ClaimDream

NASSAU COUNTY, NY – “There is a new movie named ‘Tango Shalom’ that I saw two days ago. The film is a comedy/ drama which conveys such a beautiful and universal message that I am convinced you will welcome the chance to see it’’, my friend Corey, a fifty-six year old successful tech investor from Great Neck, N.Y. told me over lunch last week.

Corey then informed me that “Tango Shalom’’ (appropriately titled as you will soon see) was recently released in select theatres in New York and Los Angeles and will be available to the general public on streaming platforms in early November.  

More importantly, Corey let me know that the film was playing at a movie theatre in Manhasset, N.Y. just about 5-6 miles from my own Great Neck office. “It is almost right around the corner from you. I really do recommend that you go there to see this wonderful film”, he urged.     

However, Corey out of desire, told me, to be totally up front revealed that he has been a long-time family friend of Judi Beecher, the multi-award-winning actress, singer-song writer and filmmaker who, he explained, plays the role of the wife of the movie’s protagonist, and is also the film’s executive producer.        

“Full disclosure my journalist friend”, Corey stated. “Judi and I both grew up in the same community in Great Neck, and we first became acquainted through our families”, and then, Corey added, “We continued our friendship and remained in contact since then, even as Judi’s work as a multi award winning actress, singer, songwriter and director have taken her for years at a time to Los Angeles, Paris and London”.

Still, Corey insisted that he would have loved the film independent of his friendship with Beecher. “Even without Judi, I would have loved the movie, and highly recommend that you see it as soon as possible”, he first swore and then implored.                  

As you might have already guessed, I followed Corey’s recommendation, full disclosure and all, and the next day went to the theatre to see the film for myself. And from the beginning to the end of what I judged to be a great work of cinematic art, I realized that I had made the right decision.    

Set in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, home to the borough’s large Chassidic Jewish community, the film first presents the theological dilemma facing Rabbi Moshe (Jos Laniado). Hoping to save his financially embattled Hebrew school from bankruptcy, the rabbi, an accomplished dancer of the hora, a traditional Jewish wedding dance, considers entering a televised tango contest to win the large cash prize that would enable him to save his school.

The rabbi, though, is faced with a seemingly unresolvable spiritual conflict: the dance contest, he knew, would require that he dance with a female partner other than his wife, an arrangement, though, totally forbidden by his own ultra-orthodox sect of the Jewish religion. However, the rabbi also understands that winning the contest would afford him his last and only chance to save his school.

From that introduction segment of the plot forward “Tango Shalom” expands, I found, from surprising to intriguing to compelling. Searching for spiritual guidance from clergy from religions other than his own, the rabbi reaches out first to a Catholic priest (Joe Bologna, the veteran actor and co-producer and co-writer of the film who died at the age of 82 shortly after the film was completed), to a Muslim Imam (Yasir Sitara) and finally to a Sikh holy man (Hamza Zaman).   

Hoping to help the perplexed rabbi find a way out of his conundrum, each one these three holy men proposes his own unique solution, which is consistent with the theological teachings of their own respective faiths, while, at the same time, reflecting the spiritual, moral and humanistic commonality of all three.

So after seeing this heartwarming movie of which, please forgive me, I will provide no further details, but rather suggest that you go see it for yourself, I was not surprised when, as I later learned, it has received the praise and endorsement of a cross section of leaders of the same four faiths whose fictional leaders are portrayed in the film.      

Nor was I surprised that, as I also later learned, “Tango Shalom” had won the “2021 Artisan Festival International World Peace Initiative for Best World Peace and Tolerance Narrative Feature Film Award”, at Cannes.        

However, I must confess that I was surprised, actually very surprised, when I discovered that this same year, the movie had, among the many other honors it has received to date, also won the 2021 “Rabat Comedy International Film Festival Morocco Award”, the 2021“New Delhi [India] Film Festival Award”, the “Jaipur [India] International Film Festival Award” as well as securing the nomination for Best Film at the 2021 “Anatolia [Turkey] International Film Festival”.                                                      

The reason for my surprise? All three of the countries hosting the festivals have very large Muslim populations – a demographic that a skeptic might view as being less than receptive to the film’s impossible to miss message of the universality of all religions.                                                 

Not among those skeptics was Judi Beecher, who thanks to Corey arranging a phone interview between her- from Los Angeles – and me – in Great Neck – I learned why. “You might think I am naïve”, she stated. “But I truly believe that the positive response shown [to “Tango Shalom’’] by many fans and movie critics in the Islamic cinematic community really does reflect the growing understanding and respect that followers of that faith have for Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism, and all other religions.

