December 27, 2007
It’s nearly over, two thousand and seven,
And I hope that you’ll join me in saying “thank heaven.”
Although it was no worse than two thousand and six
There were plenty of people up to their old tricks.
Like Iranian leaders, extreme and Islamic,
Who all seem hell-bent on going atomic,
And acting the part of the neighborhood bully
And fooling the West, and fooling us fully,
Because if you believe our very own nation,
There’s no need to fret over centrifugation.
We know that an apple is the thing that we eat
To keep doctors away and ill health in retreat.
Annapolis is, if you’ll forgive the conceit,
A place where Israelis and Arabs can meet
To keep rivals at bay while they jostle and schnorr
And say that the other just rots to the core.
Prime Minister Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas
Pretended they somehow had eased their impasse.
But when Israel got much less than they gave, it
Sounded to us just like Camp David.
From President Bush to his aide Condoleezza,
They all seemed to contract a case of amneeza.
And lest we forget, it certainly was a
challenging time for the people in Gaza,
Who between raining fire on beleaguered Sderot,
Rose up against Abbas, and grabbed the remote:
On Hamas TV, a cruel Mickey Mouse
Explained to the kids the way he’d clean house.
“Jews are the enemy!” the mascot would bellow
(We heard they asked SpongeBob, but he was too yellow).
The race for the White House has yet to infuse
A sense of excitement among voting Jews.
Whether Rudy or Mitt, Hill or Obama —
Forgive us for asking, but where is the drama?
Do Mormons love Jesus? Will Fred Thompson talk?
Will Huckabee make a disabled man walk?
With Iraq still a mess and the economy sinking,
Are these really the things about which we are thinking?
And then just when McCain was mired in defeats a
Savior named Lieberman jumped the mehitza
(a line that I stole from my friend Ami Eden
— I’m sorry but I was stuck for a lead-in).
They both backed the war, and neither’s fanatic
But will either earn votes from those Democratic?
If the year had a color it must have been green,
With efforts to make our environment clean,
And to cool down the earth after decades of warming.
Still, skeptics declared that the world was performing
According to science and natural law:
Think of it as, well, a hundred-year thaw!
While others may buy this, sink, line, and hooker,
We’ll remember how all of us shvitzed in the sukka.
We must end the year with a shout out to those
Whose names in bold face almost always repose;
The Natalie Portmans and Judd Apatows,
Shalom Auslander and Amy Winehouse,
Or Michael Mukasey, the nation’s top cop,
And Michael Chabon, a real yiddisher kopf.
Zach Braff, Arnie Eisen, and Shia LaBeouf —
We’ll see you in 2008 soon eneouf!
