Salon.com > David George

Would we ever tolerate “Breaking Muslim”?

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0000

While comprising only a small sliver of the American populace, Anabaptists exist in virtually uncountable varieties. Groups that go by the names Amish and Mennonite come in myriad variations in practice. You may hear the Mennonite tradition, into which I was born (on the religiously progressive end of the spectrum), described as “the modern kind” or “the ones who dress like everybody else,” even by our own members. Still, at my home congregation, it’s typical to see men dressed in plain suits and women wearing head coverings, especially among the older generations. My maternal grandmother, for example, dressed with traditional modesty, kept her uncut hair in a bun and wore a covering on her head. She was, I gather from photographs, a looker in her day and, from childhood memories, opinionated with a hint of a confrontational streak. Reality television would have relished the opportunity to “break” young Lizzie Yoder.

“Amish Mafia”: Amish gone wild?

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:33:00 +0000

“Amish Mafia,” the popular Discovery Channel series that I first wrote about when it debuted in December, has prided itself on its authenticity: Nearly everyone in Lancaster County, Penn., where the show is set, knows – or knows someone who knows – a cast member or someone who worked on the show (often, as has been claimed to me, with the enticement of free booze) or who works at a business featured in the show. But any local, even one who doesn’t have a connection to the program’s production, can tell you: Amish guys wielding guns and sledgehammers in broad daylight isn’t a regular feature of county life.

Which is not to say portrayals of Amish criminal behavior couldn’t be true. Of course, the Amish are no more immune to vices and temptations than are any other group. Donald Kraybill, an expert on the Amish at Elizabethtown College, points to the 1998 drug bust of a group that included members of the Pagans motorcycle gang along with two young men from the Lancaster Amish community as the spark that fueled media interest in Amish behaving badly and led to the torrent of Amish documentaries and reality shows focusing – with varying adherence to the truth – on less noble aspects of the community.

“Amish Mafia”: Is there really such a thing as an Amish thug?

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:08:00 +0000

Tonight, the Discovery Channel will roll out "Amish Mafia," a new series that follows on the heels of the commercially successful – yet no less offensive – "Breaking Amish" on sister channel TLC. If you want to gauge just how offensive these shows are, substitute the name of any other religion or identity group into their titles. And that's not even getting into the content of these programs.

"Amish Mafia," according to Discovery, is supposedly going to show how in Lancaster County, Penn., it’s the Amish mob who “maintain peace and order.” I’m a native of Lancaster County and have an extended family full of Amish people. If the Amish mafia were as vital to peace in the county as Discovery suggests, someone like me – especially with my youthful strays off the straight-and-narrow – would at least have heard of these gangsters, if not have had a few run-ins with them.