Dans Papers - May 11, 2007

Some guys have friends they play cards with. Some guys have friends they go bowling with. Some guys have friends they go to ball games with. With women its always about shopping. But with men, it's different.

Divorce lawyer Raoul Felder and comic Jackie Mason have a twenty-year long New York friendship based upon food, books and humor. They eat, they kibbitz and then they write hilarious books about what they ate. They call the books "guides." They've done restaurant "guides" to New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. They've got a pretty big following.

Felder once told me how this friendship started. They met, they told jokes, they laughed and Mason said you've got to come out and see my house in the Hamptons.

This was a long time ago. Mason had bought a vacation home in East Hampton, up in Northwest Woods, but he almost never came here. He's a New Yorker through and through. He hardly ever steps out of the place. So for him to suggest to Felder that they drive out here was a big deal.

So they started out. Wait 'til you see the size of my living room, Mason said. Wait 'til you see the size of the back deck and the pool. They wouldn't stay there. They'd come out, see it, tromp around in it, then they'd come home. It was just about Mason showing off.

But they couldn't find it. They drove up one street and down another. There were no leaves on the trees last time I was here, Mason said. Now I can't see anything.

Don't you have the address? Felder asked.

They got out of the car, but halfway up the front walk, Mason turned around. No, it isn't.

Giggling and laughing, they had a wonderful time. All together, they spent about two and a half hours looking for Jackie Mason's house without success, and finally, it started getting dark. So they went back to the city. What did you think? Mason asked as they were crossing the Queensboro Bridge. And that made them laugh some more.

Pretty soon, they were writing books together, mostly about experiences such as this, except it was all tied together with food. Food was the glue. They'd stop and eat somewhere and they'd write about that. They even got recipes from restaurants and put them in the book. Then they'd go off and have more adventures.

These two, over the last fifteen years, have written five books together. They have a following, not exactly a best-seller following, but a following nonetheless.

None of this is particularly relevant to what is going on today between Governor Elliot Spitzer and Raoul Felder, who, wearing another hat, is the Chairman of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Spitzer, prompted by some of the others on the Commission, thinks Felder should resign because of his latest book.

"The comments in this book," Spitzer said last week at a press conference, "are inappropriate and wrong for one who sits, as Felder does, in a position as chair of a commission that judges the behavior of judges."

Felder's response the next day was to say that he was thinking of resigning as chair because he had been in that post long enough, but now he wouldn't.

"Now, I can't resign," he said. "The Governor wants me to resign because of something I wrote. Tomorrow he could ask somebody else to resign because of what THEY wrote. This infringes on First Amendment rights."

"I know he has First Amendment rights," the Governor said. "Of course he does. But it is a totally different matter for him to make comments that would be highly inappropriate for members of the bench, who would be appropriately criticized and possibly sanctioned for having done so."

Reporters were now running back and forth between the two to follow this commentary.

"I supported Governor Spitzer. I still support him. He understands that I cannot step down now, and we'll battle it out in the courts. There's also the matter of innocent until proven guilty. If I lose in court, I will resign. But I think this will have to go up to the Supreme Court."

The new book -- and this controversy is probably the best publicity a book could ever get -- is entitled SHMUCKS. And like all the books these two have written before, it is irreverent, stupid and hilarious. It is also insulting and very off-center, with numerous ethnic references, mostly aimed at Jews, (they are both Jewish) with a few other ethnic groups mixed in.

For example, here was a passage that was supposed to be a diatribe against Americans having to learn Spanish. The immigrants, the authors wrote, were to blame.

"All these schnorrers, schnooks, shlubs, pishers, putzers, shlemiels and, yes, schmucks come to our country looking for a better life, speaking only a shmeckel of English and now they expect us to become Spanish mavens? What dreck."

People have concluded, not withstanding that the complaint is nearly fifty percent in Yiddish, that this is somehow an insult to Hispanics.

I don't know how much, if anything, this volume picks up about food compared to the earlier books, because I haven't been able to pick up a copy yet. But there's probably some. Shmucks, eat too.

One of my favorite comedy routines was done by Steve Martin many years ago, in a bit about Richard Nixon, who had just resigned in disgrace over Watergate. In those days, Martin accompanied his schtick doing standup with a banjo, which he occasionally played. Rather well, as a matter of fact.

Anyway, Martin was talking about the happy effects of banjo playing.

"I think Richard Nixon would have been just fine if he had played the banjo," Martin said. "He could come out and face the reporters and say okay, okay, I'll tell you about Watergate, but first, how about a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown?"

I think Judges should lighten up. And so should Mr. Spitzer. Come on, Elliot. How about a little harmonica action?