“If you doubt my optimism”, Beecher added, “look no further than the Peace Treaty [the Abraham Accords] that Israel signed last year with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and, having a very special meaning to me and “Tango Shalom”, also with Morocco”.  

Beecher, who is Jewish, then cited another example, which she said, reflects the new feeling of cooperation and friendship between Muslims and Jews.

“I learned that Yasir Sitara [the aforementioned actor who played the role of the Imam] was born in Iraq, and after seeing many of his family members murdered by [then Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein, fled to America”, she stated.

“What inspires me”, she elaborated, “about Sitara, who is a pious Muslim, is that rather than living a life based on his hatred of the evil cowards who killed so many of his loved ones, he has become a fighter for peace and brotherhood, not only through his art, including so beautifully performing his role in “Tango Shalom”, but also through his personal  actions… Sitara, I also learned, joined other members of his mosque to help raise funds for the families of the victims of the Philadelphia synagogue shooting”, noted Beecher referring to the October 27^th, 2018 shooting by white supremacist at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, which left 11 worshippers shot and killed and wounded seven other innocent victims of this heinous act of anti- Semitism.            

Beecher herself has long known about the evils of anti-Semitism. “My mother and my maternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors” she informed me. “I will tell you the entire story another time of how they were saved by Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and by Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarian organizations”.  

“But my mother, her parents and a few other close family members were the lucky ones. My mother’s grandfather and almost every one of her great aunts and uncles as well as many cousins and children were slaughtered during the Holocaust”, she sadly noted.     

Beecher recalled that during the filming of “Tango Shalom” she often thought of those doomed relatives.    

“I kept on thinking about the relatives I will never meet on this earth, while hoping that a movie that shows the common goodness and humanity of people of all religions can play some part in fighting intolerance and hatred and replacing them with understanding and love”.                                    

I believe that “Tango Shalom” does just that.    

LOS ANGELES, CA  – This past weekend, I was invited to be a “trainer” for the CA GOP convention for a session called Asian Community Voices. While I am disillusioned by the GOP, which has slowly become a toxic fringe party that plays politics poorly, focused on infighting, and can’t achieve real results or tangible outcomes, I see glimmers of hope for the future. 

I felt it was a good first step and I should be slightly encouraging but more importantly I needed to show up and speak my truth. Will they learn something new, break out of old habits and become a true viable opposition party to give checks and balances to the one party Democratic state or maybe that is just asking for too much? Walk before we run, maybe? I also know that enough people inside the party structure are hungry for the truth, many who are my friends and people I respect who are trying to save the sinking ship, but who are earnestly and honestly fighting the good fight. So I showed up.

Unfortunately, party leadership remains emblematic of just where the party is and has been for the better part of the last two decades, stuck in 1995 style campaign messaging. The party seems to have no clue how the brand is even perceived, and that’s the worst part. I have, in the past, stood up for Republicans and will continue to do so, but I’m under zero delusion that I’m contrarian to where the culture is. The insiders in the political party don’t seem to understand this, and are completely delusional about their own importance and think that anyone actually cares that they have some title for a brand that was beaten down by 25 points in an off year special election, when the opposition made it about the same brand they keep peddling nonstop, with no critical thinking.

I also really dislike the idea of “training”. Our segment was really a panel and I knew enough people in the room that did not need to be talked down to like they were dumb on who Asians are. My great friend and co-panelist, Jeff Wang, touched upon this simple fact and asked the question to the audience, “who are actually friends with Asians?” If you knew how to cultivate relationships as regular everyday people, all these racial barriers wouldn’t need to exist and I thought we achieved this in California. But political California Republicans seem to be lacking on regular social skills so I can fathom why this is foreign to them. This “training” should have been billed as a conversation. The word “training” comes off condescending, like I know better than you, emblematic of the political Republicans.

Asian community voices should not be about cynically waking up the dumb, but instead, gently guide people to vote Republican based on our values, something I have done in my organization, Asian Industry B2B, with business owners and those who have a freedom loving entrepreneurial bent. It should also not be about uninspired voter registration efforts when the greater brand is dying. Amplify a bad brand, and you’re actually doubling or tripling your work. 

What the GOP has now attracted in the Asian community is those who are living in the past, or those who are interested in climbing some political structure or hierarchy. No wonder the Democrats have made so many inroads in the younger generation because they involve people and were previously low on condescension, though now, that is changing as they become more comfortable, lazy and hell bent on growing their power. Yet the GOP cannot take advantage of the opportunities of Democrats failing, because they themselves are doing similar things, unable to strike a real contrast.

