The Wisdom of Mel Brooks

When confronted with a phenomenon that I don't quite understand, I often return to peruse the ouevre of that Yoda (or is that Yogurt?) of the Big Screen, Mel Brooks (in this case with an assist from Richard Pryor), for answers.

So it is that I tried to begin to understand the Mamdani campaign, particularly in its last days, wherein he made himself and other Islamists in New York victims of 9/11. Shed crocodile tears over a fiction about an aunt, etc.

And there was the answer leaping off the screen. It was the scene of the arrival of the new lawman, Sheriff Bart, in Rock Ridge.

The sheriff mounts the welcoming stage, which is decked out in flags and bunting, to address the townspeople. Only then do the townspeople realize what Gaby Johnson, in his authentic frontier gibberish, was trying to tell them. And they are thunderstruck. Suddenly the new sheriff is facing a wall of drawn guns pointing at him from the crowd. Reverend Johnson tries to calm the crowd by raising his Bible, which is promptly pierced by a bullet. He turns to Sheriff Bart and says the immortal line: "Yer on yer own!"

Sheriff Bart thinks fast. He grabs himself by the neck, draws his gun and puts it to his own head, and tells the crowd: Nobody move, or the ______ gets it! Suddenly the crowd fears for his life, the victim in a dire circumstance.

"Oh, lawdy, lawdy, he mean it," moans one woman as Sheriff Bart drags himself by the neck off the stage and over to the sheriff's office. Once safely inside he sits down at his desk, smiles, and says, "Boy, are they dumb!"

Victimhood works! It is the coin of the realm in the Democrat Party.

On Wednesday morning, firmly ensconced in the Mayor's office, Mamdani will justifiably smile and likely say the same thing about his fellow New Yorkers.

Of course, in Hollywood, Sheriff Bart is the good guy and saves the town from the evil Hedley (not Hedy--who sued over this confusion) Lamarr with his clever ideas. I doubt that will be the outcome in New York. Rather the opposite, I expect.

Affordability! Genius. That, of course, in Mamdani's mouth, is a euphemism for "From each according to his ability (to pay), to each according to his need." As none other than Bill de Blasio (not the former mayor) pointed out, the math doesn't add up. But New Yorkers seem nonplussed. The young generation of socialists is coming into its own. They seem intent on owning New York, whether they've earned it or not.

Interestingly, Mamdani graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and Technology (and went on to earn a degree in Africana Studies at Bowdoin). There was a time, not long ago, when that legendary high school graduated individuals who went on to win Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine. Now they produce graduates skilled at producing political euphemisms to bamboozle the electorate.

This is not the town that Sinatra sang about. New York was never supposed to be cheap and easy. It was always meant to be expensive, the ultimate challenge. If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. That no longer holds. The Big Apple is now merely the Mealy Apple. Those who don't have it are supposed to be given their bite. By someone else. Some things, per Mamdani, are even supposed to be free! (Buses, groceries). Of course, New Yorkers seem to have never heard the old canard about Socialism: If you think things are expensive now, wait until they are free.

I won't bother explaining that because no Mamdani supporter is going to read it.

Last week a Jewish tourist was assaulted in front of Mr. Broadway's, a Kosher Restaurant in Times Square — it's something of a New York landmark (although maybe not quite as famous as Katz's Delicatessen, thanks to Billy Kristol and Meg Ryan). To me, this was the ultimate sign of the degradation of New York.

Why? Well, Broadway would not be Broadway without Jews, from Irving Berlin, the Gershwin brothers, Al Jolson, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Stephen Sondheim and Lennie Bernstein, Barbara Streisand, Joel Grey, the immortal Madeline Kahn, Bock and Harnuck, Stephen Schwartz, Harold Prince, Jule Steyn, Jerry Herman, Harvey Fierstein, Debra Messing, Tovah Feldshuh, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, Joshua Harmon, Steven Levenson, and yes, even Norman Mailer off-Broadway. And of course, the Marx Brothers.

Above all others, for me at least, stands Mel Brooks. (I will never be able to get the jail scene, played beyond belief by Nathan Lane in The Producers movie remake, out of my mind).

Even as a boy growing up in a tiny Mormon village in a remote confine of the Great Basin, these entertainers defined my experience of America. (Since that village was about 60 miles from Vegas, I also came under the influence of Vegas comedians, most memorable for me, Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield, with Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Alan King, Sid Ceaser, Joey Bishop, along with TV personalities such as Jack Benny; even game show denizens like Bennet Cerf. The list goes on and on.)

With Anti-Semitism running wild in New York, I fear the century-plus of Jewish influence on Broadway is coming to a close. With a Hamas-connected fundraiser to terrorists, globalize-the-intifada Marxist mayor, New York will cease to be the live performance entertainment capital it has been, just as it will almost certainly cease to be the capitalist financial center of the world.

What comes next?