Here’s a funny/weird story in the Times about NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s less-than-warm relationship with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Why doesn’t he like her? the story asks repeatedly. And meanwhile he likes the other NY Senator, Chuck Schumer, and is cozying up to both Mort Zuckerman and Dan Senor as possible Senate candidates to go after her.
I’d just like to point out that, notwithstanding the fact that Bloomberg is a modern man (with a girlfriend with Greenwich pedigree), he is, as I am, culturally more familiar with Jews than non-Jews– and all those politicians he’s friends with are Jewish. While Gillibrand is a shiksa. Is this meaningful? Of course it is. I got most of my work in journalism over the years from Jewish friends. We threw around Yiddish words as a shibboleth as the non-Jews stood there with their jaws hanging– till they learned to use Yiddish too!
Jews like to brag about how smart they are, but Jewish kinship networks are as strong as Tammany.
