Gotta say right up front, I find the story of this jerk pretty damned amusing.
This week’s JERK OF THE WEEK is
Csanad Szegedi
Who in the blue hell is that? you’re no doubt asking yourself (you know, if you talked to yourself like you were The Rock). Well, that makes sense. Unless you’re a member of the Hungary’s Jobbik political party—or deeply anti-semitic—chances are that you’re not familiar with Mr. Szegedi.
Here’s a description of him from The New York Times:
As a rising star in Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his incendiary comments on Jews: He accused them of “buying up” the country, railed about the “Jewishness” of the political elite and claimed Jews were desecrating national symbols.
Szegedi is also “a founding member of the Hungarian Guard, a group whose black uniforms and striped flags recalled the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which briefly governed Hungary at the end of World War II and killed thousands of Jews.”
Charming fellow, right?
The real key here to all this is the word “was.” In a turn of events that seems as if it was orchestrated by M. Night Shayamalan or came straight out of an Alanis Morissette song, it has come to light that Szegedi himself is actually Jewish.
Again, from the Times.
Following weeks of Internet rumors, Szegedi acknowledged in June that his grandparents on his mother’s side were Jews — making him one too under Jewish law, even though he doesn’t practice the faith. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labor camps.
Apparently, Szegedi’s grandparents hid their heritage from their family to protect them from persecution from narrow-minded hateful bigots such as their own grandson. Awkward!
Of course, I immediately thought of Clayton Bigsby from “Chappelle’s Show” (Warning: Absolutely NSFW language).
When Szegedi was confronted with the evidence—and after he got his jaw off the floor and the shpilkes out of his genechtagazoink—he immediately tried to hush it up, offering cash and political favors to make his bitter truth go away. No such luck.
After being publicly exposed, Szegedi then tried to claim that he’s never made any disparaging comments about Jews, despite an abundance of evidence—TV interviews and his own speeches, for examples—to the contrary.
The good news is that because of everything, Szegadi has been forced to give up his political party power, and is currently being called on to resign his seat in the European Parliament. Of course, I don’t quite understand why he would be asked to step down now—it seems as though the anti-semitic agenda would’ve been frowned upon from the start, rather than after this startling revelation—but the fact that somehow karma and/or irony has come back to kick him in his jerk ass, is all good by me.
So to Csanad Szegedi, I say congrats on being named JERK OF THE WEEK!
Oh, and mazel tov!
And coincidentally, Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Connecticut History hits bookstores on Rosh HaShanah, Sept. 18. Or if you want to be a mensch, feel free to pre-order it from Amazon.