Dear Jews Who May Have Been Sitting Near Me And My Friends In Connecticut College’s Harris Dining Hall Fall Semester, 1989

Dear Jews who may have been sitting near me and my friends in Connecticut College’s Harris dining hall fall semester, 1989,

Sorry for making anti-Semitic slurs.

It was an honest mistake. As a group, we would never have wanted to say anything to offend anyone along racial or ethnic lines. But that fall, we’d taken to using an expression without knowing its etymology. And if you knew this expression’s etymology, and if you were Jewish, and happened to be sitting near us in Harris dining hall, where we ate most of our meals, because it was attached to the complex of dorms where we all lived, the Plex, and if you heard us using this expression, which you probably would have, because we used it frequently for a while there, and were the type of college freshman and sophomores who spoke loudly, I think, each of us trying to say something funnier than what had just been said beforehand, and often needing to fairly shout to be heard above the din of uproarious laughter at the table, because we did always find ourselves to be very, very funny, you might have been offended. In fact, if you knew the etymology of the expression, you might have been offended even if you were not Jewish.

The expression is “jay,” used as a verb, meaning to steal or cheat or otherwise unethically beat someone out of something. To “screw someone over” is probably the most accurate definition. It was usually used in the past tense, “jayed,” as in, “Five dollars for a bagel with cream cheese?! Oh, man, you got jayed!” Or, in the context of a college dining hall, where the food comes free with tuition: Matt gets up to get a bagel from the bagel station. Todd asks him to get him a bagel. Matt returns with an everything bagel for himself and a cinnamon raisin bagel for Todd.

Todd: “Cinnamon raisin? [Sarcastically] Thanks a lot.”

Matt: “Sorry, dude. [Smugly spreads cream cheese on his everything bagel.] That was the only one left.”

Group: [Uproarious laughter]

Me: “Ha, Todd, he totally jayed you!”

You can see why we had to speak so loudly.

Oddly, we were a predominantly Jewish bunch. Matt’s last name is Coen. Todd’s is Schwartz. Mine, in case you’ve ever wondered, is an acronym, originally Hebrew, that stands for “Ben Rabbi Yitzok” (or “Yisrael” — my grandfather’s genealogical research found evidence for both.) Steve Arnoff, another Jew, was often at our table, too. Mike Brockhaus, Carter Beal, and Will Noonan made up the rest of the core group. They’re not Jews, but I can vouch for their enlightened views on the subject.

The expression came to us through Carter, I think. This would make sense, because Carter grew up in Minnesota, where there are fewer Jews than say, New York City, or Westchester, or Yisrael. When I think back to hearing the expression for the first time, I hear it in Carter’s voice — which has traces of the hard-bite Minnesotan accent I knew best before meeting him from Replacements records, like the part at the end of “Treatment Bound” on the Hootenany album, after the song has sort of fallen apart and the music has stopped and Tommy Stinson laughs and asks, “What were the chords to that one part?” and his older brother Bob, sounding very drunk (as was his wont), says, “Fucked ’em up…” The Replacements were my favorite group in the world at that time of my life, and I remember really liking the way it sounded when Carter said “jayed,” and half-consciously emulating his pronunciation, putting a more nasal stress on the “A” than I would have in New Jersey.

Which is not to blame Carter, or Minnesota. But just to say I can imagine how widespread usage of a Jewish slur could go on more easily in a place where there are not so many Jews. Surely, much of the usage was innocent. Lots of people in lots of places use lots of expressions without knowing all the attendant connotations. That’s how it works when you learn new slang. You hear it, you hear it again, you just pick it up. You might ponder the derivation, but if you don’t know it for sure, it’s not going to stop you from saying it.

So one day, we’re sitting at lunch in Harris and someone says someone got jayed, and Matt sort of stiffens up and says, “You guys realize you’re making an anti-Semitic slur every time you say that word, right?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“No.”

“I don’t think it’s really cool to be saying ‘jayed’ all the time,” he said. “It’s totally anti-Semitic.”

