Wendie Malick, Just Shoot Me

I was recently in a Starbucks near Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a large Arab-American population. A sizeable group of old men were sitting around loudly shootin’ the shit in what sounded like Arabic. I don’t speak the language, but I made out ‘Discovery channel’ and similarly mundane phrases.

Then the conversation shifted to politics, and what little snatches of conversation I heard sounded like the paranoid Arab street personified. They tossed out ‘CIA,’ ‘CID’ and ‘MI6‘ in short order. They got into a heated discussion over what sounded like global politics. None of the genuinely friendly, genuinely obese Midwesterners in the store paid them any mind. It was in stark contrast to all the stupid incidents of people calling the cops after overhearing someone merely calling his mother in Bengali or listening to ‘London Calling’ or speaking Arabic with friends.

It’s unlikely that someone will pull a flying-while-brown in a metro area with this many Arabic speakers. In a Midwestern metro so identified with steelworkers and Motown, I found this strangely comforting.

Here’s a list of celebs you may not realize are Arab-American, including actors Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener and Wendie Malick; Tom Shadyac, who penned Evan Almighty; Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana; White House press gaggle curmudgeon Helen Thomas; Doug Flutie and Jeff George, NFL quarterbacks; and Bobby Rahal, Formula 1 driver.