The voices protesting the Stone casting are the same types who carped that multi-racial Fred Armisen wasn’t black enough to portray multi-racial Barack Obama. Why not turn the question on its head: Would a black SNL actor be white enough to play Obama?

And they’re the same types who threw an international temper tantrum over producer Cameron Mackintosh’s casting of English actor Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp in Miss Saigon. I’ll never forget how the Los Angeles Times described the Byzantine demands of one Asian-American grievance group, which dictated that Pryce’s role be instead filled by an actor of “mixed Caucasian and Asian heritage,” and that “if no suitable mixed-blood Eurasian actor could be found to do it, then the role should go to an Asian actor (as opposed to an Asian-American one), ‘because in terms of culture,’ they argued, ‘an Asian actor would be closer to the psyche of the character.’ Barring that, they wrote, an Asian-American actor would be ‘the third best choice.’”
How pathetic to see the movie industry reduced to another self-pitying social-engineering vehicle for the most unimaginative dullards of identity politics. And how little has changed. Entertainment Weekly’s Lee carped that accepting Stone as Ng “requires a certain suspension of disbelief and no small amount of magical thinking.”

Isn’t that what all art, high or low, requires of its audience?