Last Wednesday, the day after three of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s confederates won primaries in New York City, my 83-year-old brother called early in the morning to wish me a happy birthday. After a quick catalog of our various old-age aches, pains and complaints about complacent physicians, he asked, “Why do you think younger people are so anti-Semitic?”
That was a question that called for more time than we had, but my shorthand answer was that people under 40 have no memory of urban/suburban life (we lived on Long Island, in Huntington) where the Jewish population was sizable, and aside from scattered catcalls of “kike” or “yid,” everyone got together well. That includes the 12-house cul-de-sac where our family of seven lived, a pre-fab, finished-in-six-months project that was popular across the country in the 1950s. It was a mixture of Catholics, Jews, a Christian Scientist family, one from Egypt, and notably, a German-born divorced man who, while not shunned, was kept at arms-length.
As I’ve written about previously—but before the vile rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S.—half of my public school pals were Jewish, and I didn’t think twice about it, except for getting pissed when they had to attend Hebrew School after classes ended, making a quorum for a baseball or touch football game impossible. I gladly attended seven bar mitzvahs, which, depending on the devotion to Judaism, were either half-hour services, or interminable affairs, where the friend “becoming a man” had to sing and recite passages from the Torah. Once, two fellow goys and I, sitting in the back, broke into double-over laughter when Bobby Ringler (no tunesmith) had to warble out, with a microphone, words that were foreign to us. An assistant rabbi collared the three of us and sternly said we could wait outside.
Bobby and I, both 71, trade birthday emails each year, catch up on our families, and keep politics to a minimum, as he’s a lifelong left-leaning Democrat and my views skew libertarian or conservative, such as cutting taxes and regulations. I was tempted, but didn’t delve into the current political environment. A retired doctor who lives in upstate New York, Bobby’s horrified by Trump, was a Fauci advocate during Covid (he’d met Fauci at the George Washington School of Medicine decades ago) and, to my knowledge has never voted for a Republican. Fine by me: I know a lot of people with those same views, and take a hands-off approach, since friendship’s more important than fleeting politics.
That brought me back to the frequent visits to the Ringler household—especially in the summer—where we’d play ball, swap sections of the newspapers, and then go in for lunch. Bobby’s “Grandma Ida,” from the “old country,” was skeptical of me at first, but warmed up when I asked about her history and life in the United States. She didn’t go into gory detail—I wasn’t yet a teenager—but it was heartbreaking nonetheless. She’d get misty, compose herself, and switching gears say, “Oh, Rusty, you must try my just-out-of-the-oven noodle kugel.” I did, and it was exotic and delicious, certainly nothing like the fare that my mom disinterestedly cooked each night. (Although her “American Chop Suey” was pretty tasty, and unlike the undercooked Spam and beans or breakfast sausages and instant mashed potatoes, wasn’t fed to our dog Scuttle who waited patiently under the kitchen table, waiting for handouts.)
The New York Times was collectively singing (“99 Bottles of Beer On the Wall”) on June 24, in its next-day coverage of the NYC primaries. A sampling:
“Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a big bet and emerged victorious… becoming an undeniable power broker in New York politics just one year after his Democratic primary victory stunned the political establishment.”
“The result demonstrated the strength of the mayor’s support, his political acumen and voters’ hunger for insurgency over incumbency.”
“The moves showed Mr. Mamdani’s appetite for a gamble—the gamble paid off.”
“The primary results showed Mr. Mamdani’s comfort with risk—and foreshadowed a possible showdown with the top Democrat [Hakeem Jeffries] in Congress.
“With these electoral wins, Mr. Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America have the means to push an ambitious reform agenda.”
I suspect, but can’t be sure, that the Times will back off the Mamdani/DSA cheerleading in coming months, especially if another madman like Abdul El-Sayed wins the Michigan Senate primary.
The photo above is of Bobby Ringler (right) and me one day in fifth grade (we’d met in Mrs. Keebler’s kindergarten class). I’m wearing one of those very cool (for a short period of time) blue sailor semi-tees, while Bobby has a more conventional wash-and-wear button-down.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: ? and the Mysterians’ ’96 Tears” is Billboard’s #2 single of the year; the New York Yankees finish last in the American League standings; the White Sox’s Gary Peters is the A.L. ERA leader with 1.98; Roberto Clemente is the N.L.’s MVP; Mike Mansfield is the U.S. Senate Majority Leader; Jim Gaffigan is born and Bobby Fuller dies; The Flintstones airs its last episode; The Sound of Music wins Best Picture Oscar; Alan Drury’s Capable of Honor, Rex Stout’s Death of a Doxy, Barbara Garson’s MacBird! and Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment are published; and The Beatles perform live on Top of the Pops for the first and only time.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023