I didn’t watch the Wisconsin primary returns last night. I had a pretty good idea of what would happen on the Democratic side since Wisconsin fit the profile of the other primary states won by Sanders. On the GOP side, I didn’t feel like watching a seven-hour speech by Tailgunner Ted. Crazy Papa Cruz may hate Fidel but his son is equally long-winded.
In short, I didn’t think I’d miss anything. I was wrong. It turns out that I missed a Lyin’ Brian howler. I’ll let Charlie Pierce tell you about it:
The first thing we learned on primary night was that Brian Williams of the MSNBC electric teevee channel—as well as (possibly) Chris Matthews, though he may have been kidding, or suffering a terminal brain freeze after talking earlier with Ann Coulter—thinks “mishigas” is an old Irish Gaelic word for something. It’s not, dude. But “omadhaun” is. Look it up.
He mistook one of my favorite Yiddish words for Gaelic? Oy, just oy. Next thing he’ll mistake pastrami for corned beef.
Mishigas is Yiddish for craziness as well as the name of a Krewe du Vieux sub-krewe. Here’s their 2016 float:
Here’s a faux movie poster from the side of the float:
Talk about cutting edge satire…
Just when you thought it was photo essay day at First Draft, here are some Yiddish curses for Republican Jews by Rabbi Aaron Spiegel from October 24, 2012:
- May you sell everything and retire to Florida just as global warming makes it uninhabitable.
- May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare.
- May you make a fortune, and lose it all in one of Sheldon Adelson’s casinos.
- May you live to a ripe old age, and may the only people who come visit you be Mormon missionaries.
- May your son be elected President, and may you have no idea what you did with his goddamn birth certificate.
- May your grandchildren baptize you after you’re dead.
- May your insurance company decide constipation is a pre-existing condition.
- May you find yourself insisting to a roomful of skeptics that your great-grandmother was “legitimately” raped by Cossacks.
- May you feast every day on chopped liver with onions, chicken soup with dumplings, baked carp with horseradish, braised meat with vegetable stew, latkes, and may every bite of it be contaminated with E. Coli, because the government gutted the E.P.A.
- May you have a rare disease and need an operation that only one surgeon in the world, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, is able to perform. And may he be unable to perform it because he doesn’t take your insurance. And may that Nobel Laureate be your son.
- May the state of Arizona expand their definition of “suspected illegal immigrants” to “anyone who doesn’t hunt.”
- May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers.
It’s true that I stumbled into this on Facebook. It’s also true that it’s funnier than a hand grenade down your pants. Any of them *might* apply to Brian Williams who visibly leans right even though he’s a Goyim. Yeah, I know. I am too but I know what mishigas means.
Oy, just oy.