I've been reading Michael Wolff's shrewd/thoroughly-enjoyable bio of Rupert Murdoch for a review and have one preliminary observation. Wolff routinely uses the word WASPy to dispatch an older way of being that of course has a religious/ethnic basis. This is an entitled and fusty mode of being, in Wolff's view, a social structure that to his puzzlement capitulated without firing a shot a decade or so ago.
Fair enough. A lot of people feel this way about WASPs, even as I love em, having married into em. Or anyway I feel I can list their good points: among them a sense of environmental stewardship, noblesse oblige, tolerance of eccentricity, great respect for boundaries (No Personal Comments formality I have struggled to learn), dirt roads, chinos. As I list those points, I realize I have to write, The Assimilationist.
Anyway, to my points. Wolff works for Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair, and back in the day when Graydon and Kurt Andersen edited Spy, the word WASPy was removed from copy, or mine anyway, as a crude slight. I respected that policy. It was a time when my wife was clueing me to anti-anti-semitism. The glib anti-Christian attitudes one encounters in Jewish life.
Though this baldness on these matters is alright with me. Wolff's readymade WASPy reminds me that it is much easier to speak of the Old Boy Network than the new one. Wolff doesn't go in for Jewy, one of the actual words my wife and I use in our private chambers, and a good chewy word. And descriptive of a real part of the world. Like Madoff's world.
Jewy. A Times team (including Eric Konigsberg) has done some wonderful reporting on Madoff's world. What the Times demonstrates is that Madoff launched himself inside a world of Jewish "clubby"ness, in which ethnic/religious reputation amounted to everything, and then found his way into a fancy WASPy world, because as Willie Sutton famously said, Jews are not the only ones with money these days.
The Times piece is the first reporting on Madoff with real sociological bite. Without using the word yiches, or prestige, it gets at this fatal beauty of Jewish culture: the prestige that attaches to wealth and learning. (Leo Rosten: "The crucial ingredients of yiches are: learning, virtue, philanthropy, service to the community.") Thus Madoff associate Ezra Merkin, who has absolute frikkin yiches because of his wealth and learning and Israel-idolatry, burnished the moreso by his sister Daphne Merkin, the formidably talented writer and spankee. The Times doesn't get into Daphne, but here are some excerpts:
But in the clubby world of Jewish philanthropy in the New York area, his increasing wealth and growing reputation among market insiders added polish to his personal prestige...
He used his support of organizations like the Public Theater in Manhattan and the Special Olympics to build a network of trust that began to stretch wider and deeper into the Jewish community..
Through friends, the Madoff network reached well beyond New York. At Oak Ridge Country Club, in suburban Hopkins, Minn., known for a prosperous Jewish membership, many who belonged were introduced to the Madoff firm by one of his friends, Mike Engler.
The quiet message became familiar in similar pockets of Jewish wealth and trust: âI know Bernie. I can get you in.â
âIn a social setting â thatâs where it always happened,â said Jerry Reisman, a lawyer from Garden City, N.Y., who knew Mr. Madoff socially. âCountry clubs, golf courses, locker rooms. Recommendations, word of mouth. Thatâs how it was done.â
Somebody needs to write a new novel book revealing the New Old Boy Network, the WASPY-JEWY one. Who knows even some indie film
maker might trump Hollywood with it. Then every teen movie can boast of the current model replacing the old perennial demon, the blonde, blue-eyed, wooden WASP frat-rat always abusing, bullying with rich parental support, the underdog heros and heroines.
And what would Portnoy's complaint be nowadays? Now, there's something you and your wife can discuss, Phil.
Everyday, the Madoff family would go to work; they've recently said it was really nice to see your family members at their office work as
you went in the door.
Sort of like Mormons on Big Love–except Romney went nowhere and their office work didn't involve the whole USA economy and its foreign policy.
Anyeay, so what's new? How does the Madoff world really differ from
the bipartisan New USA that had gone strong for over a decade?
See link to nytimes.com
I expect inter-family warfare to break out any day as families who were late investing money with Madoff and lost millions in the alleged Ponzi scheme start suing friends and neighbors who already cashed in their Madoff profits.
Must be fun in the Palm Beach homes right about now. I watched an episode last night on HBO of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The conflict
involved two rivals each getting a name donation sign on a wall of
the latest charitable target. One came in for the celebration of
the new building, expecting to be praised for his donation. He beamed with delight at his name emblazoned on his wing of the new edifice, but he (Larry David) quickly learned his rival had the name "Anonymous" on his sign. And that he Larry David was therefore being seen
as just a mundane ego, buying social esteem for all to see. When
he learned that his rival had whispered to a few friends he was really "Anonymous," knowing (in Larry's mind) that gossip about such pure altruism would be passed around, it really got Larry's goat. Solution, next time Larry would follow his charitable rival's
strategy…
Most of the involved charitable NGO's give very little to the official
beneficiaries, while all the while gaining tax deductions for their
regular businesses, and while the NGO's executives get comparably giant pay.
Can't wait to see what Larry David does with the Madoff affair–his comedy series has been renewed by HBO.
Phil Weiss (Dec. 21, 2008),
"Wolff doesn't go in for Jewy, one of the actual words my wife and I use in our private chambers, and a good chewy word. And descriptive of a real part of the world. Like Madoff's world."
Abe Foxman (Dec. 19, 2008),
"Site users have posted comments ranging from deeply offensive stereotypical statements about Jews and money — with some suggesting that only Jews could perpetrate a fraud on such a scale — to conspiracy theories about Jews stealing money to benefit Israel," the ADL said in a statement.
Phil Weiss:
You don't just use it in your private chambers, you have now used it on your blog, and soon you'll be on the self-hating list, if you aren't already. However, truth-loving people appreciate your blunt honesty and constant searching for veracity – about yourself, your tribe, your country (and I KNOW that YOUR country is the USA – I don't know that about Witty), your world.
Go, my friend, go. You are on a road that is rough, potholed, may even seem blocked at times. Fortunately, there are no checkpoints on this road in the US, yet.
So, don't keep it in the private chambers. Continue to shout it from the rooftops, and tell it on the mountain.
PM