We, the aggrieved, protest
It comes as no surprise that Arab - Americans are protesting their portrayal on Fox's hit TV series "24." If a Muslim-looking fellow lands airtime in Jack Bauer's fictional universe, you can bet he's planning to wipe the United States of America off the face of the earth, and posthaste.
In last week's episode, a man named Abu Fayed detonated a "suitcase nuke" outside Los Angeles, killing 12,000 people. The "good" Arab on the show, Hamri Al-Assad , turns out to have beheaded some American soldiers in a prior lifetime.
The fact is, you can't put out a hit movie or TV show these days without ruffling the tail feathers of some demographic cohort. Late last year, what remains of the Mayan people in Guatemala, really really objected to their portrayal in Mel Gibson's recent movie, "Apocalypto." One activist decried Gibson's "offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans."
Yes, it's true that Mayan priests did decapitate sacrificial victims and yank their still beating hearts from their chests, as Gibson gruesomely depicted. But responsible archaeologists now believe this is a nasty habit the Maya picked up from the Aztecs. Maybe Mel will clear that up in the sequel.
The hit movie "The Da Vinci Code" was likewise a magnet for hurt feelings. Observant Christians bridled at the suggestion that Jesus Christ may have had a social life and thus sired children in an extant family line. The shadowy, semi-secret society Opus Dei objected to being characterized as a shadowy, semi-secret society. And the seldom-heard-from National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation vigorously protested Paul Bettany's portrayal of Silas, the deranged, masochistic albino monk.
If I sound indifferent to these special pleadings, I am. Why? Because I have my own grievances. Look how people like me are portrayed in popular culture! Take journalists, for a start. They are either adulterous, chain-smoking, drunken bastards (Clint Eastwood in "True Crime"); untrustworthy scum who read memos upside-down on your desk (Sally Field in "Absence of Malice"); or bow-tied bum - kissers who think their newspaper is the center of the universe (Spalding Gray in "The Paper") .
I fall into yet another category cruelly traduced by the pop - cult moguls. How do you think it feels, trying to raise children in the suburbs, and seeing yourself portrayed on film by Greg Kinnear , the pasty white husband in "Matador" and "Little Miss Sunshine"? Who the heck is Greg Kinnear? He has a career only because 61-year-old Steve Martin is getting too old to crank out junk like "Parenthood," "Father of the Bride," and "Cheaper by the Dozen."
How do earnest, not-so-funny-joke-telling middle managers feel, seeing themselves depicted on TV by a clown like Steve Carell of "The Office"? How do you think Batman feels, being portrayed by a garden-variety nebbish like Michael Keaton or a feckless pretty boy like George Clooney? How do you think it feels to have eight arms and always be portrayed as a villain? Does anyone remember the important contributions Dr. Otto Octavius made to nuclear physics? No. But the purported crimes of Dr. Octopus was splashed across the silver screen in theaters nationwide.
Here is a demographic group that should be writing a protest letter to Hollywood: America's teenagers. You don't really believe that our country's young people are as vapid and sex-obsessed as the boys and girls on the suddenly un cool Fox series "The O.C.," do you? Oh, you do believe that? Never mind.
I was disturbed to read on a Christian website that " Not Another Teen Movie," described as "a series of disgusting, graphic sexual incidents," depicts the flower of America's youth "as immoral, perverted, and dumb." The site reluctantly concludes: "Unfortunately, [the movie] will probably appeal to many teens."
So maybe teens are getting what they deserve from Hollywood. But as for the rest of us, we protest!
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
