It's war of the Yiddish words! In recent days, Mayor Bloomberg has described the State Senate's refusal to vote on mayoral control of schools as "meshugeneh" while State Sen. Hiram Monserrate called Bloomberg a "yenta". The NY Times looked at the rich history of NYC politicians using Yiddish—former mayor Ed Koch suggested it's "to sound like citizens of the world." Michael Wex, who has explored Yiddish in books Born to Kvetch and Just Say Nu, analyzes Bloomberg's and Monserrate's uses to the Times: "I think that Mayor Bloomberg probably used Yiddish as a way of having his kugel and eating it, too. His use of meshugeneh — a not uncommon solecism, incidentally; the adverb should be meshuga — seems intended to strengthen his point at the same time as it gives his expression of it a heartfelt, rather than denunciatory. The idea that ‘this is crazy, pure and simple’ comes across all the more strongly by implying that English simply lacks the words to describe what he’s feeling — that in his guts, as they used to say, he knows it’s nuts... Senator Monserrate raises the stakes, though, by calling the mayor a yenta —'a female motormouth.' If the senator’s earlier uses of meshugeneh were meant to show that he could play the mayor’s game, yenta is his way of proving that he can even play it better." more ›

Oh, it's on: After Mayor Bloomberg complained about the State Senators stalling on the bill that would give him control of the public school system, the Senators sounded off right back. On Friday, Bloomberg said, "The only thing I can think of is they want to ruin the schools," suggested the state troopers "drag them back" to Albany and saying the Senators' summer off was "Meshughena." This prompted State Senator Hiram Monserrate to say, "We believe it would be meshuganah not to include parents in the education of our children. As opposed to loosely using the word meshuganah, we would also say we don't need a yenta on the other side of this argument and this debate. Raising the issues that he has raised in the manner he has raised them is unfortunate." more ›