“It is?” I said.

“What did you think the ‘J’ stood for?”

I looked around. We all had dumb looks on our faces. “I thought it meant, like, ‘jacked,’” I said. That’s what I did think. “Like, robbed. Like car-jacking.”

I looked at Carter.

“That’s what I thought, too,” he said. “Or ‘jerked.’ Like, ‘Don’t me jerk me around.’”

I think someone even said they thought it was a reference to the bird, because blue jays were known to steal food from other birds or something. They are aggressive birds, blue jays.

“Nope.” Matt had apparently been told differently. This was maybe soon after Thanksgiving. Maybe he’d gone home, recently, to Rhode Island. Maybe he’d gone with his family to Friday night services at his synagogue. Maybe he’d said ‘jayed’ to some people there and they’d told him. Maybe it was the rabbi himself. I don’t remember exactly, but he’d been told. “Every time you say, ‘jayed,’ you’re saying, ‘Jewed.’ Like, to ‘jew someone down’ on a business deal. It’s like ‘shyster.’”

It made sense. Certainly, I was aware of the stereotypes surrounding Jewish business practices. I had heard the expression ‘to Jew someone down’ before. While Jews are notoriously paranoid about this kind of stuff — there’s that famous scene from Annie Hall, when Woody Allen tells Tony Roberts the story about hearing the words “did you” as “Jew” — this actually seemed legit. Without any evidence more persuasive than, “I just figured…” in support of the more innocent explanations, I was inclined to believe Matt was right. That is how we used it, like, “ripped off.”

“Huh.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

It was quiet for a while, while we thought. I looked around, noticed the tables nearby, filled with our classmates — people we didn’t know very well, people who didn’t know us very well, people of undetermined ethnic origin. There were no yarmulkes in sight. Just as there were none at our table.

“We’re idiots,” Todd said, breaking into a self-effacing smile, and soon we got back to loud laughter and talking.

We were. But we stopped saying ‘jayed’ after that.

“President Obama has decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and has asked his Justice Department to stop defending it in court, the administration announced today.”

by Abe Sauer

There are no two ways about it: Wisconsin workers, both private and public, will emerge worse off on the other side of the current budget bill battle. But Wisconsin is going down fighting.

The question is: will Wisconsin unions be left with enough power to fight another day? Union leaders have offered to negotiate and make the financial concessions demanded by the Republican leadership. Governor Scott Walker has told them to go spit. He doesn’t just want want to win this battle, he wants to win forever.

The longer Democratic legislators stay AWOL and force discussion of the bill to drag out, the better chance there is that even more information will come to light about just how much influence David and Charles Koch and their allies have on Scott Walker. If this stunning prank phone call, in which Walker speaks with a man he believes is David Koch is to be believed, it’s a lot.

Each day, another revelation about the puppet governor. Now, the name that may just be the most important connection between the Koch Brothers and Scott Walker: Jeff Schoepke.

When it came out yesterday that Koch Industries had quietly opened a lobbying office, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, just off Madison’s Capitol Square, Jeffrey Schoepke was identified as the “regional manager.” Jeffrey may put that on his business card, but according to the Government Accountability Board, Schoepke’s profession is listed as “Lobbyists licensed in 2011–2012.” Schoepke (and six others) were certified as lobbyists for Koch on January 5th, two days after Walker was sworn in. Schoepke is listed as Koch Public’s main contact.

For those still unfamiliar with the Koch brothers, the New Yorker profile of the billionaire duo’s spending in the war for the wealthy is a good start. They are the tea party’s wallet.

More interesting than what Jeff Schoepke is doing now for Koch Industries is what he’s done before.

After serving seven years under Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, Schoepke joined Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce in 2000. One Wisconsin Now’s WMC Watch lists the organization as:

the central force driving the conservative, pro-corporate agenda in Wisconsin. In addition to its financial role, WMC provides junk science, legislative testimony, calls to action and member service to advance corporate interests. WMC’s talking points are used by conservative activists, organizations, elected officials and members of the media as the foundation for the conservative economic agenda in Wisconsin.

