I continue to applaud the New Yorker’s knocking off Sheldon Adelson last week, but with one hand. It has the feeling of special pleading to me. In fact, it even created
an undercurrent of sympathy in me for its villain, who I suspect is incredibly roguish and charming if you got to meet him, and god knows came from nothing without using the SATs to get here.
By special pleading, I mean that author Connie Bruck curiously leaves out important areas of Adelson’s role in public life. For instance, Haim Saban gets off easy
in the article, but he’s doing much of what Adelson’s doing on the
Democratic side–another megarich, ardent Zionist with an amazing personal story (I’m trying to get assigned to write about Saban; don’t hold your breath), funding thinktanks that say America and Israel have identical interests. Bruck also downplays the Freedom’s Watch angle, the pro-Iraq-War element of Adelson’s political monkey business that seems to me the most important aspect of his work.
Does it matter here that Bruck is married into the L.A. Democratic, pro-Israel, pro-Iraq-war
elite? To her credit, I only know this because in her piece, Bruck disclosed her marriage to former Congressman Mel Levine, now a big L.A. lawyer, and said he’s a Middle East policy adviser to Obama.
But that scants his political agenda. The LA Jewish Journal says that Levine has been actively campaigning to raise money from Hollywood royalty for Obama by testifying that he’s kosher on Israel. I bet one of the people he’s trying to land is Saban. Levine supported the Iraq war. According to the FEC, Levine gave money to Joe Lieberman in ’06 before and after
he was defeated by Ned Lamont and was running as an Independent. That makes Levine another Dem hawk in the neolib style. The FEC also says that Levine gave $2300 last year to Shelley Berkley, the annoyingly/ardently pro-Israel Nevada
congresswoman whom Adelson despises–he’s supported her opponents, Bruck says. Bruck quotes Berkley at length in her story, but says nothing about her husband’s involvement in that dogfight.
Israel is central to Adelson, and to Levine too. Here he is writing about Obama in the Jewish Journal, and sounding just like AIPAC:
I could not support a candidate for president if I were not confident
of that candidate’s strong support for Israel. Obama is a stalwart
supporter of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.
In her piece Bruck is sympathetic to AIPAC because (as I reported here) AIPAC is now tilting toward the two-state solution. Her husband utterly approves AIPAC:
Fortunately, the most credible of Israel’s supporters, such as the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have clearly stated that
Obama’s record of support for Israel is superb. And the Anti-Defamation
League has praised Obama’s stands against anti-Semitism.
One thing Levine doesn’t like is author and prof Rashid Khalidi. He makes it clear that Khalidi has nothing to do with Obama:
Rashid Khalidi: Recently, e-mails parroting a right-wing Web site have
attempted to link Obama with the views of Khalidi, a prominent
Palestinian American academic. But the public record makes completely
clear that their views on the Middle East are very different.
Oh my! Khalidi is a really smart, goodnatured, and temperate guy (with a fabulous wife).
What’s wrong with him? A: He’s Palestinian. Right now, as the head-scarf incident demonstrated, Obama can’t go near
Arab-Americans. And Mel Levine is making sure of that. That is what’s wrong with the Jewish place in the
American establishment: rich old guys are redlining Any
Arab’s view of the Middle East from the discourse. How much does Bruck share her husband’s agenda? I have no idea, but I wonder. I notice that she does not report something that I mentioned a month back on this blog: Adelson wants all Arabs to disappear.
I’m still glad she wrote the piece, it’s good news. And evidence of the same important trend that J Street is emblematic of: public divisions over Zionism within the Jewish establishment (which recall the bitter divisions over Communism), between the hardliners and those who want a two-state solution. It shows that the realistic Jews want to have it out with the neocons. Oh happy day.
(Thanks to Brad Greenberg, whose Godblog has a good piece on Hollywood Jewish conspiracy theory.)
One more instance where the big decisions and writing is all done by the chosen, while us goys just get to watch. I wonder if we will ever again be invited to contribute to such august publications as the New Yorker and be able to provide insight into such weighty issues.
I wonder sometimes what it must be like at the editorial meetings of the New Yorker– do they make jokes about having 2 times what is needed for a quorum? Do they ever feel guilty, in this age of supposed diversity, that they are so over-represented in the media? Or does that form of uniformity not count?
