The New Joke Defining the Supercharged Version of Chutzpah ( William K. Black )
Posted on May 16, 2014
By William K. Black
The old joke about how to answer the question: “what does chutzpah mean?” – has been rendered woefully inadequate by events. The old answer was: “Chutzpah is when a son kills his mother and father and asks the court at sentencing to show him mercy because he is an orphan.” The two variants of the new answer to the question of what chutzpah means are:
“Chutzpah is when a foreign corporation that commits tens of thousands of criminal acts that sicken and kill humans and animals and pollute the environment demands that a Kangaroo (faux) court order the government of the nation whose citizens were ravaged by those crimes issue an unconstitutional order to its courts ordering them not to hear the victims’ lawsuits seeking compensation for those crimes and demands that fines for billions of dollars be issues against the Nation (i.e., the victims) for refusing to implement that unconstitutional and unconscionable demand of the Kangaroos.”
“Chutzpah is when a foreign corporation selling cigarettes to the citizens of another nation – for the banal and grotesque purpose of becoming wealthy through the sale of a product it knows to be lethal and addictive – demands that the Kangaroos fine the Nation for the high crime of trying to protect the life and health of its citizens by discoursing smoking.”
snip* Reality-based Insanity
Here’s the kicker: the two new definitions are based on reality. The corporations are alleged to have committed vastly worse crimes and tortious acts than the fictional son. They committed their crimes and torts for far worse reasons than the (most likely) motivations of the fictional son. They made a vastly more absurd and outrageous demand – not for a reduced sentence but total immunity for their crimes and torts. And then they transcended the old joke’s concept of chutzpah by orders of magnitude by demanding that a government (and in economic substance that means the victims) pay an enormous fine for a bizarrely invented “wrong.” The Nation is accused of refusing to violate its constitution and any concept of justice by issuing an illegal order to its courts. The unconstitutional order that the Nation was ordered to commit would have forbidden the victims from raising their legal claims against the foreign corporation. This would immunize the foreign corporation for any crimes and torts that it committed. The new definitions of chutzpah involve alleged acts that are vastly worse in terms of the harm and motive, and demands by the alleged criminal that are vastly more absurd and vastly more outrageous than the old definition.
in full: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/05/new-joke-defining-supercharged-version-chutzpah.html#more-8222