Thongs And Meshugas Poem by gershon hepner

Thongs are not a meshugas,
they’re cords that are extremely scanty
which draw attention to the ass
far more than a more prudish panty.
If you’re a Puritan you must
such forms of lingerie eschew,
and if, of course, in God you trust,
as well you ought if you’re a Jew,
you may disparage them as naughty,
but that’s what Jews who’re horny wish
once they are getting close to forty,
and hoping for a treyfah dish,
and by the time that they are three-
score years and ten a lass
must wear a thong or she won’t be
their missionary meshugas.

Inspired by Maureen Dowd’s tribute to William Safire in the NYT, September 30,2009:
During the Clinton impeachment circus, I walked by William Safire’s lair. He had an imposing office in “murderers’ row, ” as he dubbed the hall where we worked, full of English antiques, Oriental rugs and a couple of old ties he kept for those rare moments when he needed one. He was sitting in an armchair reading that bodice-ripping best seller, The Starr Report. “There’s a word here I don’t know, ” said The Times’s wordsmith. “What is a thong? ” I flushed and stammered that it was a scanty panty with a string for the back. His hazel eyes glinted with curiosity. Trying to elucidate, I blurted: “Maybe you’re thinking of thong sandals, where thong is an adjective. With Monica, it’s used as a noun.” He smiled. “It’s like a G-string, ” he said. “That brings back memories of some clubs I went to as a young man in Union City, N.J.”
Bill Safire was anything but a nattering nabob of negativity. He had none of the vile and vitriol of today’s howling pack of conservative pundits: Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter and Malkin. Even though we disagreed on the Iraq war, he chastised me only once about it, for writing that Cheney & Co. had shoehorned all their “meshugas” about Saddam’s W.M.D. and Al Qaeda links into Colin Powell’s U.N. speech. “Mishegoss, ” he wrote in his language column, would have been a better spelling of the word….
He would have appreciated the fact that his obits ran on Yom Kippur. He had a famous dinner every year at his home in Chevy Chase, Md., to break the fast that gathered many of the city’s most influential players. Curious, I pestered him for years for an invite. He patiently explained it was just for Jews or people who were, or had been, married to Jews. After years of pleading, including many protestations that I had had Jewish boyfriends and that I would one day find a Jewish husband, he broke down and let me come. He was a mensch. And that’s no mishegoss.


9/30/09