Posted on 07/21/2010 7:44:38 AM PDT by jfd1776
On January 19, 2010, in a speech from the White House yard, the president sank to a new low. In a speech more appropriate to the back door of a mansion than the Rose Garden, he resorted to the age-old technique of begging… not on one’s own behalf – that would be embarrassing – but on the behalf of family, friends, or other worthies.
I’m reminded of the gaggles of panhandlers famous in the piazzas and town squares of Europe. When last I visited my ancestral home town of Pizzo Calabro, I was warned to beware of Calabria’s omnipresent families of “gypsies.” A wailing mother, surrounded by her unwashed and shoeless brood, would accost tourists, extolling the virtues of this son or that daughter, so wonderful, if only they had a crust of bread or a bowl of soup to get them through the day.
And you would look at the eyes of these mournful young souls, the pity perhaps overtaking the revulsion, convinced to reach deep into your heart and toss them some coins. Only later, back in the hotel room, would you discover to your chagrin that the dexterous little monsters picked your pockets clean while you were enduring their mother’s pleading back in the street.
The issue of the day was yet another extension of unemployment insurance.
Continue reading at http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2010/07/little-barry-schnorrerinchief.html
(Excerpt) Read more at lnkd.in ...
I was wondering at what point people just move off “unemployment benefits” and into “welfare” and we just call it “welfare”?
Does the original really suggest the speech was on JANUARY 19th, 2010? I’m figuring that’s an...error, maybe?
Bitterly sweet. November is coming.
Quite right... the date of the Rose Garden speech was July 19.
A freudian slip... I think my mind is stuck on the date before the inauguration; I’m wishing we could turn back time to Jan 19, 2008 (or better still, 1988, the last full day in which we had a great President).
Thanks for the correction; I’m correcting the original now.
JFD
“I was wondering at what point people just move off “unemployment benefits” and into “welfare” and we just call it “welfare”?”
Exactly.
Gladly! Thanks for asking!
Schnorrer is both German and Yiddish, and means beggar, panhandler, something like that.
There’s also a rather neat concept in Yiddish folklore for the schnorrer being the public beggar on behalf of someone else, which is why I used that specific term in this story.
Leo Rosten tells the classic tale of two men traveling together, and a person asks why they deserve anything. The one beggar points to the other and says “because he’s a wise man, a rabbi, a tutor, a thinker, an good and honorable soul.” So the guy gives that other guy a few rubles.
So the talkative one asks for his share, and the benefactor says “but why should I give YOU anything?”
Comes the reply: “Didn’t I bring you this saintly scholar?”
Rosten tells it better than I do... and more succinctly. Read “The Joys of Yiddish,” the most delightful lexicon ever written.
Thanks for the lesson.. next thread could be based in the yiddish “Hoika”(hunch on hunch back)... also an obscure yiddish word with deep meaning..,p>
**Note: everybody is a hunchback but “they” can see your hunch but not their own(hoika)... i.e. democrats/ republicans..
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