The True Cost of Freedom

We went to hear a Jewish refusenik named Natan Shcharansky talk this evening. I don't want to sound irreverent to a genuine hero, but he did sound just like  MYRON COHEN. And, since he had exhibited such individual courage in standing up to the entire Old Soviet Union almost by himself, I expected him to be at least 10 feet tall, but he was about the same height as Woody Allen. Although his speech was inspiring listening to it did come at a cost, of $54.00 for a pledge to the sponsoring agency, who brought him to speak to us. For that we got the speech and two sugar cookies.
The funniest part of the evening's speeches came when one of our US Senators spoke to the audience via a prerecorded segment, during which he said he would have rather been with us in person, but the work of the US Senate kept him in Washington. 
Since the work of the US Senate is too be deadlocked, and get nothing done, he could have at least used a different excuse for not attending in person.

Club Mordecai

Since the Jewish holiday of Purim is coming up, it occurred to me that Jews are always trying to make this into a "happy" holiday, maybe they should start a Club Mordecai Comedy Club. The Club Mordecai would fulfill two purposes, it would give Jews and Non-Jews a place to laugh at and with each other, and it would give guilt-ridden Jews a place to expunge their religious demons in public. Actually the first stand-up should be Woody Allen, notoriously ambivalent about his Judaism, he could do at least two or three hours of one-liners about how his non-stop psychiatric analysis could have been prevented had he just be given the opportunity to tell one-liners at his Bar Mitzvah instead of having to read the Torah.