The year in verse, 2010

Out of date and full of rage
An ink-stained wretch in an iPad age
Here I sit with paper and pen
To bid farewell to two-thousand-and-ten.

But I’ll be nice. For sure, I promise,
Even to poor old Helen Thomas
Who after a lifetime reporting the news
Fired herself with a shot at the Jews.

And like Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor,
Who shared her fate, if not her rancor,
She was able to, loud and clear, prove,
Dissing the Jews is no career move.

Unless you’re a self-styled “Israel critic,”
Then it’s okay to be anti-Semitic.
As long as you stick to the boilerplate:
“It’s not the Jews — it’s their country I hate.”

And few will forget the global megilla
When soldiers confronted the Gaza flotilla,
And “activists” armed with clubs and knives
Were “shocked” when buddies lost their lives.

Whoops — there I go, sounding angry and bitter
(For less of the same, you can find me @Twitter)
When the year wasn’t nearly as bad as I make it
Or at least not so bad that I couldn’t fake it.

Iran, after all, met disappointment,
Its nukes undermined by a fly in the ointment.
Although it wasn’t exactly a fly
But an Internet worm sent by (shhh — starts with “I”).

There wasn’t much cheer in Israel proper,
When talk of peace came up a cropper
And Obama, despite his threats and pleas,
Couldn’t score a settlement freeze.

In a blow for doves and a boon for hawks
Little came of the “parallel talks.”
Both sides balked, and in the final analysis
“Parallel” seemed more like mere paralysis.

Mark Zuckerberg, the king of “friends,”
Set out this fall to make amends
For having had the gall to seize
Upon our lack of boundaries.

The Facebook founder broke the rules
And gave a mint to Newark’s schools,
And despite a cinematic sneer,
Time named him “person of the year.”

Elena Kagan, taking her seat
On the highest court, said she’d eat
Chinese food on Christmas Day.
(But why’d they ask her, anyway?)

And let us raise a glass of tea
To the victors of the GOP
Who seized the House amid much banter
About the rise of Eric Cantor,

Who having given Dems a spanking
Is the second-highest ranking
member of his party, reader,
(and, what’s more, a Jewish leader!).

Mike Bloomberg was the crucial hero
Of the ruckus at Ground Zero
When right-wing pundits rose to fight
A mosque planned near the sacred site.

Hizzoner ignored the rants and screeds
Said our land welcomes all the creeds.
Besides, of what are we afraid —
a radical mosque, or a masquerade?

When Marc wed Chelsea, to no surprise,
It was a chance to sermonize
On faith, and love, and something deeper,
Like, Would the bridegroom wear a kipa?

And when he did, my gosh, the gossip!
For Jews, however, it was a toss-up.
Between a sign of our arrival
And a question of survival.

So grab your Nooks, load your Kindles,
Twitter as the old year dwindles.
Find your way by GPS,
Enjoy the high-speed wireless.

Me? You’ll find me in the stands,
With a paper in my hands.
I welcome what the future holds,
But like to read a thing that folds.