32 | OCTOBER 15 • 2020 

CHICAGO 7 AND 
SOMETHING WEIRD
The Trial of the Chicago 7, an orig-
inal Netflix film, begins streaming 
Oct. 16. It opened in a few theaters 
on Sept. 28 (to be “Oscar-eligible”) 
and has received mostly great 
reviews. 
The film was directed and writ-
ten by Aaron Sorkin, 59 (A Few 
Good Men). In 1968, Chicago’
s 
Mayor Daley determined that no 
anti-Vietnam War demonstrators 
would get near the site of the 
Democratic National Convention. 

The police got carte blanche to 
beat and/or arrest anti-war demon-
strators. All this was later called “a 
police riot” by a blue-ribbon, non-
partisan commission. Nonetheless, 
the Nixon Justice Dept. made the 
political decision to charge (1969) 
a group of anti-war figures with 
conspiracy to riot. 
Here are some Jewish side-
lights: Three defendants were 
Jewish: Abbie Hoffman (Sacha 
Baron Cohen, 48), Jerry Rubin 
and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins, 
30). The main defense lawyers, 
William Kunstler and Leonard 
Weinglass (Ben Shenkman, 
51), were Jewish. The trial judge, 

Julius Hoffman, was Jewish. 
During the trial, Abbie cried out in 
court: “You [Judge Hoffman] are a 
‘
shande fur de Goyim’
 [“disgrace 
in front of the Gentiles”]. You would 
have served Hitler better.” Five 
defendants were convicted on 
the conspiracy charge. Their con-
victions were reversed on appeal 
(partially because the judge was 
so biased). After the trial, Weiner, 
now 81, worked for the ADL and 
was active in protests on behalf of 
Soviet Jewry.
I wondered how the Proud 
Boys, the all-male, far-right group 
that featured prominently in the 
first presidential debate, got its 
name. I found out it was named 
by Gavin McInnes, the group’
s 
co-founder. To quote the Southern 
Poverty Law Center, “McInnes 
plays a duplicitous rhetorical game: 
rejecting white nationalism and, in 
particular, the term alt-right while 
espousing some of its central 
tenets.” It’
s fair to call McInnes an 
antisemite, homophobe, racist and 

anti-feminist. 
I was surprised to find out that 
the Proud Boys name comes from 
the song “Proud of Your Boy.” It 
was originally written for Aladdin, 
the 1992 animated Disney musical, 
but wasn’
t included in that film. 
The tune got a cult following in the 
mid-1990s, and it was included in 
the 2011 Broadway stage version. 
Aladdin sings the song, and, in very 
simple terms, he expresses his 
wish that his mother would some-
day be proud of him. 
McInnes heard the song and 
came to the bizarre conclusion that 
Aladdin was apologizing for being 
a boy (!) — which he thought was 
wrong. From that weird begin-
ning, there is a now a major hate 
group “kind of” named after a 
song written by two Jews (Alan 
Menken, 71, and the late Howard 
Ashman, who was gay). “Proud” 
was first sung on Broadway by 
Adam Jacobs, 40. He’
s a bigot’
s 
nightmare: a Jewish father and a 
Filipino mother. 

NATE BLOOM
COLUMNIST

Scene from The Trial of the Chicago 7

SCREENSHOT

Arts&Life

celebrity jews

