Chutzpah

ILLEGAL immigrants don't contribute to the economy. They send all their money home. They don't spend any of it here except for a one-room shack to live in. Yet they get FREE medical care, FREE education for their kids, FREE social services, FREE municipal services. At taxpayer expense! They drive down wages by accepting jobs below minimum wage. They create a huge black market for fake documents. Then they have the nerve to cry they're being picked on when we try to deport them.

We'd say that Harry P. Jannotti had a lock on this week's "Shameless Thirst for Power Award. " But the competition's tough in Philadelphia and the week is still young. You remember Mr. Jannotti, of course. He's the Kensington taproom owner still smarting from an Abscam conspiracy conviction that lost him a seat on City Council and sent him up the river for five months. This week he filed to run for his old seat again. Since he was convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion, not bribery per se, his lawyers argue, state law doesn't clearly forbid his return to public office.

MY FAVORITE definition of "chutzpah" used to be the one where a man kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. Now I can top it. A little girl is allowed to die a horribly painful death, deprived of water, food, the most minimal level of care. City agencies are blamed for the death, and rightly so. But the real killers are her parents, who kept her in a dark and filthy room so they wouldn't have to hear her cries for help.

There was no debate last month when members of the Pennsylvania legislature gave themselves a fat pay increase. Legislative leaders knew they had the votes to pass it; so did the many lawmakers who voted against the $8,800-a- year pay grab and made a show of lamenting it. But there's still a tangible way for members of the House and Senate to express themselves on this hot topic. Those who really oppose the pay hike can refuse to accept it. It's easy to turn down, because of the form it's in. Rather than a straight salary increase, the lawmakers received the extra funds as a reimbursement for undocumented expenses.

The cringing ethnic is a pathetic specimen in American culture, whether it is Uncle Tom meekly defending his Master for selling him down the river ("It goes agin me to hear one word agin Mas'r. . . . He couldn't be spected to think so much of poor Tom") or Walter Lippmann oleaginously agreeing with Harvard's WASP president, A. Lawrence Lowell, that the university ought to have fewer Jews (". . . bad for the immigrant Jews as well as for Harvard if there were too great a concentration")

George W. Bush used a rare trip to California this week to test-market a new and improved version of "compassionate conservatism. " Yet the gap between Bush's words and actions remains so stunning that it's time we gave this sham "governing philosophy" its proper name: compassionate chutzpah. For those who missed Yiddish class, chutzpah is defined by Webster's as "shameless audacity; impudence; brass. " The classic case is the kid who kills his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he's an orphan.

For our first-ever chutzpah lesson, mind you, we are not situated in the Capital of Chutzpah. "This is just a suburb," says our teacher, Alan Dershowitz, gesturing toward the East River. "Over there - Brooklyn - that's the capital of chutzpah. Just to survive, you need maximal chutzpah. " Our teacher thinks we may not require chutzpah lessons, maximal, lite or otherwise. After all, long-stemmed songthrush Carly Simon paid $800 for her class (the fee went to charity). But we asked Dershowitz - Harvard law professor, best-selling Chutzpah author, Nightline staple, and a stranger to us - for ours gratis, which is Latin for bubkes.

JOHN ELLIS writes in his letter (Dec. 30) that it took a lot of "chutzpah" on our part to go to war based on weapons that we gave to Saddam. Well, John, you're right - we do have a lot of chutzpah. The same kind that enabled us to break away from England and their unjust behavior. The same that Winston Churchill had when he stood against Hitler when Neville Chamberlain and most of England wouldn't back him. If you gave your neighbor a gun because he told you he had been threatened, and then find out later that he had used the gun to commit a crime, does that mean you're a lying hypocrite because you report him to police?

Do the French have a word for chutzpah? You know the classic definition: A man kills his parents, then begs for mercy from the court because he's an orphan. Philadelphia's own Mr. Personality, Ira Einhorn, is writing a new definition all his own. Yesterday, after a French court turned down his last appeal of his rightful extradition to the United States to stand trial for murder, Einhorn melodramatically "slashed" his throat inside his home, drawing just enough blood for the cameras.

