Amish Confidential (21 page)

CHAPTER 25

LAST LAUGH

T
he uproar over
Amish Mafia
didn’t start with Governor Corbett. It didn’t end with him, either. Pennsylvania’s two US senators, Pat Toomey and Robert Casey, also jumped onto the trash-Levi train, though the petition they signed stopped short of demanding the show be banned or canceled. Frankly, I was waiting for one of them to say I should be jailed. Various other lesser politicians also scrambled aboard—the lieutenant governor, a couple of copycat congressmen, some third-string state legislators.

I guess all of them needed an issue, and I was standing there.

The minute these puppet politicians started talking, I knew someone else had to be pulling their strings. They hadn’t all just decided at the exact same moment to come roaring out at me. Why were they suddenly so agitated, almost four seasons into our Discovery Channel run? Whose invisible hand was making their lips move? The Amish aren’t known as big voters, so this wasn’t about a swing constituency, and most of these so-called public servants had never before shown much interest in Amish sensitivities. I vowed to find out.

I know a lot of people in Amish Country. I did what I always do when I need information. I started asking around. It didn’t take long. Three or four names kept coming up, usual suspects from the Amish-tourism industry—plus a couple of irritating busybodies along for the ride. While the politicians were signing petitions and putting out statements, these were the people who seemed to be doing the scut work. Every last one of them, one way or the other, was in the Amish-promotion business, and they were all deeply invested in the old Amish fairy tale.

There was Tom Baldrige from the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce, Kathleen Frankford from the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau, and Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College and widely quoted “Amish expert.” Most of all, there was Mary Haverstick, a local videographer who had a Facebook page called Lancastrians Against Amish-sploitation Films and TV Shows. Snappy name, huh? She also had a website, RespectAmish.org. It was hard to say how many people Haverstick represented, if any, but she’d definitely been busy stirring up complaints about our plainspoken TV show. Her group was “dedicated to countering the false ‘reality’ our region is being depicted [sic] on TV & promoting harmony with our Amish neighbors,” she said in a Twitter post.

These were the people who had drawn up the statements the politicians had signed. Their fingerprints were all over the entire attack campaign. Now these back-room advocates were trying to turn the public against us too, Amish and non-Amish alike.

None of these people is or has ever been Amish. That doesn’t surprise you, does it? But don’t worry, that doesn’t stop them from telling the world exactly what the Amish believe, as if they actually knew.

What the Amish believe, according to Haverstick and her posse, is that
Amish Mafia
really sucks and those of us connected with the program suck even worse. Mind you, no actual Amish people are saying any of this—just these self-appointed Amish spokespeople. When it comes to instant character assassination, they make my mother’s stitch-and-bitch ladies seem like amateur gossips.

The chamber of commerce, with an “us, too” from the visitors bureau, sent around a notice to their members—three thousand Lancaster-area businesses, they said—asking them not to cooperate with the TV crews who are shooting
Amish Mafia
,
Breaking Amish
,
Return to Amish
or any similar shows.

“Whatever short-term economic impact these shows may bring, it’s taking what has been a well-respected culture in our community and turning it into a fad,” chamber president Baldrige said. “Whatever arguable increase in tourism may result from these shows, it is unquestionably short-term and will fade out over time and not serve our community well.” Tourism dollars generate $363 million in tax revenue and support twenty-four thousand jobs, added visitors bureau spokesman Joel Cliff.

And the bashing had only begun.

Shows like ours are “bigoted and prejudiced” against the Amish, Haverstick told our local cable channel, News-11. “If it was just one of these projects and we had lots of other good films on Amish and Mennonites, it would be one thing. But we don’t have other things happening but this. This is it.”

Haverstick trotted out Lark McCarley, who runs the Lovelace Manor Bed and Breakfast in Lancaster. Apparently, she didn’t claim the shows had hurt her business—how could she? Business was booming all over town, in part because of all the interest we had
generated. But she said the tourists who’d been coming to her place lately, they were—well, they were
different
.

“I try to tell them more about the true Amish culture, what it’s really like,” the B & B woman said, “but whether or not they’re receptive . . .” She let the thought drift off sadly.

