‘Buji’ Herzog Snags Last Remaining Stupid Nickname

Future leaders will be forced to bear nicknames that do not prompt people to wonder what the hell they were thinking.

Tel Aviv, February 2 – Opposition Leader and current election frontrunner Isaac Herzog confirmed today that his moniker “Buji” was the last idiotic nickname available, leaving none for any other politicians.

For decades, Israeli leaders have been referred to in the press both by their official names and by a raft of often-inexplicable, yet somehow charming, nicknames. From current Minister of Defense Moshe “Bogi” Yaalon to now-retired Labor bigwig Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer, those leaders often wore their ridiculous nicknames as a sign that they had arrived. However, after “Buji,” no stupid names remain in the pool, and future leaders will be forced to bear nicknames that do not prompt people to wonder what the hell they were thinking.

If in fact no new stupid names can be created in the next few years, the next generation of politicians will be condemned to using only the mildly amusing or otherwise unexceptional. Several current politicians, chief among them current Prime Minister Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, have already chosen such names, perhaps removing some of the stigma from them. However, the currently serving crop of politicians will be the last with truly moronic nicknames.

“We’d better appreciate what we have while it’s still around,” noted official Knesset Historian Yosef “Gigolo” Shem-Tov, who has documented the most storied nicknames in the young nation’s political and military annals. “Once Buji is out of the picture in however many years, that’s going to be it for imbecilic nicknames.” He noted with tragic irony the late and legendary Rehavam Ze’evi, whose moniker “Gandhi” was earned when as a young militia man he showed up to a meeting in only a nightshirt, and whose deport-the-Arabs politics would have made the Indian mystic apoplectic.

Shem-Tov recalls how the iconic David “Booger” Ben-Gurion would stumble over successor Moshe “Rumplestiltskin” Sharett’s term of endearment, and how the latter flatly refused to refer to Moshe Dayan by anything but his famous nickname “Chucklepatch.” Prime Minister Levi Eshkol reveled in using Golda Meir’s nickname “Twinkletoes,” while Meir herself refused to believe that US President Richard Nixon’s middle name Milhous was not some practical joke.

Tzipi Livni

Most of the nicknames current among today’s leaders would be considered blasé by their predecessors, but will nevertheless be dumb enough to be considered remarkable in twenty years. Foreign Minister Avigdor “Caligula” Lieberman and rival Tzipi ‘Mel Smith the Albino’ Livni may disagree vehemently on what stance to take toward negotiations with the Palestinians, but agree there are no good nicknames left.

“I was actually just talking about this with Shaul Mofaz, who retired from politics a couple of weeks ago,” noted Livni. “He was saying one of the reasons his party faded was he didn’t have a catchy, monumentally stupid nickname. Long ago, when we were both in Kadima, I suggested ‘Catfish,’ but then he reminded me that one was taken by [Labor MK] Amir Peretz.” Peretz, she noted, was unique among Israeli political figures in that he sports two such names, “Catfish” and “Joseph Stalin.”

“I honestly don’t know what our successors will do,” she mused. “But if the coming elections work out as planned, Buji and I can work on making sure that’s the least of their worries.”