Brouhaha Over Chuckie's Cheeseburger

Schumer is a phony; this is news?

[Note to Readers: Ha! As if subscribers, in any significant numbers, are actually reading this! It’s finally dawning on me that I’m essentially talking to myself here; we’ll see just how long I carry on pretending that what I think or have to say is of any interest. Substack tracks every aspect of these posts. Out of not quite 300 subscribers, only a third or so even see fit to open them. The last post garnered a whopping 7 Likes and 1 Comment. Whoopie.]

OK, so Senator Chuckie Schumer (Rush used to call him “Chuck U. Schumer”!) is being deservedly pilloried for his Fathers’ Day tweet containing this photo:

All over the web, critics (including American Thinker’s Andrea Widburg) are pointing out what an obviously phony, staged photo this is, as evidenced by the cheese atop a raw burger. The (presumably) already-grilled hotdogs next to the as-yet-uncooked burgers are another clue that Chuckie doesn’t know dick about grilling [‘Don’t care for that expression? ‘Too bad].

As an attempt to be “real” that falls flat because it fools nobody, this stunt stacks up alongside, for example, John Kerry’s “Is this where I can git me a huntin’ license?” moment, and Bill Clinton (who, being from Arkansas, ought to know better) remarking [paraphrased] “Some of my best times have been mornings in a duck blind with my rifle.”

But there are other aspects of this brouhaha that seem to have been missed by most of the pundits. Schumer is ostensibly Jewish. That doesn’t mean he’s necessarily expected to “keep Kosher” and follow the Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, as all Orthodox and other observant Jews seek to do. And there's no way to tell from the photo if the hot dogs and burgers are Kosher. But putting cheese on a burger is, like any mixing of meat and dairy, trayf, meaning irredeemably non-Kosher.

So Schumer allowing himself to be photographed putting cheese on a burger, whether raw or cooked, whether real or staged, illustrates a profound tone-deafness, if not outright contempt, for his Jewish constituents, who probably care little whether Schumer, in his private life, keeps Kosher or not, but who probably wish he would at least keep up appearances and at least adhere to “Kosher-style.” One has to wonder if a similarly-staged photo of the Schumer family’s Passover seder table would feature a centerpiece of a baked and glazed ham.

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‘Just free-associating here, I’m reminded of two stories. The first is from the memoirs of my late, great friend Barry Farber. As a young journalist, he was the dinner speaker at a Southern men’s club. Barry loved to tell how the club president took him aside and said, totally without guile, “We’re serving ham, and I know you Jewish boys don’t eat ham. But don’t worry: I’m having the cook fix you some nice porkchops.”

The other story is the classic joke about the rabbi, a gourmand, who has always been intrigued by the idea of roast suckling pig. Finally he gives in to his temptation, and orders it at a restaurant in a nearby town where it is the specialty and where he believes he will not be seen by anyone he knows.

But, as he’s waiting for the celebrated dish to be brought out, who should walk in but a couple from his congregation, who of course recognize him and make a beeline for his table, making smalltalk just as a team of waiters arrives ceremoniously bearing an ornately garnished platter with the roast suckling pig, complete with an apple in its mouth!

“Can you believe how fancy this place is?” exclaims the rabbi, feigning great surprise. “I order a baked apple, and look how they serve it!”

•  •  •  •

But Schumer doesn’t even pay lip service to Kashrut, not even the way he pays lip service to support for Israel, although such claims of support are equally disingenuous, given that he is the spokesmouth for the party that tolerates outright Jew-haters in its midst, that is sympathetic to Hamas and which actually bankrolled, via its massive funds transfers to Iran, the October 7 attacks. And let’s not forget that Schumer has been personally very vocal in calling for the ouster of Benjamin Netanyahu.

From the word trayf comes the word trayfnyak, which Leo Rosten defines as “someone untrustworthy, malicious, tricky, of whom you should beware.” Just as it’s said that, if you look up “Rock’n’Roll” you’ll see a picture of Chuck Berry, if you look up “trayfnyak” you should see a picture of Chuckie Schumer.

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But wait, there’s more! Yet another aspect of Schumer’s “Burger-Gate” that seems to have sailed right over the heads of most of the otherwise sharp-eyed critics was in the caption Schumer supplied to accompany the cheeseburger photo:

"Our family has lived in an apartment building for all our years, but my daughter and her wife just bought a house with a backyard and for the first time we’re having a barbeque with hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill!"

“My daughter and her wife…”!! Didja get that, Boys and Girls (and persons of indeterminate gender)? Chuckie couldn't manage even the slightest nod to his Jewish constituents, his own (ostensible) co-religionists and landsmen, but he makes sure to not miss an opportunity to include a broad, overt and unmistakeable wink to demonstrate his and his family’s woke credentials. Isn’t that special?

ST