If you've been busy over the past few days you have mercifully missed the great "schlong" debate. But that's all over now:
Trump has stumbled back into the turbulent waters of Yiddishkeit by saying that Hillary Clinton “got schlonged” in the previous election, and then insisting it was not the vulgar term for penis most believe it be.
“When I said Hillary got ‘schlonged’ ,” he tweeted, “that meant beaten badly.”
Of course, “shlong” (as it is spelled in standard Yiddish transcription) means nothing of the kind; it is not even a verb. The word means simply “snake,” which perhaps made it inevitable that its colloquial meaning of male genitalia would overtake its original definition.
As the journalist Jeff Sharlet wrote in response to Trump’s claims about the word, “Spent three years as editor of Pakn Treger, magazine of National Yiddish Book Center. Never heard schlong used to mean anything but dick.”
Arguing the other side, political analyst Jeff Greenfield wrote, “Trump is right on this. ‘I got schlonged’ is a commonplace NY way of saying: ‘I lost big time,’ w/out genital reference.”
The author says there is a similar sounding Yiddish phrase that Trump may have heard which has something to do with beating a chicken. (You can look it up.) But let's face it: if Trump was saying that Clinton was "beaten badly" by Obama in 2008 the image he evoked was that she was beaten badly with a penis.
I'll leave it to others to argue about what he really meant with all that but I did want to point one thing out since it seems to come up over and over again. The 2008 primary was not a rout, It was the closest primary campaign in history.
Not that this is particularly relevant to this year's obviously. They start with a clean slate. But it is a fact that the last primary was very close. Who knows? Maybe it will be this time too.
*The annual fundraiser continues. If you feel like dropping a little something in the kitty it would be most appreciated.