But what gives me hope is that so many are registering out of Republican into Independent. Because in California, the NPPs are truly the “replacement” Republican party. Free thinkers who do not want to be associated with the party, which really is the “fringe” party playing politics instead of finding solutions. If you are intellectually honest, you cannot be a Republican or a Democrat, at this point. What finally made me register out of Republican was watching the good honest Republican grassroots donors donating $50 here, or a $100 there, sometimes, their own meager life savings, and then watching that same money spent ridiculously on salaries for consultants who actually were poor fiduciaries to the campaign and cause. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this over the last few election cycles.

Right after our Asian Community Voices segment, the Vice Chair Peter Kuo, my co-panelist, posted his typical uninspired rantings on Twitter calling this training “historic”. It is this type of desperate hyperbole that turns off your average person. First of all, this is 20 years too late. The Democrats have made this outreach way back, and just now we are doing this? Second, do we even need to pander? I think issues like law and order, school choice, wildfires, affordable housing, etc., all affect all races equally. Using words like “historic” just made me cringe like I have never before. I reject this grandiose mentality – can we just be real?

Peter also had the nerve to make a quip that I should return to the party and not “sit on the fence”. That is laughable, if you look at my record of work in the community and in the media promoting conservative values. But this is par for the course. Meanwhile, Peter is symbolic of an out of touch older generation. My heart actually went out for him as he talked about not having a connection with his daughter. In contrast, I know so many parents, including my own late father, who actually took time to listen. After being around so many Republicans in my activism, I found a common thread: many had broken relationships with children. There was a disconnect because they didn’t bond and connect, and were too rigid and didn’t evolve with the changing world. It doesn’t mean throw out your values, but at least know what’s going on and talk to your kids. And this goes beyond race. This seems to be common in successful Asian families. I can certainly admire Peter’s immigrant story but this is not what we need in 2021, especially with a 2nd generation of Asian Americans who are intermarrying and overwhelmingly Democrat, breaking with their parents and concerned about other issues. I encouraged the party to start embracing things like cannabis or bitcoin, or at least having a conversation about it, to get to this new bloc of voters, who are open to not voting lockstep with Democrats. Stop thinking you know it all, Republicans.

A title doesn’t make you a leader. The current GOP leadership may look outwardly diverse, with a Latina and Asian as chair and vice chair, but after many years of poor results and no change in trends, is actually more indicative of how the CA Republicans seem to only uplift “yes” men and women. Can we practice meritocracy in a party that claims it’s all about it and the free market, and performance? Can we bring up leaders who actually have solid community connections and tangible credentials? Not titles, but true accomplishments.

Another person who attended texted me and told me to turn down my “anger”, focused more on the animation of my voice, while missing the point that she was projecting her own to me and that no one likes to be told what to do or condescended to. Funny that the ultimate response to my words on the panel was overwhelmingly supportive, because in the end, the convention goers and hardcore activists needed someone to match the anger and frustration. Once again, Republicans need to learn some humility and maybe look at results versus “Karening” what others are doing. I certainly wouldn’t have the nerve to tell someone else what to do with their own public presentations. Hey, you do you. But I’ll do me.

Both Peter and Madame Critique need to understand how out of touch they are, in general.  The biggest takeaway is not that they are bad people, but that they are focused on being accepted by this dying structure and toxic political brand. I am not here to win a Mr. Congeniality award. I have never cared about that, and could care less about shallow accolades or titles, as I have turned down many opportunities to get involved in the political parties, because the community is my focus. There’s some serious work that needs to be done, in a state I have invested my life in. And the work doesn’t start or end in the political structures or elitist social clubs.

What the GOP has become is a cult of misfits, and has self-attracted myopic types of people, distracted by warped priorities, with a consultant class ripping flesh off the dead carcass of the roadkill. What is left are sycophants who are woefully clueless on how dead the brand is, and are busy brown-nosing other sycophants with titles that mean nothing, because the structure itself is compromised and is not even the 2nd biggest organization in California. The bottom line is the GOP in California isn’t even a viable party. Independents and NPP’s are higher in registration by 4 percent, while the GOP can’t even clear a quarter of registered voters, languishing in third place.

And this is not just limited to the establishment. The grassroots are just as misguided in a dying party.  While I earnestly worked hard to get the grassroots engaged on our Facebook group for the recall election and in real life rallies, nonstop talk about electoral fraud became a quick defeatist excuse for those who are low on action, and high on rigidity, and are not even open to understanding the simple fact that our state is culturally liberal. In addition, there are many grifters who live on dead-end candidacies sucking up the money and oxygen from well meaning donors, and fake self-fashioned leaders who end up playing their own political games in the grassroots, the moment they are given a little bit of perceived power. This was so evident in the Recall Newsom campaign and I highlighted this on my Newsweek op-ed.

