Eric Konigsberg has a piece on the front page of the Times today about Walter Noel, a big loser in the Madoff tank. Noel lives in Connecticut and is club friends with a John J. McCloy, whose name resonates, and there is talk of Greenwich, the social diary, a Stanford White house near Lake Agawam, George Ball, Christmas cards, Town and Country, Mustique, the daughter in London married to the Italian…. You got it. The whole nine yards of the WASPocracy, which I guess still runs the country. Or used to, I don't know.
I'm an old friend of the talented Konigsberg. So I know that he's just a couple degrees of separation from Ezra Merkin, another Madoff fish, whose sister, the redoubtable Daphne Merkin, is a bigtime New York writer known most of all for her piece on spanking in the New Yorker. Ezra's a big Zionist. Daphne digs Israel too. All I'm saying is there is a Jewish social universe of considerable interest within the Madoff story. Madoff had his fancy clubs, and his Mortimer Zuckermans, and Lappin Foundations for the interruption of intermarriage…
I know the press can do WASP social shtik. Can it ever do Jewish social shtik, when it matters?Thanks to James North for the headsup.
P.S. Joachim Martillo informs: Walter Noel's daughter Alix is married to Philip Jamchid Toub, who is the son of Said
Toub, who is apparently of Iranian Jewish background and quite wealthy. It's all very assimilated. Alix and Philip were married in a Methodist
ceremony, but the Toub connection would probably still open a lot of doors.
