6/8/12, No. 42
@Jaxonpool _______
Dershowitz’s funeral: I am learning a new language, Yiddish, so I thought I would practice Yiddish sayings right here in this letter. You don’t mind, do you? To help you gauge my accuracy, here’s the site I’m using to study: Yiddish Dictionary Online. Learning a language increases mental power. To test this, when I get to the last line, I’ll ask you if I’ve gotten any smarter. Beforehand though, let me apologize for any gross errors I may make in my choice of words and expressions. I’m still feeling my way, so I beg your indulgence. In case I wind up making any mistakes vi a barg, I give you my sincerest groyser finger.
So, here goes. Gloria Estefan once sang, “We seal our fate with the choices we make.” She is a true chochem. And her lyrics apply to the recent dust up involving Alan Dershowitz and my hero, Angela Hardcorey.
Here’s what the naive nudge dared to publish in Newsmax: Dershowitz: Zimmerman Prosecutor Threatening to Sue Harvard for My Criticism
Some things are just bashert zein. Don’t you think? But consider. Who was this foolhardy eizel anyway who thought he could k’vitsh about our gantseh macher state attorney?
Like most Jacksonvillians, I had never heard of him before. Had you? From what I hear, he was a chronic klogmuter. But that’s what you would expect from a durkhfall. Well, you know what they say, “a mentsh on glik is a toyter mensh.” But in the end, this thing that happened, it is a maisse mit a deitch. Let me explain.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky (right), the New York-based development director for Chabad’s international emissary network lends his hand to Mr. Dershowitz (left) during Kinus HaShluchim.
It all started when Dershowitz complained about the way Hardcorey handlen the Zimmerman case. After what he said, she decided to be the pisk, so she called up Harvard, where Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, and shtrafeerened to take legal action against the Law School, make him give the endowed chair back to Felix Frankurter, have the Bar expel him, and sue him for libel and slander. For forty minutes, zi farmacht nit dos moyl. His being a lamden, a major bal toyreh, didn’t phase her. It made absolutely no difference. Whoever he was, she wanted him to ver derharget!
And do you blame her? In case you haven’t noticed, free speech is a zero-sum game: either you have it or the other guy does, but you can’t both have it. Not if you want to get your point across.
Before this kerfuffle, I myself wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between this poor shmegegi Dershowitz and a hole loch in kop. But, oy vey! I know now! I feel bad for his sorry tush, I mean, sorry for what’s left of it. He must have had a lot of chutzpah!
Read what Ron Littlepage had to say about it: Angela Corey’s hissy fits, threats unprofessional
Chub rachmones for this callow nebbish (a nebbish hulyen, actually), who wound up getting mauled. He should have known better than to tshepen her. As you know, she became positively kaas oyf with him.
Hardcorey is a female lioness, and once the two came face to face, she tore the unsuspecting pisher apart, limb by limb. Literally. Having wandered into the lioness’s den, he tweaked the lioness’s tail. Obviously, he had no saichel.
From the letters to your paper, one learns from your well-informed readers that the reason Dershowitz attacked her was to get fifteen minutes of fame. It’s amazing, isn’t it, what people will do when they crave attention! I guess he wasn’t getting enough in Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv, not to mention frequently appearing on the cable news networks to comment on the Arab-Israeli conflict. No! The man obviously was desperate. However, he must have been mashugga to think attacking Hardcorey was the way to go about getting people to notice him..
When he arrived in Jacksonville, all we bystanders could do was say a chorbn and hope that she would relent. We cried, “Alan! Don’t do it! Don’t go near! You don’t know what she’s like! She’s geferlech!” But to no avail. Alas. On my cell phone I managed to capture his final words:
The reason she did it? Er bolbet narishkeiten. You read his article about Hardcorey, and you just have to think, Zei nit a nar! Zei nit kain vyzoso! Zindik nit! Don’t you agree? Weren’t these the first thoughts that crossed your mind? But he obviously wasn’t thinking this way. He had thrown caution to the wind. The desire for fame, you know, clouds the judgment.
