Chutzpah

It's amazing that Leon Reinstein can say it was the Republicans who held America hostage and caused S&P's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating ("GOP offers new definition of chutzpah," Aug. 9). Talk about chutzpah, Democrats were in power for almost two years, yet did nothing to avoid what has happened to our credit rating. How can the Democrats claim innocence when it was them, with the president's help, who forced through Obama's unwelcome health care bill? Mr. Rubinstein and others may blame the Republicans, but they can't see their own reflection in the mirror when it comes to holding America hostage to one pork-filled bill after another.

It's amazing that Leon Reinstein can say it was the Republicans who held America hostage and caused S&P's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating ("GOP offers new definition of chutzpah," Aug. 9). Talk about chutzpah, Democrats were in power for almost two years, yet did nothing to avoid what has happened to our credit rating. How can the Democrats claim innocence when it was them, with the president's help, who forced through Obama's unwelcome health care bill? Mr. Rubinstein and others may blame the Republicans, but they can't see their own reflection in the mirror when it comes to holding America hostage to one pork-filled bill after another.

The old definition of the Yiddish word, "chutzpah," is the son who murders his parents and at his trial pleads for mercy because he is an orphan. The modern definition of chutzpah is for the Republicans, who held America hostage over extending the debt limit, to blame President Obama for the downgrading of Standard and Poor's credit rating of America from AAA to AA+. Leon Reinstein, Baltimore

The old definition of the Yiddish word, "chutzpah," is the son who murders his parents and at his trial pleads for mercy because he is an orphan. The modern definition of chutzpah is for the Republicans, who held America hostage over extending the debt limit, to blame President Obama for the downgrading of Standard and Poor's credit rating of America from AAA to AA+. Leon Reinstein, Baltimore

THE PHONE has been ringing with calls from historians who want to know what I was doing on Dec. 7, 1941. After the third query, it occurred to me that I was giving out information I could easily use myself.This is what I was doing on the Day of Infamy, which my father always referred to as the Day of Chutzpah. There were five friends at the Forest Hills Bowling Alley in the borough of Queens in New York City.They were Bob Markay, Arnie Alperstein, George Hankoff, Dick Zimmerman and myself.

Washington -- The cringing ethnic is a pathetic specimen in American culture, whether it is Uncle Tom meekly defending his Master for selling him down the river (''It goes agin me to hear one word agin Mas'r . . . He couldn't be spected to think so much of poor Tom'') or Walter Lippmann oleaginously agreeing with Harvard's WASP president, A. Lawrence Lowell, that the university ought to have fewer Jews (''bad for the immigrant Jews as well as for Harvard if there were too great a concentration'')

The date of Dec. 30, 2006 on the calendar indicates it must be time for my annual Chutzpah Awards. Usually, I honor 10 dubious winners. But in 2006, three were filled with such audacity that they took chutzpah to new limits. There is no room for the seven other spots. Here are the honorees: Third place: Martin O'Malley, mayor of Baltimore and governor-elect of Maryland. No, not because he took a police department that was never Bill of Rights-friendly and made it even less so. It's not even for promoting Baltimore's 60 percent graduation rate as an achievement during his gubernatorial campaign.

Most politicians are known for their chutzpah. But few are as brazen as Shelton J. Stewart Jr.In 1986, he became Baltimore's sheriff. Two years later he was convicted of obstruction of justice and removed from office. Now he is running for sheriff again in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary.Voters should strongly rebuff this effort by a convicted felon to return to office. They can do it best by pulling the lever for John W. Anderson, who was appointed to the post in 1989.L For the most part, Sheriff Anderson has done a splendid job.He has hounded dead-beat parents for support payments and generally worked to heighten the profile of his department.

HAGERSTOWN -- Say this much for Richard Michael: He had chutzpah. Chutzpah is a Yiddish word, meaning nerve. Michael would have known this, if only he was the Jew he claimed to be.Instead, being no Jew at all, he finds himself on a little list, released the other day by J. Joseph Curran Jr., the attorney general of Maryland. With apologies to David Letterman's writers, it was the Top 10 List of Frivolous Inmate Lawsuits. This one wasn't played strictly for laughs, although a few are inevitable.

