of the Holocaust, of art. He generally took himself very seriously in both his defense of his art, and of his Jewish identity and Jewish movie.
That’s all well and good, and probably appropriate for The Brutalist. But it’s far more fun to watch Chalamet play ping-pong against China’s elderly. And I think it’s a better way to handle the criticism, whether it’s about Zionism, Judaism or um, anti-opera-ism. Chalamet refuses to dignify his critics; he simply carries on enjoying himself. And I, for one, have enjoyed watching him do it. I’ll miss him when this press tour ends.
The post I’m going to miss the ‘Marty Supreme’ press tour appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The post UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
The post Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
The post Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’ appeared first on The Forward.