From a mean-spirited obituary of Nora Ephron on the website of Chronicles, a magazine of the nativist, isolationist right:



Is this really it, what American literature comes down to in the New Millennium? A combination of maudlin sentimentality (Sleepless in Seattle) and adolescent impudence? Ephron's scripts--I've endured them on transatlantic flights--sound like an unending episode of MASH. Even on my worst days and in my blackest moods, I would never have suggested that Ephron was anything but a lower-middle-brow entertainer, somewhere in the American cultural pantheon between Bill Kristol and Billy Crystal. Well, to paraphrase Ephron on religion, I guess you can never have too much schmuck.**



** A Yiddish word with many meanings and spellings, the most harmless referring to culinary chicken fat used in making, for example, chopped liver. I by the way make particularly good chopped liver, taught by a lady friend from New York who probably loved the Nora Ephron who said her religion came down to the belief that "You can never have too much butter."



Have you ever spread some schmuck on a piece of pumpernickel? Delicious. Terrible for your cholesterol. For a more in-depth discussion of the word schmuck, please read my article, "Sister Mary Schmuck Takes a Stand."

COMMENT OF THE DAY: From down below, "This guy's going to be shocked when he finds out what he's been mistakenly mixing into his chopped liver."