“Today,” she said, “it’s like at the breakfast table, they’re saying, ‘Okay, we want to go see Lebanon Levi.’ ”

Imagine that!

Gosh, I wish I’d known they wanted to say hello. I’d have been happy to stop by.

I
understand. People have a right to their opinions, whether they agree with mine or not. Programs like ours will always be controversial. We’re giving people something they’re not used to, and politicians, especially at election time, will ride whatever bandwagons they can find. A few years ago, New Jersey governor Chris Christie was railing against MTV’s popular
Jersey Shore
,
which followed the beach-house high jinks of some tacky, tanned and tattooed twentysomethings. US senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia launched a crusade against
Buckwild
, a reality show about a group of rural halfwits in the Charleston area. The show ended quickly, but only because one of its central figures, Shain Gandee, was killed in a freak carbon-monoxide accident. Oddly, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has embraced the cast of
Duck Dynasty
, which features some similarly colorful characters from his state.

Francis Ford Coppola certainly understood this phenomenon. More than four decades ago, he made one of the greatest movies ever,
The Godfather
. The film got slammed by touchy Italian-
American advocacy groups, who claimed the film reflected poorly on Italian-Americans. Coppola had a pretty good answer, I thought. He replied to critics by saying, “The real day-to-day reality of the Italian family that was put into the gangster film was based on my family and what I remember as a kid. You can’t make films without them being personal to some extent.” Of course,
The Godfather
busted box-office records, spun off two sequels and won huge critical acclaim. It’s definitely the number one all-time favorite of most of the Italian-Americans I know. Like Coppola said about
The Godfather
,
Amish Mafia
is personal to some of us. Forty years from now, maybe they’ll put up a statue of me in downtown Lancaster—but, no, I’m not counting on it.

I’m sorry, but some of these official reactions to our show have been just plain dumb. The US Patent & Trademark Office actually refused to grant Discovery Channel a federal trademark for the term
Amish Mafia
for the TV show. The trademark examiner, Kim Moninghoff, called the name “disparaging to members of the Amish religious sect.”

Honestly, where do Washington bureaucrats get off telling Americans, Amish or otherwise, what is and isn’t disparaging to them or anyone else? The decision, which Discovery appealed, came from an office that had already okayed
Dutch Mafia
,
American Mafia
,
Portuguese Mafia
,
Lesbian Mafia
,
Mexican Mafia
and
Mafia Grannies
. Somehow, grandmothers are still loved by children everywhere, and all those other groups can still go outside with their heads held high.

I have a plain answer for all this: If these people don’t like
Amish Mafia
, why don’t they just change the channel? Or better yet, why not just turn off their televisions? The bishops would be thrilled, I’m sure, to hear they weren’t watching any TV at all.

I liked what one of my Amish cousins said in the York County Blog. First, he admitted he hadn’t seen the show. “I just have what I hear,” he said. “And I’m not here to talk against Levi. For all I know, things might have gone way out from what he expected.” Who knows? He said, “The rest of the world” might be getting an inaccurate picture of Amish culture, but “if it’s not the truth, then it shouldn’t offend us.”

O
ur local businesspeople seemed to be genuinely worried. Who knew how the tourists might react? They might stop believing in the Amish fairy tale! They might start asking questions at the breakfast table! Really, anything was possible. A lot of money was made off the old story.

As the controversy raged on, Mary Haverstick called a public forum at Lancaster’s First Presbyterian Church. According to the media reports, a decent-sized crowd showed up, sixty or seventy people in all. Haverstick used her made-up word
Amish-sploitation
a lot, but when she asked the audience how many had actually seen our show, only about one-third of the people raised their hands. Most of the people in the audience were dependent on whatever they were hearing—mostly from her—and on local TV and social media.

The Amish, Haverstick went on, “give us something in Lancaster. They give us a peaceful, beautiful, serene and pastoral vision. A simple lifestyle, a lesson in simplicity.” They deserve “good neighborship” from the non-Amish, she said. “Our neighbors, I think, are under a certain assault.”

