In Tom Lehrer's well-known lines

"Call him a Nazi -- he won't even frown.

`Eh -- Nazi, schmazi' says Werner von Braun."

it is doubtless in bad taste to use a Yiddishism in such a context. The intent, however, was satirical. It was left to an actual German, round about 1970, to make that remark his own, without (self-)satirizing intent. In a broadcast press conference (in English), the right-wing media magnate Axel Springer, who was called all manner of names on the left, was asked by an American reporter whether it bothered him to be called a Nazi. His reply: "Nazi, schmazi, as your American folksinger put it." Note that he also managed, in the same breath, to call Tom Lehrer a folksinger.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: When I was a boy, the genders were masculine, feminine, & neuter, the sexes were male & female, & fucking was fucking. :||