A couple months back at the 92d Street Y, someone on a panel said that Bernie Madoff could have happened to any community. I mocked the comment at the time because it was willful indifference (on the part of a person whose duty it is to make social observations) to this special Jewish moment in the American Establishment. Yes there are crooks in every ethnic/religious group; but the Madoff scandal was special in magnitude and character. It exposed the new Jewish place in America in a fresh way. We are equal partners in the Establishment. We have extremely wealthy kinship networks, and country clubs. And we tend to believe that other Jews will treat us more fairly than non-Jews. The credulity issue.
"Six Degrees of Separation" was John Guare's read on liberal credulity toward "good" black people, who would con them. And Madoff is about Jewish credulity in smart ethnocentric Jews, who would con them.
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