ILLEGAL immigrants don't contribute to the economy. They send all their money home. They don't spend any of it here except for a one-room shack to live in. Yet they get FREE medical care, FREE education for their kids, FREE social services, FREE municipal services. At taxpayer expense! They drive down wages by accepting jobs below minimum wage. They create a huge black market for fake documents. Then they have the nerve to cry they're being picked on when we try to deport them.

"SURVIVOR" winner Richard Hatch said in an interview on the "Today" show yesterday that he believes that he was sent to prison because he's gay. Gee, Tattle thought it was because he didn't pay taxes on his $1 million "Survivor" prize and then lied on the stand. Not according to Hatch, who, speaking publicly for the first time since being released from prison to home confinement, told "Today" that he believes that the judge discriminated against him - him being gay and all - and a prosecutor was guilty of misconduct - again, because he was gay. "I know without question that there are personal issues involved for the prosecutor," he said.

MY FAVORITE definition of "chutzpah" used to be the one where a man kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. Now I can top it. A little girl is allowed to die a horribly painful death, deprived of water, food, the most minimal level of care. City agencies are blamed for the death, and rightly so. But the real killers are her parents, who kept her in a dark and filthy room so they wouldn't have to hear her cries for help.

HE'S ENRICHING uranium for nuclear weapons. He's called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and denied that the Holocaust ever happened. He's the president of a country of more than 65 million that's on the State Department list of terror-sponsoring nations. Now he's in New York to take a seat next to legitimate leaders of civilized nations of the global community at one of the most important meetings of 2007. As the 62nd U.N. General Assembly opens, the global community must not turn a blind eye to the dangers of Iran and its brazen leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It takes chutzpah to make a movie about a pharmaceutical executive devoted to a cure for AIDS who engages in promiscuously unprotected sex by servicing lesbians who want children. It takes nerve to make this same movie about an African American intellectual, because it risks caricaturing the black man as sexual stud. Likewise it takes brass to ask whether this dude has paternal responsibility for the children he has sired, because it risks suggesting that his behavior isn't so different from the guys who enjoy sex but shirk its consequences.

JOHN ELLIS writes in his letter (Dec. 30) that it took a lot of "chutzpah" on our part to go to war based on weapons that we gave to Saddam. Well, John, you're right - we do have a lot of chutzpah. The same kind that enabled us to break away from England and their unjust behavior. The same that Winston Churchill had when he stood against Hitler when Neville Chamberlain and most of England wouldn't back him. If you gave your neighbor a gun because he told you he had been threatened, and then find out later that he had used the gun to commit a crime, does that mean you're a lying hypocrite because you report him to police?

Convicted Quaalude dealer Alan J. Chernick of Lower Merion cooperated with authorities when arrested a year ago. The information he gave detectives helped break up a drug-dealing ring that stretched from the Main Line to Miami to New York. Chernick pleaded guilty to drug charges but avoided a long state-prison sentence because of his cooperation. Instead, he got nine to 23 months at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, and work release. But yesterday, prosecutors said Chernick had received his last break from the criminal justice system.

New Jersey Democrats are perfectly happy treating the bizarre as ordinary - when it suits their purposes. They've been touting former Sen. Frank Lautenberg for the U.S. Senate as if he'd always been on the Nov. 5 ballot. The candidate is traveling around the state, pumping hands at senior-citizen centers, marching in holiday parades, phoning for dollars. But when it comes to debating Republican Douglas Forrester, Democrats suddenly view this election as a special circumstance.

George W. Bush used a rare trip to California this week to test-market a new and improved version of "compassionate conservatism. " Yet the gap between Bush's words and actions remains so stunning that it's time we gave this sham "governing philosophy" its proper name: compassionate chutzpah. For those who missed Yiddish class, chutzpah is defined by Webster's as "shameless audacity; impudence; brass. " The classic case is the kid who kills his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he's an orphan.