Wednesday, February 04, 2004

 
"Mohammed, this may hurt a little, but I must be, er, 'Frank'"
Or: "The Feringji Rules of Acquisition"

I should be continuing to catch up on sleep, but just hadda' catch the Corner. Jonah's line, "While the "Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors" line is funny, what I find hilarious is the fact that he "loved and cared about almost all the peoples of the world," reminded me(at least I *think* it did, given a failure of a brief attempt to confirm via Google) of Jon Lovitz's SNL character, "Frenchy" who "loves *everyone* -except the Jews."
And(sigh) as far as I know, no one 'sides moi gets a sophomoric giggle with every reference to Star Drek's "ferengi," remembering the odd looking word, "feringji," from the Derb's Sept. 13, 2001 column:"Hesperophobia":"I can't see any strong reason for believing that if the state of Israel were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, hesperophobia would disappear with it. Not even just Arab hesperophobia would decline. A common word for Europeans in the Arabic language is feringji, from "Frank," i.e. crusader."
The search to confirm the above was worthwhile if only because it also coughed up the masterful, truly fair and balanced, "Crusading They Went" of the same year. (-just had a Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid moment: "Rules?!? In a Crusade?!?")