Word: yiddishism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first issue of Maledicta ("bad words" in Latin) is now in the hands of 1,480 subscribers who pay $10 per year. It contains scholarly dissertations on such subjects as Yiddish insults, scurrilous Elizabethan and Jacobean sexual metaphors, and Latent Accusative Tendencies in the Skopje Dialect. Other articles include a bracing harangue by Aman himself, directed at academics who do not appreciate his life's work ("biodegradable nitwits" and "cacademoids," a neologism formed from "academic" and the baby-talk word for feces, "caca"). The coat of arms of his International Maledicta Society is a 3,000-year-old obscene...
...borough's complexion is clearly changing. As poorer people, mostly black and hispanic, move in, the middle class retreats southward or leaves entirely. Racial tensions, long dormant or mild, rise to the surface. To the Jews, this influx of 'schvartzes' (Yiddish for dark-skinned people) represents a clear threat to their middle class lives. Worse still, this "invasion" threatens their basic values. People who played by the rules of the game are apt to react defensively when the rules are changed in midgame. The Jewish middle class sees itself under attack for succeeding, and becoming wealthy, by the economic rules...
...largest-selling Christmas record of all time, Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," was originally written--in Yiddish--as a lullaby for infirm children...
...infantry sergeant in Europe, New York University Law School, a moderately successful private practice. He first got into politics during the 1952 Stevenson campaign. Koch served as a street speaker then, and again four years later, developing a style that is more haimish-homey-than sophisticated or rousing. A Yiddish lilt flavors his speech, and a phrasemaker...
Mayer teases his reader in a subtler, more ambiguous way as well. Sandwiched between jibes at Yiddish, first love and Herbert Hoover is an apparently serious statement about American politics, values and mores. But the reader is never quite sure when Mayer crosses the line between humor and conviction. The angels in Heaven bustle about designing portable restrooms, and manna and nectar refreshment concessions for the up-coming gala bimillenium. ("We're expecting millions of tourists," Mary tells Brinkley.) The bumbling corruption of Soviet-American disarmament negotiators and the CIA's school for assassins are cleverly ridiculed, but the caricatures...