When Dean Obeidallah, a New Jersey native of Palestinian-Italian descent, heard someone say that Arab-Americans are now so racially profiled that they've become "the new blacks," he didn't get worried. He got excited.

An episode of "The Watch List," Comedy Central's new Internet-only series featuring Middle Eastern-American comedians, presents Obeidallah's reaction to the news in a sketch. His response? "So we're cool now."

In this new paradigm, Obeidallah fantasizes about good-looking Asian women fawning over Arab men in a bar and white kids in the suburbs tossing aside their do-rags for traditional Arab headdresses -- tilted to the side, of course. "Pimping their cars to look like taxi cabs," says Obeidallah of the kids. "Walking up to each other going, 'What up Mostafa?!' 'Where my Arabs at?' 'Arab, pleeeease.'"

With an abundance of material to work with, the comics on "The Watch List" have jumped on a stage shared with many American minority comedy acts. Their routines are politically charged enough to make people uncomfortable, but they're true enough to be understood -- and for both reasons, they're hilarious.

The creators, Obeidallah and Max Brooks (son of Mel), say the show's focus is on the personal experiences of Middle Eastern-Americans who found themselves with a whole new set of problems after Sept. 11, 2001.

Ahmed Ahmed, an Egyptian-born, American-raised comedian, jokes about his repeated security checks at airports. Maysoon Zayyid introduces herself as a Palestinian Muslim virgin with cerebral palsy from New Jersey, following that up with, "If you don't feel better about yourself, maybe you should."

Obeidallah's success with the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival (which he co-founded with Zayyid in 2003) made him think about trying a television show. He pitched it to Brooks (an Emmy-award winning writer for "Saturday Night Live") as a show with an element of activism.

For Brooks, a Jewish-American, the Middle Eastern-American identity conflict is a familiar one. He draws parallels between them and dispossessed minorities of the past: German Jews, Japanese-Americans during World War II and African-Americans in the '60s.

He noticed similarities between the stories of German Jewish Holocaust survivors and those of post-9/11 Middle Eastern-Americans. Obeidallah has described going to sleep a white guy on September 10, 2001, and waking up an Arab.

"If any minority keeps silent too long, someone else is going to speak for them," says Brooks. "America is at a crossroads right now, and we have to let Arab-Americans tell their story or else the haters are going to do it for them."

Comedy Central's Dan Powell says that the network is interested in the show because it's funny, "provocative and politically relevant." It has that Comedy Central shock value which can make viewers reflect on serious issues, after laughing about the absurdity of them.

Negin Farsad, co-producer and director, said the show, which refreshes every week with a new episode, will take "baby steps" to foster understanding, instead of presenting complicated issues to the American public. Rather than delving into the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, or educating people about Iranian politics, the comedians just want to show Americans that they're everyday people.

In one sketch, Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American comic, tells the audience that he wishes the media would "just once, show us doing something good." A concerned news anchor announces a news flash that "Mohamed" in Iran is baking a cookie.

"The cookie episode is really the essence of what we want people to recognize," says Farsad. "Middle Eastern-Americans bake so many cookies. We want people to see how big our bakery is."

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Lily Hindy is an editorial assistant at The Associated Press in New York.

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