Kvetching over the loss of schmucks

Nov 2, 2007: The Onion reports “Mel Brooks Starts New Foundation: Schmucks for Schmuck”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mel-brooks-starts-nonprofit-foundation-to-save-wor,2316/

NEW YORK—Saying he could no longer stand idly by while a vital part of American culture is lost forever, activist and Broadway producer Mel Brooks has founded a private nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the word “schmuck.”

An emotional Brooks stopped short of kvetching at a schmuck fundraiser Monday.

“Schmuck is dying,” a sober Brooks said during a 2,000-person rally held in his hometown of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Monday. “For many of us, saying ‘schmuck’ is a way of life. Yet when I walk down the street and see people behaving in foolish, pathetic, or otherwise schmucky ways, I hear only the words ‘prick’ and ‘douche bag.’ I just shake my head and think, ‘I don’t want to live in a world like this.'”

The nonprofit, Schmucks For Schmuck, has compiled schmuck-related data from the past 80 years and conducted its own independent research on contemporary “schmuck” usage.

According to Brooks, the statistics are frightening: Utterances of the word “schmuck” have declined every year since its peak in 1951, and in 2006, the word was spoken a mere 28 times—17 of these times by Brooks himself.

The study indicates that today, when faced with a situation in which one can use a targeted or self-deprecating insult to convey a general feeling of disgust, people are 50 times more likely to use the word “jerk” than “schmuck,” 100 times more likely to use “dick,” and 15,000 times more likely to use “fucking asshole.”

Perhaps more startling, only 23 percent of men know what schmuck means, and only 1.2 percent of these men are under the age of 78.

If such trends continue, Brooks estimates that by 2011, such lesser-used terms as “imbecile,” “dummy,” “schlub,” and “contemptible ne’er-do-well” will all surpass schmuck, which is projected to completely disappear by the year 2020 or whenever Brooks dies.

“We must save this word!” Brooks said to thunderous applause as those in attendance began chanting “Schmuck! Schmuck! Schmuck!”

“How will we be able to charmingly describe someone who acts in an inappropriate manner? Especially given the tragic loss of the word ‘schmegeggie’ in 2001. So I urge you: Tonight, when you get home, please, call up your family, your friends, your loved ones, and tell them they’re a bunch of schmucks.”

“The world cannot afford to lose this valuable and versatile word,” Brooks told reporters during a charity auction in Manhattan’s Upper West Side Tuesday, where attendees bid for the chance to have a private lunch with Brooks and repeatedly call him a schmuck. “You can be a poor schmuck, a lazy schmuck, a dumb schmuck, or just a plain old schmuck. A group of people can be collectively referred to as schmucks. You can call someone a schmuck, and you can be called a schmuck. You can even call yourself a schmuck.”

“Plus, it’s just so fun to say,” Brooks added. “Schmuck.”

To brush up on your Yiddish, go to http://thomer.com/yiddish/ 

Just in the S section, I found several I recognized, like shiva, shikseh and shmuts, plus some I knew the meaning of but did not realize were Yiddish, like shlep, shlub, shlump, shmaltz and shnook.

And for those inquiring minds wondering the subtle differences between these:

• Shlemiel: Clumsy bungler, an inept person, butter-fingered; dopey person
• Shlimazel: Luckless person. Unlucky person; one with perpetual bad luck.
  • “The shlemiel spilled the soup on the shlimazel.”
• Shlub: A jerk; a foolish, stupid or unknowing person, second rate, inferior.
• Shlump: Careless dresser, untidy person; as a verb, to idle or lounge around.
  • “What kind of shlub would hire a shlump?”
• Shmo(e): Naive person, easy to deceive; a goof (Americanism)
• Shnook: A patsy, a sucker, a sap, easy-going, person easy to impose upon, gullible
• Shnorrer: A beggar who makes pretensions to respectability; sponger, a parasite
  • “The shnorrer keeps his eye out for shnooks and shmoes.”
• Shmekel: A penis, correctly circumcised during the Brit Milah ceremony; slang for small penis.
• Shmuck: Self-made fool; obscene for penis: derisive term for a man.
  • [Make up your own … I am not going there! LOL]

H/t Jim Walter