Angela Hardcorey
Who would be so narish as to take her on? Only a fool. A simpleton. A dumkop. We thought she might go easy on him. We thought she wouldn’t sink her fangs in when he pled for mercy and repeated Es tut mir bahng. But no. The di skeyne, the behaimeh, granted him no mercy. At first the oisgeshtrobelt potchked him good, and once she smelled blood, there was no stopping her. And when it was all over, he had learned that you don’t tangle with a balmalocha. But by then he had lost too much blood. And too many body parts. So he slipped out of consciousness. Soon he had no more chai. The whole episode looked something like this:
Afterward, we had to collect the bodily remains. An arm here, a leg there, the head over there, bits of scalp, hair, his bloody toches, torn off flesh all over the place, etc. And then there was the carcass. A gory mess. Hefker! We thought we should give them, er, I mean him, a fitting leveiyeh.
Hardcorey is a farbissener (and a goyeh), and she insisted Dershowitz (one of the balebatisheh yiden) be given a Christian burial. That’s what you do when you are Angela Hardcorey. And Angela herself delivered the eulogy at the burial site. She sounded positively Shakespearean: “I pray you all,” she inquired in stentorian tones from the lectern, “tell me what they deserve that do conspire my downfall?“
No one said a word. No one dared. All was silence.
Then the chaleria left the lectern, strode over to the open casket, and glared at Dershowitz’s lifeless body. The funeral director had done an excellent job of cleaning off the shmuts and reassembling the dismembered parts. Using cosmetics, he had restored the deceased’s countenance to a lifelike composure. “Thou art a traitor,” Hardcory intoned angrily as she pointed. “Off with his head! I don’t care that he’s already dead. Now, by Saint Paul I swear, I will not dine until I see the same. Funeral director, look that it be done: The rest, that love me, rise and follow me.”
And the crowd of Jacksonville dignitaries rose and prepared to follow her. I did too. Who would be brave enough not to?
But then, as she was about to walk away, she stopped, as though struck by a sudden thought. “Wait!” she yelled. “Funeral director! I’m not finished with him yet. I have one more thing I have to do.”
And before anyone could stop her, she climbed up and practically entered the coffin. There, atop and straddling the lifeless body of Alan Dershowitz, she unzipped the dead man’s trousers, groped the crotch, and grabbed something in there and yanked very hard and continued pulling as though she were engaged in a tug of war. Finally, whatever it was all of a sudden became detached from his corpse, and she flew back and nearly lost her balance, almost falling out of the casket. Climbing out, and once again on her feet, and having gotten what she wanted, she held up the glorious prize for all to see.
“I almost forgot!” she beamed proudly, holding up his baitsim, which really was nothing more by this point than an amorphous mass of bloodless flesh. “This trophy will go on my mantle.”
Then the funeral director re-zipped up the dead man’s trousers, closed the coffin lid, and began slowly lowering the casket into the ground. The few mourners still present wept, and later, family members sat shiva. For the next year they will say the kaddish.
Well, now we all know who rules the roost. Who rules the roost?
My Yiddish is not so good, so please bear with me. I am not confident in my grasp of the language. Will you help me? I want the word for a great and powerful woman who rules the roost. The word I think is machshaifeh. That is the term for a woman who rules the roost? Yes? I think so. Angela Hardcorey is a machshaifeh? Does that make sense? Please tell me if I am using this word incorrectly. You will have to pardon me if I do not apply all Yiddish locutions in an entirely appropriate way. If I have made the right choice, then, yes, we have reason to be proud. Admirably, here in Jacksonville we have a machshaifeh.
It is possible that I have made a groisser potzmistake. If I have, then I am very, very sorry, or, to repeat the exact same sentiment in Yiddish: Host du bie mir an avleh!
I will close with this sweet sentiment: Az mir vill schlugen a hunt, gifintmin a schtecken. I am thankful for one thing: I wouldn’t have been able to undertake this Yiddish vocabulary exercise had Dershowitz listened to Gloria Estefan and taken her lyrics seriously.
And now, the test. Having undertaken this linguistic exercise, I already feel somewhat smarter. Have you noticed? (BTW: How do you say, “me talk pretty one day” in Yiddish?) So, how did I do? Am I an alrightnik?
Sincerely,
Lemule Blogiver
Unfortunately, even with him dead and dismembered, I doubt this is
the last we will have heard from Dershowitz.
_______________
.
@Jaxonpool 