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[Laurence Horn]

> On Aug 1, 2015, at 1:00 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> "[Bernie Sanders,] a 73-year-old Jew _from Brooklyn via Vermont_ ..."
> 
> Shouldn't that be
> 
> "... a 73-year-old Jew _from Vermont via Brooklyn_ ..."?
> 
> Or have I, once again, fallen behind the curve of language-change?

Ah, another reversal?  Actually, I think I'd go for _from Brooklyn via Vermont_.  For me the "via" is 'by way of', so I'd take someone who told me he was from Vermont via Brooklyn as saying he started out in Vermont and spent some time in Brooklyn (probably Williamsburg, the most Vermonty neighborhood of Brooklyn) before getting here.  Someone from Vermont via Brooklyn would talk the way someone from Brooklyn (via anywhere) like Bernie does.  Haven't checked OED to see what sort of glosses and cites they show, this is just my own intuition.  Has there been a change of the "substitute" kind here?

> (Bernie Sanders is a Jew?! That's odd. He doesn't look Jewish. Those of a
> certain age may recognize the reference.)
> -- 

There was this long shaggy dog joke my mother was fond of.  Let's see...yup, here's a version on the web, from 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=583583

(Pretty much the way she told it, except the train was a subway and the woman was a man (with an over-the-top Yiddish accent).

A woman on a train walked up to a man across the table. "Excuse me," she said, "but are you Jewish?"
"No," replied the man.
A few minutes later the woman returned. "Excuse me," she said again, "are you sure you're not Jewish?"
"I'm sure," said the man.
But the woman was not convinced, and a few minutes later she approached him a third time. "Are you absolutely sure you're not Jewish?" she asked?
"All right, all right," the man said. "You win. I'm Jewish."
"That's funny," said the woman." You don't look Jewish."

LH
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