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On Behalf of the Jews, Please Accept These Yom Kippur Apologies. Please.

We gave the world Anthony Weiner and Michael Bloomberg, and even our holidays screwed up everyone’s summer

by
Rachel Shukert
September 12, 2013
(Collage Tablet Magazine; original photos Andrew Burton/Getty Images and Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(Collage Tablet Magazine; original photos Andrew Burton/Getty Images and Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“Judge not, lest you be judged.” It’s a thing people say, and there’s a name for the people who say it: Christians.

Jews, on the other hand, know it’s all about the judgment, particularly on Yom Kippur, when we judge each other, ourselves, and that suit the former Mrs. Paskowitz is wearing that shows a little too much cleavage for synagogue, not that anyone will say anything to her directly.

It’s also a time for atonement and settling scores, so in the spirit of collective guilt (something we also, sadly, know quite a lot about), the Tattler wants to offer her apologizes on behalf of “the Jews” for the top five things we have to say sorry for this year.

Anthony Weiner. Carlos Danger rises (ha, I said rises) to the top (ha, I said top) spot. Erect (HAHA) a monument in his honor! Yes, we all thought we had seen the last of Anthony’s wiener, if not Anthony Weiner himself, but we thought wrong. As repentance goes, he’s the gift that keeps on giving—from dragging his wife out for yet another unapologetic apology tour to yelling at people in bakeries to telling Lawrence O’Donnell to “chillax” except nobody watches his show anyway. He may never be mayor, or hold elected office again (although I highly doubt this will be his last attempt), but at least he gave us this: Carlos Danger and Sydney Leathers have to be the greatest potential drag king names ever conceived. (I SAID CONCEIVED! And she’s out, ladies and gentlemen.)

Mike Bloomberg. And so the peculiar reality television survival show that is the New York City mayoral election has felled yet another Nice Jewish Boy, albeit in a less frankly creepy way; Hizzoner Le Bloomberg seems, like his predecessor, to have fallen into the peculiar hubris of not knowing when to leave well enough alone. If he had just given us the smoking ban, dayenu. If he had only bought himself an unprecedented (and dubiously legal) third term, it would have been more than enough. If he had stopped with the bike lanes, it would have been enough. But now, as the Bloombergian age lumbers to a close, leaving a bank and a chain store on every corner and the greatest wealth inequality since the Gilded Age, he’s giving interviews to major media outlets about how Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee, is running a “racist” campaign for having the temerity to have a wife and children and how great it would be if all the Russian oligarchs would buy up the rest of the city (although if it means they bring the floor shows back to the restaurants in Brighton Beach, I’m not totally against it). It’s time to make your apologies and go.

Syria. Just all of it. Syria in general. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, or indeed, exactly what’s happening at all, but look, it’s in the Middle East, so somehow it must be Israel’s fault. I’ll just apologize in advance while everyone figures out exactly how best to blame this on the Jews. We’re sorry!

That Horrible, Extra, No Good Very Bad Week of Summer … which, according to this, made many fancy mommies and disengaged daddies very, very unhappy. What the hell were they supposed to do with their kids for an extra five days, after horse-riding camp and geometry camp and circus arts camp and improve your concentration camp (see what I did there?) were all over? What, what, what? It’s not like these children, our future leaders, could do anything so jejune and inorganic as dumbly watching Full House reruns whilst eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for a few days, and if they did, they’re sure not going to get into Harvard now. Thanks a lot, Jewish kids who spent the whole time dressed up in synagogue, not allowed to pee. Thanks a whole lot.

Miley Cyrus. OK, so she isn’t Jewish. Neither is Robin Thicke, or 2 Chainz, or any of those giant bears. (The foam finger, on the other hand, looked suspiciously circumcised to me.) But I’m sorry anyway. I’m sorry that AutoTune hasn’t yet been invented for live performances. I’m sorry for the bears, several of which are now filing a class-action PETA-assisted lawsuit. I’m sorry that you were forced to see the sad spectacle of a lady who was once a child dance around in her underpants at the VMAs, unlike all the other ladies who have danced around in their underpants at the VMAs. They at least had the decency never to have been children. And I’m sorry you had to read about it for weeks afterwards, while everyone else got their two cents in about how outraged they were, even as something something Syria. I’m sorry for us all, Jew and non-Jew alike. The only person I’m not sorry for is the finger. He looked like he was having a pretty good time.

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Rachel Shukert, a Tablet Magazine columnist on pop culture, is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great. Starstruck, the first in a series of three novels, is new from Random House. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.

Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.