Schoepke put his nose to grindstone and soon was the director of tax and corporate policy — and the WMC’s registered lobbyist.

Much has recently been made of the revelation that Koch Industries was Walker’s second biggest supporter, ponying up $43,000 and giving $1 million to the Republican Governor’s Association, which itself spent $65,000 on supporting Walker (and $3.4 million against his opponent). All of this was actually noted way back in September, 2010, by Scot Ross at One Wisconsin Now.

There are two more Koch-funded organizations that have not received the proper credit in Wisconsin. The left jab is Americans For Prosperity, which tenderized and prepared the ideological environment in Wisconsin where Walker could win by way of tea party astroturfing. (No surprise, the AFP paid for buses to bring Walker supporters to Saturday’s counter rally and is cranking up its pro-Walker broadcast ads today.)

The right hook is the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that counts Koch Industries as a Private Enterprise Board member, and which practically hand-writes legislation for Republican legislators to submit, including Walker’s. The Council even congratulated Walker for signing a tort reform bill in late January, being very careful not to put the word “our” before the word “bill.” The organization has been called “Corporate America’s Trojan Horse in the States.”

Wonder why so many states suddenly bring similar legislation to the floor (as is happening now in Ohio, Indiana, etc.)? These guys.

But the Kochs didn’t elect Walker alone. The WMC spends more money to elect pro-corporate Wisconsin candidiates than any other. Most infamously, WMC spent $4 million to elect pro-corporate Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman. The WMC knows how to partner, too. It’s listed as the state partner of another huge Walker donor, The American Justice Partnership, one of those organizations named for exactly the opposite of what it actually does, like the Citizens for Prosperity, Wisconsin Family Action and Freedom First.

In October, 2010, WMC Vice President James Buchen practically bragged to the press that the lobbying group would spend $1 million to help Republicans win seats in the Legislature and had already spent $950,000 on Walker.

And the campaign money is only the beginning of WMC’s influence. Since 1999, a year before Schoepke came on board, WMC has spent more than 58,000 hours and over $7.1 million lobbying state legislators, putting it at the top for lobbying spend in Wisconsin in nearly every year that Schoepke was there.

Today, WMC is hosting a “Business Day” event at the Monona Terrace, near the Capitol. Governor Walker (as well as GOP wet dream and WMC patron Rep. Paul Ryan and Fox Business’ Stuart Varney) are marquee attendees at this all-corporate-access event. The event’s agenda lists “Capitol Visits” from 10:30–11:45 a.m. This is unlikely to happen.

Not surprisingly, the Kochs have a ringer on WMC’s board, Georgia-Pacific executive Kelly L. Wolff.

What Schoepke’s move to Madison represents is the fusing of Koch’s bottomless coin sack and a decade’s worth of lobbying efforts and contacts and favors and money. The Kochs had the money, they just needed a bag man. Jeff Schoepke is the bag man.

The end game for the Kochs’ conservative think tanks is now clear. Abandon the gummed-up politics of the national level and get it done at the state level. The goals in Wisconsin are:

• Try and bust the public unions, turning middle class workers against one another in the process; and while everyone’s paying attention to that…

• push through unheard-of executive power for governor appointees (made not from within Wisconsin agencies but from D.C. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation) to make way for balancing the budget on cuts to expensive state services like Medicaid, so that tax cuts can be preserved, and…

• place state resources (and income drivers) such as the power companies up for (no-bid) sale to private industry, converting public resources into instant corporate wealth… to which the citizenry remains enslaved to pay.

Nearly every adventure movie has a stooge like Walker, a weak and dim bulb who will sacrifice everyone else to align with what he sees as the new dark power. Wisconsin should look at their new partners. One hundred and fifty-eight of those 250,000 new jobs Walker has promised by 2015 already have to make up for the 158 layoffs from the Koch Industries Green Bay Georgia-Pacific plant.

