“Women like old Jewish men.”

NYT columnist Maureen Dowd interviewed Lorne Michaels and Larry David about American politics recently after Larry David appeared on Lorne Michaels' tv show, Saturday Night Live, playing Bernie Sanders. (the same night of the Sturdy Barbie skit, mentioned here.)

Larry David:

“Like Bernie, I’m from Brooklyn and unlike Israeli Jews, we do not care for fighting,” he said dryly. “We run for the hills. On the other hand, if I had some football players backing me up or in this case, the U.S. military, I probably would have instigated fights!” 

(I've long said myself this is the core problem of the special co-dependent relationship between America and Israel:  The U.S. in the long run is an enabler of deadly behavior.)

Asked if he’s surprised that Bernie has turned out to be such a chick magnet, David replied, grinning: “Women like old Jewish men.”

(He underestimates the natural lesbian inoculation, grinning . . .  Not everyone falls prey to the charmed factor.  Still, plenty do. )

Maureen Dowd:

 So what have you learned from being the daddy of comedy all these years, working with so many generations of comics?

Lorne Michaels:

I think what you realize when you do my job is that you can pretty much tell how everyone was treated by their father. Sometimes you get stuck in your period of peak rebellion. If they were a girl, and they were adored by their father, they just assumed that posture. They were very easy to be around. If they were a guy whose father was way too critical, whatever you said was a problem.

(No wonder he doesn't like Sarah Palin.  She's likely ... not very easy, for him to be around.  Now Tina Fey on the other hand... )

Lorne Michaels: 

You have a lot of hot personalities this year. Obama was the essence of cool and minimalist, and you have people now who tend to spill over, and that is much easier because they’re just bigger.

Maureen Dowd: 

Then Sarah Palin suddenly pops back up in this flamboyant way. Did you have to talk Tina into doing it again?

Lorne Michaels:: 

No, Tina knew. She was happy. When you saw the tape of Sarah Palin, I think the hardest part of that was the jacket. We had to make it.

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* Full disclosure:
 Larry David's business agent is Ari Emanuel, brother of Ezekiel (the doctor turned lobbyist whose political advocacy helped pass Obamacare) and Rahm (the embattled mayor of Chicago suspected of spending hush money to buy off the family of a young black man shot multiple times, including in the back while running from police in Chicago.)

Also this:

Maureen Dowd to Lorne Michaels:

You once told me that you thought Will Ferrell’s “backhandedly affectionate” portrayal of W. helped sway the 2000 election, even though that didn’t jibe with Ferrell’s politics.

I still wouldn't let down my guard that if the business community wants to see Jeb Bush get elected, Mr. Michaels will find a nice white actor to portray the latest brother chosen to succeed.  It's not easy being a kingmaker, you know.  Ethnic machines rarely grind on smoothly without grinding outside others up...

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HERE'S a FUNNY SATURDAY STORY
that wound up in my in-box too:

JEWISH  MOTHER  (A GEM)
The year is 2020 and the United States has elected the first woman as well as the first Jewish president, Susan Goldstein.

She calls up her mother a few weeks after Election Day and says, "So, Mom, I assume you'll be coming to my inauguration?"

"I don't think so.  It's a ten-hour drive, your father isn't as young as he used to be, and my arthritis is acting up again."

"Don't worry about it, Mom, I'll send Air Force One to pick you up and take you home.  And a limousine will pick you up at your door."

"I don't know.  Everybody will be so fancy-schmantzy; what on earth would I wear?"

Susan  replies, "I'll make sure you have a wonderful gown, custom-made by the best designer in New York." 
"Honey," Mom complains, "you know I can't eat those rich foods you and your friends like to eat." 
The President-to-be responds, "Don't worry Mom.  The entire affair is going to be handled by the best caterer in New York; kosher all the way. Mom, I really want you to come."
So Mom reluctantly agrees and on January 20, 2021, Susan Goldstein is being sworn in as President of the United States.  In the front row sits the new President's mother, who leans over to a Senator sitting next to her and says, "You see that woman over there with her hand on the Torah, becoming President of the United States?"
The Senator whispers back, "Yes, I do."
Mom says proudly, "Her brother is a doctor."

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I think the Jewish men are beginning to question why they are traditionally favored over the women in the tribe.  Here's a telling story about Rahm's upbringing in Wilmette:

Political passions always ran deep. Rahm still remembers the time his mother and her father got into such a furious argument at the dinner table over Henry Wallace and the 1948 split of the Democratic Party - a quarter century after the fact - that father threw daughter out of the house. ''And it was her house,'' Rahm says. ''I thought, 'This is nutty.' '' 

And did you know the Brothers Emanuel have a sister?  Shoshanna -- not so successful as the boys in the family though...

From the same 1997 New York Times article:

Today, the brothers argue just as passionately about the role that environment and genetics played in the life of their sister, who in recent years has been on and off the welfare rolls that Rahm worked so hard to cut.

Benjamin Emanuel met his daughter when he gave her a well-baby checkup and discovered that she had suffered a brain hemorrhage at delivery. The baby's future was unclear; Shoshana's birth mother, a young woman of Polish Catholic background, asked Dr. Emanuel if he knew someone who wanted her child. ''But I couldn't find placement,'' Benjamin Emanuel says.

After a week of debate between both parents and sons - Marsha Emanuel had always wanted a girl - the Emanuels themselves took Shoshana in.

''What are you going to do?'' Benjamin Emanuel says philosophically.

Like Rosemary Kennedy, the lesser sister in the Joseph Kennedy's clan, Shoshanna has been effectively disappeared from later family narratives about to raise overachieving children, which Mrs. Emanuel allegedly did in Wilmette with the doctor's sons.

Here's David Bernstein in a 2013 Chicago magazine interview with Ezekiel Emanuel, author -- not the mother!-- of How to Raise Kids to Be Overachievers (I'm reminded of the old Bush joke about the ballplayer being placed in the game as a pinch runner and then scoring from third when someone  batted him in, celebrating like he hit a home run himself):

Brothers Emanuel doesn’t mention your sister, Shoshanna, whom your parents adopted when you were a teen. Why?
Yeah, look, it’s about our growing up. She came much later. She needs her privacy. We’re not going there. It’s about the brothers.

It's about the brothers, indeed.

Be careful what you're voting for, is all I'm saying...  Equal Opportunity, or fixed traditional preferences, where special connections are needed?  The more we artificially choose up society's winners and losers, the more inequality we will learn to tolerate.  "Closed societies" with restricted memberships and pre-chosen personal characteristics rarely spur competition or achieve equality. They're constrained, rarely achieving full potential of all.

"We Don't Want Nobody Somebody Sent".
When the game is fixed, it's harder for qualified women and minorities to break through.  The brothers Emanuel, doctors' sons, won in a fixed game.  Don't know if they have really come to terms with that yet though...

Emanuel downplays police controversy

Written By Fran Spielman Posted: 02/12/2016, 12:44pm

 

The video played around the world of a white police officer pumping 16 rounds into the body of a black teenager has placed Chicago at the center of the controversy. But Emanuel maintained that Chicago is not alone among big cities grappling with policing problems.

“Cleveland has this. Cincinnati has this. Los Angeles with Rodney King had this. Baltimore has it. New York -- the Garner case starts today. They have it. This is not unique to Chicago,” the mayor said.