Sholom Rubashkin’s accent and his regret

The most interesting passage from the reporting on Thursday’s developments in the sentencing hearing of Sholom Rubashkin comes from the AP:

Rubashkin told the court he had made mistakes and was remorseful. In a thick Brooklyn accent, he reiterated that he was sorry for his actions, and that he was put in a position by his family of running the operations of a large plant for which he had no training or interest.

"I’m basically a conflicted and flawed human being," Rubashkin said. "Conflicted in that I allowed myself to be drafted into my family’s business against my wishes and better judgment.

"I basically should have stayed in teaching and being an emissary (for Lubavitcher Judaism.)"

The second half of that is interesting on the human level — Rubashkin as the dutiful son, dragged into the family business when he would have rather spent his life doing Lubavitch outreach to Jews.

Back to the first part — a "thick Brooklyn accent"? Well, yes, Rubashkin is from Brooklyn. You got a problem with that? Why does the AP feel the need to share this piece of info? What about the judge? The prosecutors? The witnesses? Did any of them have a thick Midwestern accent?

In his JTA profile and corresponding blog post on Rubashkin’s father, Ben Harris wrote about a "thick Yiddish accent" — and the editor (moi) let it through. We got some complaints, suggesting that we were somehow attempting to make the senior Rubashkin look bad. The truth is — from a purely practical point of view, we felt that noting the accent would help readers more easily digest what the senior Rubashkin was saying. More importantly, this was a profile — one aimed at giving the subject a chance to speak after waves of reports from his critics and at giving readers a chance to get a fuller picture of one of the people at the center of the story. In this case, knowing the accent was potentially helpful to understanding the man and his actions on several levels. At least we thought so.

Back to the AP… here we’re talking about a just-the-facts news report that suddenly decides to provide some color. So why’s this detail important? I’m not, I’m really really not, trying to suggest anything nefarious. And certainly not on the part of the writer.

So what’s the point? I don’t know what the author had in mind, but when I read "thick Brooklyn accent" my mind quickly flashed to that classic scene in "Annie Hall," of the WASPy grandmother seeing Woody Allen as a Chasid. In other words, I read it as conveying the palpable sense that Rubashkin sticks out like a sore thumb in this courtroom. [UPDATE: Rubashkin is now set to be sentenced May 27.]