A last comment:
I have read Khalidi's The Iron Cage, which is very impressive, but I have to say that I am disappointed in his acquiescing in Obama's abandonment of what all reports I have heard indicated was a warm friendship.
Khalidi has gone so far as to say that Obama owes the Palestinians nothing– this is in contrast to Ali Abunimah, who was apparently also quite friendly with Obama in Chicago, and maintains that, contrary to his current stance, Obama was very aware of and sympathized with Palestinian suffering.
i disagree entirely that it is good news for the newyorker to do this story. it is cya. they know or fear the tide is turning so they have to get out in front of it. it does not mean they are truly reporting. come on, phil. this isn't honest journalism. you know that. the newyorker has disgraced itself. they do a half-assed job so for one, they can say they did do it, and two, to forestall anything worse. another magazine won't do adelson now because it's already been done.
i disagree entirely that it is good news for the newyorker to do this story. it is cya. they know or fear the tide is turning so they have to get out in front of it. it does not mean they are truly reporting. come on, phil. this isn't honest journalism. you know that. the newyorker has disgraced itself. they do a half-assed job so for one, they can say they did do it, and two, to forestall anything worse. another magazine won't do adelson now because it's already been done.
David Remnick has ruined a once great institution of American journalism.
I cancelled my subcription after reading one too many articles by Jeffery Goldberg. (The Atlantic Monthly, where Goldberg is now, is following a trajectory similar to the New Yorker. Quelle surprise!)
Boycott the New Yorker! Boycott all publications and media outlets that become Zionist ghettos.
Alternatives are out there. Seek them out.
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Perhaps Connie Bruck heard some rumors about Sheldon Adelson's finances. Today Bloomberg reports:
"Las Vegas Sands's long-term debt is rated BB-, three levels below investment grade, by Standard & Poor's and a comparable Ba3 by Moody's Investors Service. Five-year credit-default swaps on Las Vegas Sands reached a record high at 550 basis points yesterday, according to CMA Datavision. That means it costs $550,000 a year to protect $10 million of the company's debt from default for five years."
OOPS … a junk-rated credit whose risk of default is hitting record highs during a period of global credit stress — ungood!
Bloomberg tips Adelson's company as wanting to borrow $7 billion "to expand and refinance debt for projects in Macau." However, it's rather more likely that Adelson is borrowing not because he wants too, but because he NEEDS to. He's in flat-out expansion mode, as the global economy hits a patch of wet concrete:
"The loan will help Las Vegas Sands fund $12 billion in spending on a 20,000-room complex of hotels and casinos in Macau. Las Vegas Sands is also building the S$5 billion Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, scheduled to open in 2009, and the $800 million Sands Bethworks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania."
Adelson is rolling the dice big time, but the table may not be kind to him this time round. The writing's already on the wall:
"Costs for new properties led to an unexpected first-quarter loss for Las Vegas Sands, majority-owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The Las Vegas-based company had $11.2 million of losses in the first quarter, after interest expenses more than tripled to $114.7 million."
Interest expenses TRIPLED, and you want to borrow $7 billion more to build a "20,000-room complex"? Dude, you've got a problem.
Doubtless Israel would hate to see its meal ticket go down. But, hey — there's always the last, best set of suckers — the U.S. taxpayer. Onward, Jewish soldiers!
http://tinyurl.com/5k9r7u
another weird lacuna in the press. this time the financial press. a lot of talk of rising oil prices-why? so many words printed yet not one article on a primary reason. war, and specifically war on iran. possible blocking the straits of hormuz in retaliation .
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For sure, the press describes Israel's snarling threats as if they were what economists call 'exogenous shocks' — just stuff that happens, like a rainstorm or a flood or an earthquake.
The notion that Israel's blustering could be politically controversial, or adverse to U.S. interests, never arises in press reports. There is no 'other side' to the story … only the standard boilerplate zionist agitprop against the perfidious Persian devils, decorated with little American flags. Touching.
'Boycott all publications and media outlets that become Zionist ghettos.'
That doesn't leave too many. It's not just Zionism of course, ideology of any stripe is intellectual death to any enterprise dealing in culture. It's true Zionism seems particularly adept at this (just look at TNR) but that may be due to it's sheer ubiquity.