Schlemeel, Schlemazel

Schlemeel, Schlemazel
746 Words
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I’m a little slow on the uptake this week. I mean it’s been a week, and what happened has just penetrated my consciousness. I probably should have been paying closer … They stole his watch?! Our decider-in-chief, the man who looked into Putin’s eye and saw into his soul, the man authorized to launch the American nuclear arsenal, the man the Republican Congress has followed like an obedient lap dog for six years, walked into a crowd while…wearing an expensive wrist watch? That’s like paying a million dollars to have Picasso sign your plate of scrambled eggs…and then eating the eggs. And I don’t mean its bad for him. I mean it’s bad for us, so very, very bad for U.S.
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Last week our president walked into an adoring crowd of Albanians in the village of Fushe Kruje and was welcomed with open arms – sort of like the crowds that were supposed to greet our soldiers and marines in Bagdad – and they stole his watch! Suddenly I’m glad our invasion of Iraq was not greeted by cheering crowds. They would have picked us clean. But if ever there was ever a moment in history that encapsulated an entire presidency this was that moment. George Bush, with his approval ratings doing the limbo with Richard Nixon’s, and after six years of avoiding contact with any Americans who might ask awkward questions – evidently, like what time is it – chose to “press the flesh” in Albania, and…they stole his watch. Now there’s a mistake a professional politician never would have made.
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Do you remember the beginning of the old “Laverne and Shirley” TV show? The girls stand on the sidewalk and chant, “Schlemeel, Schlemazel, hasenfeffer, incorporated.” It’s the opening of the theme song “Makin’ Our Dreams Come True”, written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox and sung by Cyndi Grecco. (of whom I cannot find a photo). Well, in the Yiddish hierarchy of idiots and fools, the one who spills wine at an expensive dinner party is a schmuck. The person the wine is spilled upon is the “schlemeel”. A “schlimazel” is the person who doesn’t get any wine because the schmuck spilled it all. And hassenfeffer is rabbit stew.
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So if we were categorizing our presidents by Yiddish humor, this would make Richard Nixon a schmuck, Jimmy Carter a “schlimazel”, and that would mean our current resident of the White House is a schlemeel. And does that make Dick Cheney the “Vice-Schlemeel”? Yes, yes it does.
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Our current president is a schlemeel…and we re-elected him. He’s a schlemeel twice over. And what does that make us? We’re paying the schlemeel’s salary. He’s going to be our president for another year and a half.
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The White House reaction was predictable, of course: denial. Tony Snow not only denied it happened but when challenged by video of the “slight-of-hand” on YouTube said, “I’m not going to change what I’m saying. I was told he took it off about the one minute mark.” Which I think is what used to be called a “non-denial, denial”. And how did he know it didn’t happen at the one minute mark? What, was he looking at his watch as it was slipped off his wrist?
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And Bushie himself, as his adoring Albanian public referred to him, insisted, “I have never seen such a ludicrous story. Unbelievable." Yeah. Next thing you know the media will be saying he’s going to fire Don Rumsfeld.
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But if you watch the video carefully, searching for a mysterious secret service agent who supposedly retrieved the watch from the ground, or perhaps looking for the President to pocket his watch prior to his flesh pressing encounter with Mr. and Mrs. Joe Albania…and if you watch the watch frame by frame, you can see the wrist with the black band across it reach into the crowd and then pull back and to the left and there is, suddenly, clearly, no watch band on that wrist. Watch it again; back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left.
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How appropriate that this presidency should be framed between two felonies; a stolen election at one end and a stolen wrist watch at the other. I always knew that Bush would pass into history as the other end.
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Boy, time flies when your commander-in-chief is a schlemeel, doesn’t it?
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