Anti-anti smokers Smokers are bad enough. But even worse are the vociferous groups (sometimes nonsmokers themselves!) that brand efforts to limit smoking as "fascist." As long as I have to breathe your secondh...

Gardens in Brooklyn People from Brooklyn always want to show you their gardens. "I could never afford this garden in Manhattan," they tell me. Come on. Your garden is three square feet. You can't fit four toma...

"Un-PC" Invoking this phrase somehow lends a veneer of heroism to even the most un-heroic of expressions. Say, "Maybe this is un-PC, but the problem with this country is too many immigrants," and your listener...

Madeleine Would everybody please shut up about Marcel Proust's madeleine? Honestly, you'd think his entire kaleidoscopic epic was about baked goods. The cookie passage takes up less than one page of the seven-...

Shelley Goldberg Cable station NY1's "parenting consultant" begins each of her insufferable segments by condescending to her audience. "I'm sort of like a helper for mom and dad," she says in a tone that would...

The Rebbe's Court The world's first ultra-orthodox soap opera, The Rebbe's Court, which premiered on Jerusalem TV this past fall, offers a new twist on the traditional daytime drama. According to cast member O...

Aleph-Bet Yoga The latest mishigas from New Age Jews prescribes embodying individual Hebrew letters in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment. According to its creators, bending over backwards into a "mem" (...

Fur Coats Fur coats are really sexy to furry animals like bears, Sasquatch, and middle-aged Israeli men. Lady, if you're trying to be attractive in that thing, you're only attracting foxes, rodents and seals w...

Public Nail Clipping There can't be anything more emblematic of the erosion of civic virtue in this nation than the disturbing development of public nail clipping. It's so acceptable to do your nails in public...

Amanda Hesser This prissy little New York Times food writer has somehow become my mother's fantasy of the perfect Jewish daughter, and for this, she must be eliminated. In her columns about souffles and salads...

Sanitized Toilet Rings I don't feel safe anymore! I feel vulnerable to attack! I yearn for a simpler time, a time when public toilet seats were sanitized for my protection. Growing up, my world was wrapped in ...

Lifegem From the creepily named "living memorial" industry, a Lifegem is a diamond created from the carbon ashes of your cremated loved one, available in assorted colors. I can hear it already—women crowing fr...