“We’ve always had a nagging sense that we needed to go back and tackle this topic.”
Las Vegas, August 30 – A duo of prominent stage magicians known for their outspoken stances on political issues and for their vocal support of skepticism toward many widely-held beliefs have announced they will produce a once-off revival of their Emmy-nominated TV show arguing for skepticism of those notions, with the special episode focused on the disingenuous, distorted, and outright false claims behind the Palestinian national movement.
Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller, one of the most famous magic acts in history, issued a press release today to the effect that “Penn & Teller’s ‘Bulls**t!'” would come back for a special one-time, two-hour episode to examine the common misconceptions, myths, and falsehoods peddled by advocates for the Palestinian cause, aiming to demonstrate that support for such a cause keeps millions of people stateless and miserable, perpetuates violent conflict, discourages a peaceful resolution of Arab-Israeli differences, and draws precious international resources away from where they are actually needed.
“I have to say our biggest regret, in terms of the topics we took on in our show, was not devoting attention to the Palestinian cause,” said Jillette, referring to the seven-year run on the Showtime cable channel that ended in 2010. “Teller and I shifted our emphasis when the run ended, but we’ve always had a nagging sense that we needed to go back and tackle this topic. It’s a source of tremendous bulls**t, after all.”
Specifically, Penn and Teller aim to shine a critical lens on the notion of Palestinian nationhood, the historicity of Palestinian claims to indigenous status, Palestinian denial of a Jewish connection to the Holy Land, the misleading application of terminology such as “occupation” and “genocide,” and numerous other features of Palestinian advocacy. “We’re not even going to spend a lot of time on the violence and intimidation that characterize so much of pro-Palestinian rhetoric, especially on college campuses, but that will get a mention, because it has to,” explained Jillette, to nods from Teller. “Millions of people are walking around with this stupid image of Palestinians as these poor native victims of imperialism, but it’s a load of bullsh**t, and the more it spreads, the farther the world gets from the possibility of resolving this conflict peacefully.”
Whereas the original series episodes ran 28-30 minutes each, the special revival episode will run four times as long. “There’s enough material to make it ten hours if we wanted, and we wouldn’t cover the same ground at any point,” noted Jillette. “But that would be overkill, so we’re going to cap it at 2 hours.”
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Read The Haj by Leon Uris. The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz and The Israeli Solution by Caroline Glick.