The fact remains that our once conservative state has had a huge demographic shift thanks to affluenza. Nowhere more evident than the formerly hardcore conservative Orange County, where the older generation is dying off and the newer generation is polar opposite liberal. Bottom line: electoral fraud cannot account for a 25 point loss in California, so it’s time we start cleaning house on the conservative side.

It’s not just about showing up, it’s how you show up. While Asian vice chair Peter Kuo is a nice guy, his flamboyant red suits and violin-playing as his gimmick, is once again a distraction from the real impactful work that needs to be done on a daily basis. It is almost poetic how in the Titanic movie, you have the people in denial playing music, dancing and having fancy dinners as the ship was slowly sinking. When Peter plays the violin, I picture Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet sinking into the ocean. The type of sycophantic hierarchy-worshipping behavior is also what I have seen in the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to infiltrate the San Gabriel Valley, which I have discussed in previous op-eds.

I had to also laugh at affirmative action hire, Latina Chair Jessica Patterson’s attempts to strip the California College Republicans from their charter status because they put out a few memes to make fun of her. I’m sorry but if you want to be a leader, you better learn how to laugh at yourself and maybe look at some harsh truths of why we are not succeeding in growing our movement. Humor does go a long way. Suppressing it is as bad as censorship in China.

Once again, we are post partisan and the GOP is playing catch up 20 years later, and now they’ve once again missed the pulse of the average person. The fastest growing bloc of voters in California are those with “no party preference”, mostly disaffected Republicans and Democrats, who don’t need to be boxed into partisan food fights and who actually want to work towards solutions. I am glad I went to the GOP convention to see exactly where the baseline is, but I see the enormity of the work that needs to be done. I will be fighting for my conservative values and commonsense solutions outside of their dysfunctional structure, but wish them all the best.

PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL – The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad responded to St. Dak Buddhist Temple, located in the 6900 block of Donald Ross Road, in unincorporated Palm Beach Gardens in reference to a possible firebombing. When authorities arrived multiple items were found burning on the Temple’s grounds. These items were determined to be improvised incendiary devices or IIDs which are manufactured fire bombs which can be created using common household items purchased from any hardware, grocery, or department store.

The temple’s video surveillance captured a female igniting and throwing a total of four firebombs over the gate onto the temple property. The female was also seen placing a fifth lit firebomb in a mailbox on the temple grounds. The suspect was identified as Mei Cheung, 46 of Riviera Beach. Mei was located, interviewed, arrested and booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on five counts of felony use an incendiary device and one county of felony criminal mischief to a place of worship.

VOLUSIA COUNTY, FL – On Ormond Beach man has been charged in the death of his girlfriend, 62-year-old Elizabeth Crisanti, who was was found dead in her bedroom Wednesday, September 22, 2021. Her boyfriend, Nelson Rivera, was also found in the same room but was unresponsive, suspected of a potential overdose on prescribed medication and sent to a local hospital. At the scene, detectives found signs of a struggle, but no sign of any forced entry into the residence, which was locked when deputies arrived for a well-being check and found the couple inside.

The well-being check was requested by a relative after Crisanti didn’t pick up her grandchildren from school. When no one answered the door, a family member provided deputies a key to enter the home. Deputies made entry and found Crisanti deceased with what they identified as sharp force injuries.

After an investigation, detectives learned that Crisanti was afraid of 61 year-old Rivera who was described as being extremely controlling and she was planning an exit strategy from the relationship. A warrant was obtained for Rivera yesterday, Sunday, and he was transported from the hospital to the Volusia County Branch Jail, where he was charged with first degree murder and being held without bond.

LEE COUNTY, FL – Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers is hoping that an increased reward and a new billboard will bring renewed focus to the murder of a young mother which remains unsolved nearly three and a half years later. According to authorities, Destiney Bocanegra was gunned down in front of a home in Bonita Springs, near Matheson Avenue and Goodwin Street, in April 2018. When gunfire rang out, the 25 year old mother stood in front of her four year old son to protect him. Sadly, Destiney lost her life in the process. She was also pregnant with her second child at the time of the murder. 

Over the last three years tips have come in on Destiney’s case, however Crime Stoppers is hoping that additional reward money will be the key to someone coming forward. The reward in Destiney’s case has now been increased to $20,000 – with $3,000 coming from Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, $6,500 from the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers, and $10,500 coming from Destiney’s family.

Late last week, a billboard was also posted in the area of US 41 and Old 41 in Bonita, asking for tips to help solve this case. Anyone with information on the murder of Destiney Bocanegra is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-TIPS (8477). All callers will remain anonymous and will be eligible for a cash reward of up to $20,000. Tips may also be made online at www.southwestfloridacrimestoppers.com or on the P3Tips mobile app.