Hocking a chinek

The Democrats like to choose some meaningless phrase and run with it; right now it's racism of those who disapprove of Obama's actions. I remember when it was "No war for oil." Well, we had the war--where's the oil?

These mantras are meaningless; they are never expanded upon or explicated. This is what bubbe called "hocking a chinek," which I discovered after arduous research, means, beating on a teakettle--preferably an empty one, I suppose, or tea would get all over everything.

A brief Yiddish lesson

I have been reliably informed that there are people in this country who don't know what oy vey means.

True story: when I was in the hospital right after knee surgery, the woman in the next bed kept up a constant moaning of oy vey, or sometimes just oy the lite version. When I mentioned this to my father, who came to visit me, he protested, "But she's black."

Nevertheless, I heard her say oy vey for about 18 hours. The other six of the 24 were given over to exhortations to Jesus.

My Swedish-Scotch-Irish-possibly German son-in-law says it in a midwestern accent.

Oy vey is the international language of woe. In fact, I believe it can be translated roughly as "Woe is me." It expresses misery, pain, dismay, the whole tragic view of life. Saying oy vey over and over is called "kvetching." But lets not get into that.