ARE YOU ONE OF THE "AZAZEI?"

There is an infinite number of scapegoats to choose from, but consider just two: Adolf Hitler and Mitch Miller.

A peculiar pairing, granted, but they do have this scapegoat thing in common. Hitler has become the premier scapegoat of modern times. The most hated, the most evil, the most death-wielding of madman tyrants. Few people -- least of all Germans -- will stand up to explain let alone defend him. Now, however, there is Hollywood's award-winning director Oliver Stone and his upcoming series on Showtime.

He recently made a Mel Gibson like remark that he's had to, as they say, clarify. Stone stated that Hitler did far more harm to the Russians than to the Jews (30 million deaths to 6 million). His math was right; his message was not. And so now Stone himself becomes a scapegoat. To all those Jews here and abroad who consider him yet another malevolent instance of global anti-Semitism.

The one thing that can be said with assurance is that everyone with strong beliefs will need a good, solid scapegoat at one time or another. To help the world better realize how their honest beliefs are under dishonest attack. One can only imagine what it would be like to have a Sunday morning network interview featuring scapegoats Oliver Stone, Mel Gibson and Eli Wiesel; sparked with remote comments from the Holocaust-denying President of Iran and Albert Speer Jr (son of Hitler's munitions minister who after the war married into my family living in another Hollywood-scapegoated narrative: Corleone, Sicily).

A digital maelstrom of Azazei all compacted into 60 of the most teratogenic minutes on network television!

There is evil fun in projecting the splash of Washington punditry following such a program. In contrast, there is no fun in reporting some of the reactions to the death of 99-year-old Mitch Miller. His popular sing-along network shows in the early 60s may have been the last time America gathered together in families to savor a mythical Norman Rockwell America. Now, often reviled as that corny hypocritical age of phony moral values which today's cool generations can rightly snicker at (see films like "Pleasantville" for snickering details).

Mitch will be remembered by some (as Hitler is by all) as the goat for the "iniquities" fellow millions at the time participated in gladly. Now, conveniently, those millions can look back with rolled eyes and say: "Me? No, not me!"