AN EXCESS of chutzpah oozed its way into the body politic in 1990, rising to such alarming levels that we now face a danger of chutzpah overload. Meteorologists may now have to give out chutzpah alerts with their daily weather reports. So pervasive is the phenomenon that I, in a flash of inspired lunacy, have decided to inaugurate the First Annual Chutzpah Awards. Without further ado, I now cite the winners.* 9th runner-up: Rap musician Vanilla Ice, plucked from a Dallas suburb for his Aryan good looks to cash in on the popularity of rap music, has shown no talent for the genre.

Re-fu-di-ate ( ri-fyoo-de-at' ) vt. To deny or else to prove wrong or perhaps something in between those quite different meanings. Merging of repudiate and refute first coined by former vice-presidential candidate and aspiring semanticist Sarah Palin. People abuse the English language all the time. Count this newspaper's writers among those who sometimes err — despite the most valiant efforts of editors and copy desk staff. Humans make mistakes. But when errors are caught, most people admit wrong and corrections are made.

Who wants to be a bailout recipient? We do! say the steel companies. Not content with what is likely to be the biggest public works program in decades, Big Steel wants to ensure taxpayers buy bridge, road, school and electric-grid steel only or largely from U.S. producers. Every provision in Congress' forthcoming stimulus should contain "a buy America clause," Nucor CEO Daniel R. DiMicco told The New York Times. What a good idea. The Buy America Act of 1933, signed by Herbert Hoover as he exited his miserable presidency, fueled a global trade war that hurt American exports and made the Great Depression even greater.

The date of Dec. 30, 2006 on the calendar indicates it must be time for my annual Chutzpah Awards. Usually, I honor 10 dubious winners. But in 2006, three were filled with such audacity that they took chutzpah to new limits. There is no room for the seven other spots. Here are the honorees: Third place: Martin O'Malley, mayor of Baltimore and governor-elect of Maryland. No, not because he took a police department that was never Bill of Rights-friendly and made it even less so. It's not even for promoting Baltimore's 60 percent graduation rate as an achievement during his gubernatorial campaign.

What most people don't realize is that Red Auerbach married the prettiest girl in town. Even in her 70s, Dorothy (Lewis) Auerbach was an elegant presence in the finest Sophia Loren sense, and one can only imagine what a head-turning traffic-stopper she must have been when young Arnie Auerbach slipped that ring onto her finger oh, so many years ago. But should we be surprised? We already knew Red, who died at 89 Saturday, had an eye for talent. Well, yes, there was the problem with his original dismissal of Bob Cousy as merely an overrated favorite of the "local yokels," but the Cousy episode was one of the very few professional misjudgments in the career of the most important non-playing person in the history of professional basketball.

You've heard that those who can, do; and those who can't, teach. Well, sometimes, those who can, do - and teach, too. Victor Danchenko, for example. The Russian-born pedagogue, a veteran faculty member at two leading conservatories, Curtis and Peabody, gave an instructive recital Tuesday night at An die Musik LIVE. He demonstrated not just the calm authority you would expect from a professor and a competition-winning Moscow Conservatory graduate, but an unabashedly old-fashioned, romantic style.

Think of Helen Harkness as the fairy godmother of career reincarnations. She doesn't sprinkle magic dust or wave a wand. But the 76-year-old takes clients looking for a career change on journeys of the soul to find out what will feed their passions. Discover that, she said, and enjoy true success. "Many executives have gotten to the top by leaving parts of themselves behind," said Harkness, principal and president of Career Design Associates Inc. "There's a need for growth that they're not getting from the corporate world."

WHAT? NO Annual Chutzpah Awards for 1999? You should hope that you would get off that easy. I've given out the awards annually since 1995 to those folks who committed the most brazen acts of audacity for a given year. Most years there have been nine place winners and a number one prize given. Bill Clinton was tops in 1998 (who else could have been?) and Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch got the nod in 1996 for his self-righteous denial that his organization had any knowledge of cocaine smuggling by two Nicaraguan contras involved in CIA covert operations.

AS ANOTHER year comes to a close tonight, it's time once again to honor those who've elevated gall, audacity and excessive cheekiness to a cultural imperative. Yes, the 2003 Chutzpah Awards are upon us. There just might be a year when these awards aren't given out, but 2003 wasn't one of them. So without further ado, it's on to the kudos. Ninth runner-up: Rapper Jay-Z, whose latest album features a cut with the lyric "I got 99 problems but a b-- ain't one." Call some women that word, Jay-Z, and you'll have several problems, a lot more than 99. Jay-Z has said the album this foolishness appears on will be his last.