Professor Kraybill wasn’t at the meeting at the Presbyterian
church, but he was mentioned prominently. Apparently, he disapproved of
Amish Mafia
every bit as much as Mary Haverstick did.

“
Amish Mafia
is a deliberate misrepresentation of their religion,” Kraybill said in one of his many media interviews attacking us. “There is no shame in it for them.”

The Amish hate the show too, the professor assured anyone who would listen. Did he have any polls to support his harsh assertion? As an esteemed college professor—
Dr.
Kraybill—had he conducted any academic research about the show? Well, um, no, but he said he had spoken with unnamed “Amish friends.”

“When I’ve spoken about this program with Amish friends, they’ve just kind of laughed and said they never heard of this kind of thing,” Kraybill told one reporter. “It’s just sort of an example of the foolishness and stupidity and lies—misrepresentations I should say—that are promoted in television.”

I didn’t know much about Professor Kraybill. No actual Amish person had ever mentioned him to me, but when I looked him up, I understood why he sounded so distressed: He had published many, many books celebrating the sanitized Amish. Of course he responded to our show as if it were a threat. I’m sure he won’t like my book either—or anyone else’s that punctures the old Amish fairy tale.

Mary Haverstick’s meeting got some attention around our part of Pennsylvania. There was some conversation I heard in the coffee shops and bars. The meeting was written up in the Lancaster and Harrisburg newspapers and discussed in the local news blogs, but as this public discussion got rolling, something surprising occurred. Most people rejected the dire handwringing, and they strongly supported us.

“These people in the capital wasted taxpayer money writing up
a statement of petition?” one commenter asked. Another writer, sick of politicians’ pandering for votes, said, “Please, stick to what you know, BRIBES, FRACKING, KICKBACKS and PERKS!”

“So what?” asked one viewer. “I want to see if Levi is going to get it on with Esther!”

“Ok, you say Levi is ruining the Amish, but there are stores in Lancaster selling Amish stuff, Amish tours, Amish food. Maybe they should be shut down, too. It’s the same thing, too.”

I got a big smile from some of the locals who supported the show. Leslie Shenk from Lititz, Pennsylvania, commented on an editorial in the Lancaster newspaper: “Mary Haverstick and Lancaster Newspapers do not speak for all of Lancaster County. I for one watch and enjoy the show very much. While it is obvious some parts of the show are done for ratings, there are other aspects that those of us who live here have known about for ages. Amish Mafia does bring tourism, which is a good thing, anything that draws people here to visit is a good thing. So, if you don’t like the show, don’t watch it. Meanwhile, I intend to continue enjoying it.” And a reader named Laurie nailed it when she said, “
Shahs of Sunset, Russian Dolls, Mob Wives
 . . . just a few ethnic-centered reality shows. Amish puppy mills, abused Amish horses, kids, wives . . . REALITY that the commercializations/tourist industry here does not want to expose.”

Someone else wrote: “Lebanon Levi for governor!” I think I’ll take a pass on that one, but thanks for the thought.

It wasn’t TV shows that were exploiting the Amish, several people said. It was local businesspeople. The people behind the tourism industry were the ones, Jeff Bender wrote to the website LancasterOnline, who were treating the Amish like animals in a zoo.

“Every day,” he said, “I travel the roads here and witness peo
ple in cars and buses stopping, staring, gawking and photographing Amish people as they go about their daily lives. You might think they were animals of some odd nature, with all the fuss made by the tourists . . . . It’s highly disrespectful and shameful to submit any people or group to this kind of scrutiny. But I guess the almighty dollar trumps even human dignity.”

M
ostly, I tried to ignore the uproar. I went about my business, going to work every morning with my brother Chris. I prepared for the next TV season. I spent time with my family and friends. When people came up and said things to me—a few were negative, far more were positive—I always tried to be friendly with them. Clearly, the public had spoken. They’d given a cold shoulder to the complainers and a warm embrace to us. The overwhelming majority of the people seemed to side with me and not the governor and his last-ditch attempt to win the hearts of Pennsylvanians.