Journalist Charleston

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

The country has experienced a political upheaval. Political parties seem to be imploding. The economy is shaky and everything seems to be in flux. There is great distrust of authority and the media. A prominent association of journalists holds its annual dinner in the nation’s capital where they make fun of themselves and everyone else, too.

The 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C.? No! Dial back 90 years to the 1927 Purim ball of the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw and hum along with “Journalist Charleston” as you reflect on how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Journalist Charleston

Music by Henekh Kon/Lyrics by Moyshe Broderzon
(Original is in rhyme)

A)
The fourth estate
Rules it all.
It’s always looking >
And proves it all….
It delivers the news,
Speaks in black and white.
It caresses and bites
And reveals secrets –

Refrain:
A cow flew
And jumped up on the roof…
—The king of Turkey
Has many wives…
Everything in the papers
Is a rare and amazing thing—
And everything is politics!

B)
That young journalist
Really has a nerve.
It’s love he hungers for,
As everyone knows—
The press pass
It’s a big help.
And one, two, three,
He gets it for free.

C)
He’s an eager beaver for everything—
For this, that, and the other:
Funerals, masked balls.
For wreaths and waltzes—
And every place
Whether promiscuous or pious,
At celebrations and calamities,
He enjoys his day…

D)
Well, if life is monotonous
Then, nothing is good.
If there isn’t much of a story,
It’s really bad.
Right on the spot,
He works really fast:
And commits a murder
—Of himself.

E)
The right and the left,
The center, too.
One cranks the barrel organ (katerinka)
And smoke comes out…
The journalist,
He sings gibberish
He coughs and sneezes.
And digs for more… Nu?

F)
He’s equally familiar
With joy and sorrow.
He has free entry  
To both hell and the Garden of Eden.
It’s all the same to him,
It’s no big deal to him.
But about it all he raises a commotion…

G)
If you only live once, my brother,
Just one time—
Today there’s bedlam
And tomorrow—it’s gone!
A newspaper also marks time.
Tomorrow, it’s old,
Tomorrow, it’s smoke…

[English translation by Roberta Newman and Edward Portnoy]

Henekh Kon is best known today as the composer of The Dybbuk’s film score and songs. Moyshe Broderzon (1890–1956) was a Yiddish poet and playwright and founder of the acclaimed Yiddish cabaret theater Ararat in Lodz, in 1927, the same year as he wrote the lyrics to Journalist Charleston.

This artifact is one of the thousands of pages of YIVO’s prewar archives currently held at the Lithuanian Central State Archives, and which have been digitized for the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project.

Roberta Newman is YIVO’s Director of Digital Initiatives.