I always love it when someone is outed for committing an act of “chutzpah.”

When I see it, I yell, “What a case of  chutzpah. He’s got a really big set of balls on him or as my Spanish-speaking friends might say, cojones grandes to be so galling.”

You see, chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning to commit an audaious, imprudent or a galling act.

And with every good definition comes an example.

And this week’s example of chutzpah occurs at Columbia University. Yup, the Ivy located in NYC, where a 33-year old, keffiyeh wearing, pro-Palestinian protestor, Johannah King-Slutzky—seeking a PhD in English and Comparative Literature—asked an audience of reporters for food and drinks for the trespassers occupying Hamilton Hall.

Of course, the media mocks her for her audaciousness.

But I want you to hear Johannah’s exact words,

“Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you? If the answer is no, then you should allow basic… I mean, it’s crazy to say because we’re on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic humanitarian aid we’re asking for…’’

Johannah, you’re right it is a crazy request as is the cause you’re fighting for.

But we live in a crazy world and these are crazy times which leads me ask four questions:

1. Isn’t it chutzpah for Columbia to educate left-wing wackos, when our country desperately needs the Ivys to produce a much higher class of students;

2. Isn’t it chutzpah for Columbia to offer a degree in English and Comparative Lit? When no one has landed a job with that degree since 1971. Columbia owns a truckload of chutzpah for offering this degree to its naïve students;

3. Isn’t it chutzpah for Columbia to accept students that are delusional? Have they no standards when it comes to an applicant’s mental health?;

4. Is Johannah King-Slutzky Jewish? If so, that’s chutzpah. A member of the tribe helping out terrorists that just murdered 1,200 Israeli men, women and babies and still holds over 100 hostages.

Okay, in Johannah’s defense both of her parents are psychologists and we know that that could “F” anybody up.

And with a name like Slutzky, she must have had one-hell-of-a-tough time in middle school.

But when I learn that King-Slutzky’s university research is focused on “theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the Romantic imagination,” I thought, if my research focused on that topic, I wouldn’t be a pro-Palestinian protestor, I’d just blow my brains out or I’d want someone to wring my neck with my black and white keffiyeh until I turned purple and died.

Now that would be an ultimate act of chutzpah.

Oh, how he loves abusing them

His menagerie of masochists

Knowing they’ll  beg for more.

As he hits them with lies

And makes them lick his sneakers

Knowing how much they enjoy being humiliated and called “stupid”

Watch as his sadistically brainwashed get whipped into a frenzy

As the master smiles

That contorted I-love-torturing-people sneer

This master in the art of inflicting pain

does not clown around with those slaves he holds in bondage

They have no coulrophobia

But they crave his discipline

As he drills into their submissive brains.

Yelling, “I don’t give a shit about you. All I care about is me.”

And they love it

For their brains are cuffed to his genitals.

Oh, how he loves sexually assaulting them by rubbing porn stars in their faces

And teaching their children, “Abusers are good people”

And slaps the smiles off of young pregnant women

And punches the disabled to make the crowd laugh

And this sadist knows the weak of mind are easy prey

Always begging for abuse to be heaped upon them

And as the crowd cries out for more

He listens and smiles and  knows he is giving them pleasure

With interest, I read the SFWA announcement of Pamela Petro’s lecture at our monthly meeting. I catch part of the title of one of her books; focus on the words “Presence of Absence”.

I think, “How often have I been physically in one place but mentally in another?”

Yes, we can be in two places at the same time.

Yes, we all do it.

As kids, we perfect this skill watching the black arms on our classroom’s circular clock crawl toward the three and twelve.

And boy did we perfect the art of daydreaming.

And as I daydream, I question: Is the presence of absence an oxymoron?

You bet it is.

Then my brain jumps to other oxymorons, Simon and Garfunkel’s, “Sounds of Silence” and John Legend’s, “All of Me.”

I love Legend’s lyrics:

I love all your curves and all your edges

All your perfect imperfections.

So if you’re dying to live, and you don’t want to be absent from our presence, join us or you’ll miss Pamela Petro’s perfect imperfections.

Join us to hear Smith College’s own Pamela Petro speak about “The Long Field X-Ray’d – The Insider Story on How I Found the Skills and Guts to Write the Book” at the South Florida Writers Association’s monthly meeting on Saturday, May 4, 2024, Pinecrest Library, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and on ZOOM, Login: 838 9971 8493.

Hope to see you there.