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The Silverman Manifesto (2012) By Silverman Everyman Enough of this self loathing and self hating! Enough of Jews themselves denigrating themselves in public shows of comedy or books! Enough of dysfunctional families and ghetto Jews from the past! We are now living in 2012 and we are no longer dysfunctional people nor do we live in dysfunctional families anymore and Jewish mother jokes and Jewish Princess jokes and distasteful Joan Rivers' Anne Frank jokes should be thrown out the window. The Bronx and Brooklyn ghettoes are things of the past. Wake up, fellow Jews and cast off your self loathing and self hatred with these terrible jokes about dysfunctional mothers and weak fathers and antisemitic tropes that are sometimes even worse than Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice schtick! Wake up, people! We are a normal people now, successful, middle-class, no longer in the New York City ghettoes where much of the old sick humor came from. Sure, in the 1930s, those jokes had a purpose. Sure, in the 1950s, after the war, maybe some of those jokes still had a purpose. But now, in 2012, they have no purpose! Those jokes should be retired and you know exactly what jokes I am talking about! We don't live in dysfunctional families anymore and we have success stories all around, in an entirely new and loving way. It's time for Jews in America to wake up and smell the new air of happiness and life. It's time to stop the self loathing and self hating Catskills and Borscht Belt jokes of the 1950s and celebrate the joyful reality of 2012. Stand up and create a new kind of warm, life enhancing and positive humor that goes beyond the old stereotypes of yore. Rise up and rejoice, O Jews of America, you have nothing to lose but your long-suffering neuroses. We are no longer a neurotic people. Stop the Jewish mother jokes, stop the JAP jokes, stop the sick Anne Frank jokes (and books!), stop the dysfunctional family jokes, stop the victimization. We are no longer victims. We have made it. Wake up and celebrate success, joy, happiness, normalness. Enough already. We are normal. We have arrived. Leave the past alone. Where it belongs. Stop the Jews are cheap jokes; some of the most philanthropic people on Earth are American Jews: they build hospitals, museums, fund scientific research, professorships, educational initiatives. Focus on the good and the positive; leave the past where it belongs: in the past! Wake up and smell the sunshine. We don't all live in the Bronx or Brooklyn anymore, or Queens or Beverly Hills. American Jews must evolve. Be nice, all ye who are comedians and humor writers. Respect yourselves. Respect what we have become now in 2012. Stop the old, out-dated stereotypes. We can write a new chapter in American Jewish history in the creative arts of comedy and film and literature and it does not have to be Portnoy's Complaint anymore. Nor does it have to be Old Jews Telling Jokes off-Broadway anymore. Mirror the present, stop mirroring the dysfunctional ghetto past. Get past the past! Embrace the now!