Chutzpah – a.k.a. Balls, by Mike Gold Brainiac On Banjo #193

October 25, 2010 Mike Gold 22 Comments

There’s a reason why many Yiddish words have become common to the English language. For some reason, Yiddish has mastered the use of single words that express certain emotions and actions that cannot be as easily or as thoroughly expressed in the American tongue. Bupkes, feh, glitch, kibbitz, klutz, kvetch, mentsh, shlep, shmooze, shtick, tchatchkes… the sound of these words convey their meaning.

In my opinion, no single Yiddish word has been more useful than “Chutzpah.”  Dictionary.com defines it as unmitigated effrontery or impudence, gall, audacity, nerve. Hey, that sounds like my job description. But when it comes to chutzpah, I bow to the master – Virginia Thomas.

Nineteen years ago, her husband Clarence was nominated to the Supreme Court. In the Congressional confirmation hearings, Anita Hill, one of his aids, said Clarence Thomas subjected her and other women to harassment by making sexual remarks and references to pornographic movies. “He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes… On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess… Thomas was drinking a Coke in his office, he got up from the table at which we were working, went over to his desk to get the Coke, looked at the can and asked, ‘Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?’”

Hill only made those accusations after congressional investigators contacted her and subsequently leaked her interview, and by that point in time she had been working for Thomas for ten years. You could argue that if she had been able to swallow it for a decade, it wasn’t a big deal. Well, you could argue that if you had not been subjected to sexual harassment in the 1980s. On the other had, she did have the job for ten years and her performance was not challenged until she after was questioned by investigators.

So now, 19 years later, Virginia Thomas is demanding an apology from Ms. Hill. According to ABC News, Thomas said on her phone message “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.” Thomas told the Associated Press she was “extending an olive branch” to Hill.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is chutzpah. That’s a full 10.

Anita Hill declined the extension. “I have no intention of apologizing because I testified truthfully about my experience and I stand by that testimony,” she said.

Anita is now a Brandeis University professor. Virginia is the founder of Liberty Central, which opposes “the leftist tyranny of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.” She’s also a darling of the tea bagger circuit.

Seeing somebody perform at an unprecedented level is always a moving experience.  One-time Batman teevee writer Stanley Ralph Ross explained this feeling as “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat; the human drama of athletic competition.”  It takes real chutzpah to make such a stand, and Virginia Thomas performed to a level reached only by the Michael Jordans of this world.

Damn, and I thought I had balls.

Fellow-traveler, anarcho-syndicalist and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.