GATEMOUTH (December 20, 2009): Listening to the complete Aladdin Recordings of Charles Brown; essentially what the King Cole Trio would have sounded like if they were black
In the same spirit, I think that my friend, Orthodox Pundit, blogs like what Gatemouth would write like if he were Jewish.
Please don’t make me explain that joke.
Well it is December and the Board of Elections has posted the November election results, meaning it’s time for me to do some analysis, but Orthodox Pundit has already beaten me to some of the best stories and has already said a lot of what I was about to say.
Take his analysis of the race in Brooklyn’s 48th Council District.
To review, as I’ve documented, the City’s Redistricting Commission earlier this year drew a map which created a Sheepshead Bay/Midwood district drawn to the advantage of the Russian Jewish community over the Orthodox Jewish community.
While both groups were ensured of the creation of at least one other area district where they were possible or probable victors, it would have been hard to draw a map where both of those communities could have had two seats if one was also going to accommodate the legitimate requests of other communities as well. One probably could not give both those communities everything they wanted without disenfranchising someone else.
That being said, I noted at the time that the Orthodox community of East Midwood seemed to have been marginalized beyond any rational need to do so.
One of that community’s residents, Chaim Deutsch, having been moved by the redistricting out of the district he’d been planning on running in, responded by moving right back in.
Contrast this with the behavior of the district’s Republican candidate, David Storobin, who last year, during his 15 minutes as a State Senator, renewed a lease for an apartment which had been moved outside his new district.
Back then, Storobin argued that, though he was not, like most residents of his new district, an Orthodox Jew, he had experience playing one on the campaign trail.
Now, Storobin took a different tack. Storobin, who lived nowhere near the Senate District he ran in last fall, and said it did not matter, now attacked Deutsch for living nowhere near the Council District, even though Deutsch lived there.
Having a pet schnauzer means that I've become an expert in translating dog whistles. In this case, what David Storobin, a well known hatemonger, was actually signaling was that Deutsch was not Russian.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, for before the general election against Storobin, Deutsch had to win a primary.
In the end he did, taking advantage of both a split Russian vote and the ability of the Orthodox community to generate a strong turnout.
But that gives Deutsch too little credit.