I am in love with Judge Judy. I don’t mean physically in love – although she’s kind of cute that gal even at age 81. I mean I love her style which is Brooklyn Jewish style which is my style.
I am a 78-year-old widower and I watch Judge Judy reruns several hours each day and experience a thrill every time she tells a litigant on her TV show don’t fuck with me, although she never actually says don’t fuck with me. She’s too much of a lady for that. She says it in other ways:
You’re a moron.
I don’t want to hear you unless I’m looking at you and asking you a question.
You didn’t keep your promise. You get dippity doo-dah.
If you say one more thing, I’ll throw your case out.
Um is not an answer. It’s either yes or no.
You have to understand one thing about Judge Judy. She’s from my part of Brooklyn, mostly Jewish at the time we grew up, and even if her parents didn’t speak Yiddish – I bet they did – they were influenced by the Yiddish language which has many words for fool: shlemiel, shlimazel, shmendrik, schmuck, putz, etc., etc. So, when Judge Judy calls someone a fool, she’s being true to her roots, to a culture in which we called a schmuck a schmuck even to his face. Because telling the truth was important.
What some people – like the great Judge Joseph Wapner – saw as rudeness in Judge Judy was her acting natural. To use a cliche telling it like it is.
Judge Judy Sheindlin – nee Judy Blum – attended Madison High School on Bedford Avenue in Flatbush Brooklyn. My high school Midwood, also on Bedford Avenue, was Madison’s rival, and I had many friends who attended Madison. I probably knew kids who knew Judy Blum. Famous alums of Madison are Carole King, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Chris Rock went there but didn’t graduate. My alma mater Midwood has one famous alum – Woody Allen.
Judy Blum would have grown up saying – or merely thinking – some Madison students were morons or idiots, and unlike most of us, she gets to call people idiots in her job. I envy her that. I had several morons for editors, but I had to be polite or keep my mouth shut. Calling them morons wasn’t good for job security. But calling people morons assures Judge Judy of job security because people love her rudeness because she says what they are thinking.
More Judge Judyisms:
Don’t speak.
Get your hand off your hip. There’s only one attitude here and that’s mine.
That’s a ridiculous argument.
Do I look like an idiot to you?
If she’s a neurotic broad you picked her and you chose to make a baby with her.
In Judge Judy’s court you can’t fold your arms across your chest or keep your hands in your pockets or have too many shirt buttons unbuttoned or chew gum. Heaven help you if you talk while she’s reading a document. Shh!!!! she shouts and gives you the death stare. When you speak you must look her in the eye. You better stop telling a long narrative and get right to the point. I don’t want to hear the whole story from the Creation. I want to know why you didn’t pay him back the two thousand dollars bail.
And you must have the police report. If you don’t, God help you. Why are you here? Did you think you were going to the beach? She wants documentation. Let me see the letter (pronounced letta).
I love her power and how she solves things in a few minutes. I wish my life were like her courtroom. I’ve found my life has more questions than answers and precious few solutions.
Hers is a small claims court, maximum judgment $5,000. In one case a man broke off an engagement because he said his fiancée was having sex with a midget. In another a renter got evicted for having a 9-foot python that got away in the building. There was the plaintiff who sued the leader of an underground rock band for vomiting on her dress – Judy agreed and called it an assault and awarded her 500 bucks. There was the plaintiff who sued his roommate for spraying urine on his bed – judgment for the plaintiff 1,700 bucks. In yet another case a kid borrowed his girlfriend’s car saying he needed to get clothes from home for high school choir practice but blew off practice and went cruising with another girl and crashed.
Cases involve people who get stopped driving without auto insurance – Judge Judy won’t tolerate no car insurance, sisters or mothers, or husbands and wives, or lovers who dispute whether the money was a loan or a gift – Judge Judy leans towards loans in her judgments, dogs who bite people, neighbors who fight over noise or broken fences. There are dozens of cases about people who left a home or apartment in a huff and ask for return of property left there but the other person claims there’s no property – Judge Judy can’t stand the drudgery of these cases. To many of these people she says:
I don’t look stupid, do I?
Because if you think that I’m stupid I resent it.
Well, that’s stupid. Then your answer is stupid.
Judge Judy clearly doesn’t appreciate stupid. She imitates people who make faces by making faces back at them. When she’s bored, she says,
Listen to me, I don’t care. I don’t care.
Why do I love Judge Judy? Because her world is orderly – it has rules, and it makes sense, and she is the enforcer of order. She insists people take responsibility for their actions, demands they support themselves, if able, and she won’t accept excuses. When litigants weep, she has no sympathy. Do I look like Dr. Phil? And she lectures people on the immorality of their behavior:
If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory.
That’s what happens when you act like a jerk.
I don’t think you’re cute as a matter of fact. If you’re trying to be charming with me trust me it’s not going to work. Better looking and richer people than you have tried to charm me without success.
You are no gift. You are a 20-year-old unemployed person who takes from young women because he thinks that he’s God’s gift. I mean you’re not even goodlooking. Judgment for the plaintiff.
That means that you’re a baby and a bully. Maybe it’s because you’re short of stature.
Don’t look up to God. God is not going to help you, Jimmy, not here.
And when she’s heard enough or had enough, she often ends with a loud flourish bordering on a shout as she straightens the case documents and rises from the bench about to leave the courtroom/studio:
Your case is dismissed.
We’re finished.
We’re done. Done. Goodbye.
I need Judge Judy in my life.
Excerpted from Brooklyn Jew, my memoir in progress.
My late mom and I loved watching Judge Judy together! We need more people like her in everyday life
Digging this, and it reminds me of another no nonsense TV personality I enjoy, Dr. Now from “My 600 Pound Life.”
Looking forward to more Substack posts — and Cohn Zones, which are appointment viewing for this Rams fan/Niners hater. Cheers