With the bill on the table and no Republicans backing down, it’s not even a question any more of if they can get away with this, but just how much will they take. This bill will pass — maybe not with the union-busting condition, but it will pass.

Wisconsinites should all know the Joint Finance Committee Republicans as the dirtiest dirty dozen. These are the names that gave our state away to Jeff Schoepke and his lords.

Senator Alberta Darling
Senator Glenn Grothman
Senator Joe Leibham
Senator Sheila Harsdorf
Senator Luther Olsen
Representative Dan LeMahieu
Representative John Nygren
Representative Robin Vos
Representative Dan Meyer
Representative Pat Strachota
Senator Randy Hopper
Representative Joel Kleefisch

Top Photo: Williston, North Dakota. Farmers’ union meeting with the county commissioners to protest the selling of land to corporation farms in Williams County; 1942; Library of Congress.

Koch poster photo via.

You can reach Abe Sauer at abesauer at gmail dot com.

“The worst thing about travelling is having to drag stuff around, so please forget some purists’ mantra that wheelie bags are a no-no. In fact, rolling carry-on luggage is one of the most fabulous inventions of the 20th century.”

Attention memorabilia collectors: If you want a complete set of all the tat produced for Britain’s forthcoming aristocratic nuptials, make sure to order your Royal Wedding sick bag. Don’t actually throw up in it though, because that is sure to reduce the value.

According to this truly sketchy website, “if you feel unbalanced and generally worn down lately, it is probably because your biofield has fallen victim to the electromagnetic radiation around you.” The answer is the iRenew bracelet, obviously. But one woman did not find that her electromagnetic radiation was dealt with properly by this bracelet! So she is suing the company: “Her attorney is asking that he be allowed to sue on behalf of the hundreds of people who bought the bracelets. He estimated damages at $5 million.” Oh no, but I have been wearing it in my underpants!

by The Awl

With Wisconsin firefighters promising the largest demonstration yet on Thursday, the historic show of solidarity in Madison is not abating. The Capitol rotunda remains occupied. And it’s working — a Gallup Poll now puts Americans at 61 percent against eliminating the unions’ collective bargaining rights. (And not the exact opposite, which is what Fox & Friends has amazingly claimed.) What happens in Wisconsin is certainly a blueprint for what goes down in other states, so many have asked what can be done to support the demonstrators from afar.

For one, the protesters appreciate hot coffee, food and water, so we are doing a small, one-day drive to raise funds to buy supplies to fuel those in Wisconsin. Abe Sauer will be at Capitol Square tonight and also definitely on Thursday evening and will deliver as much as the donations can buy (from a locally-owned vendor, of course) to those continuing to occupy the Capitol building. Here’s how it works: Paypal us a small amount of money, if you like (don’t go crazy), and we’ll give it all to Abe, he’ll buy things, deliver them and we’ll report back.

Update: We said don’t go crazy! Uh, so, if anyone in Madison would like to help Abe carry things tonight, you could email him at abesauer at gmail dot com.

Update update: Okay, wow, we are going to stop taking money at this point! We’ll update you later on the disposition of donations obviously, but basically there will be a boatload of material goods being delivered. Yow! Thanks everyone!

“If this were a bird then queues would be stretching around the car park. But it’s not, it’s a spider with a slightly amusing abdomen.”
 — Mark Singleton of Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds discusses a recently discovered lichen crab spider that, when looked at from a certain angle, appears to have a frowny face on its back.

Does this revision of the cover of Harper’s as Us Weekly make you want to read it more?

If you are a fan of Sharon Horgan’s “Pulling,” rejoice: the one-hour series finale is now available on Nextflix Watch Instantly. If you are unfamiliar with Sharon Horgan’s “Pulling,” rejoice: the whole thing is available on Netflix Watch Instantly. If you don’t have Netflix Watch Instantly, make friends with someone who does and insist that you spend the weekend watching Sharon Horgan’s “Pulling,” which is so so good.