It was not until I was hanging out at the pizza-and-beer "Blogger Dinner," which my friend, David Berkowitz, organized in conjunction with the Web. 2.0 Expo, that I suddenly realized that I had not bestowed last week's Chutzpah of the Week award! I suppose this had something to do with my own way of being caught up in the Imus affair and the extent to which the whole week was one of chutzpah overload. However, I definitely had a strong preference for the most deserving candidate by the end of the week. As a hint, I just affixed the "chutzpah" tag to my "Restitution is Necessary for an Injury" post. That's right, chutzpah fans, the recipient of the award for last week is none other than the Reverend DeForest Soaries, for how else can we describe the way he imposed himself on a situation that demanded the utmost delicacy in all matters and turned it into the bargaining situation that provoked my rant last Friday?
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3 comments:
On CNN now I'm watching Bush give an address about the Virginia shootings from the Holocaust Museum. Can I nominate him for the Chutzpah award for next week? It was good seeing you.
David, funny you should bring up Bush. He has never been one of my direct targets, so to speak. There was the week last month when his whole administration was "scooped" by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso. We really ought to revisit that one in the wake of the Imus affair:
http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/03/japanese-chutzpah.html
However, the only member of the Bush administration to be awarded by name has been Condi:
http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/02/condis-chutzpah.html
The topic of chutzpah actually came up before I had finished my first beer at your party. I was challenged over the difference between chutzpah and hubris. Even with beer in me, I could still invoke Aristotle, who wrote that tragedy involves characters who are noble, while comedy involves characters who are base. So my answer was that hubris can only be committed by those who are noble; chutzpah is for the rest of us! Since I doubt that any of us would accuse Bush of nobility, he is probably due for an award; but I am not sure that grandstanding over the Virginia shootings would count. Real chutzpah would have been sending Cheney to substitute for him in the capacity of "chief mourner" in Virginia!
I'm still getting used to using this commenting facility properly, so the URLs got garbled. Hopefully, this will resolve the problem. The two posts I cited concerned
Taro Aso and
Condi Rice.
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