A Mensch Passes

RIP Jackie Mason, 93. Born Yacov Moshe Maza to Belarus immigrants, the family moved from Sheboygan, Wisconsin to NYC when the future comic was five. An ordained rabbi, he honed his craft in the Catskills, known back in the day as the “Borscht Belt.” In 1964 he was mistakenly thought to have given the finger after being rushed through a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. It threw a wrench into Mason’s career. In ’67 the two reconciled, and Mason would appear on the show five times in the ensuing years. In 1986 he took Broadway by storm with his one-man show The World According to Me! He would do eight more and five TV specials. He recorded 13 albums, wrote or co-wrote four books, and did more than 200 vlog’s on youtube. There are 20 titles under his name at IMDb, including his uncredited, hilarious voice-over as the robot tailor with the Yiddish accent in Woody Allen’s Sleepers (1973). Of course he was a mainstay on talk shows. My favorite joke of his, quoting from memory, went as follows: “You marry a Jewish girl and for the rest of your life you go from Chinese restaurant to Chinese restaurant. Just once I wanna hear a Chinaman say — ‘I’m lookin’ for a nice piece of gefilte fish.’” There were other controversies: his use of the term schvartze regarding NYC Mayor David Dinkins and President Obama, and his walking out on the Queen after a performance in England. Who doesn’t have missteps, especially one who has lived so long in the public eye? Well done, sir. Thank you. Alav ha-shalom.

Imagine the state of mind of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who did everything in his power to get Quid Pro Joe elected, now having his venue dubbed by the White House as “judge, jury, executioner” on bad COVID info. The “Useful Idiot,” as the Soviets said of their saps, is no longer needed and thus a prime candidate to be “thrown under the bus,” as Americans say.

How disheartening is the story on FBI agents entrapping citizens into criminal acts? This after the upper echelon did all it could to oust President Trump. Are they law enforcement or political operatives?

Interesting tidbit from the column of NY Post sports media critic Phil Mushnick, in my own words: Ralph Kiner used to slip a hundred dollar bill to players who appeared on his postgame show, Kiner’s Korner. Who knew?

Check out this pic from foxnews.com. It’s from Pennsylvania:

My thanks to the kind folks who donated, swapped and bought books today, and to the woman who informed me of a choice cache nearby and stood guard while I checked it out and brought back two bags full of marketable titles. Here’s what sold: two thrillers in Russian, Career Match: Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Love to Do by Shoya Zichy and Ann Bidou, three other works of non-fiction, and a mystery that had death in the title.

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