Bernard Madoff, the alleged fraudster and $50 billion Ponzi man, got tons of money from Jewish establishment figures. He was on the board of Yeshiva U. And one of his victims was a Jewish-oriented foundation, called the Lappin Foundation, which foolishly believed in Madoff and has had to shut down.
The issue for me is sociological. The meritocracy put itself forward as the scientific ingathering of the best and brightest– wherever they hail from. But since my days at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, I understood there was a Jewish social component to the new establishment. I joined the Crimson because I was more comfortable with Jews; and I got work from two of them, Peter Kaplan and Michael Kinsley, for another 20, 25 years. Kaplan and Kinsley are both brilliant; but did they give me work because I was deserving, or was there a social component to my progress? Of course there was a social component. Madoff was a shady character; did he make his way in good part because he was Jewish? And I'm saying, Yes.
The social component of the Jewish elite has only been a factor in countless scandals. Marc Rich damaged Bill Clinton forever, and maybe Eric Holder too; and Rich got the pardon in some measure because the Israelis were behind it and, surprise, the Israelis had powerful friends in the U.S. Monica Lewinsky came out of the Jewish world, and Clinton was backed through impeachment by Jews: Abbe Lowell, Barney Frank, Lanny Davis, Evelyn Lieberman, Sid Blumenthal, Joe Lieberman, and critically, Arlen Specter, etc. I'm not saying it was a conspiracy; but feelings of identification surely played a part, because Clinton had the most philosemitic administration in history and brought Jews into the Establishment in a new way. Scooter Libby's downfall had a Jewish social aspect to it. When he wrote to fellow neocon Judy Miller and said that the aspens all turn at the same time because they share roots, it seemed to me like a subtle call to Jewish heritage. The other reporter in the Libby scandal, Matt Cooper, is also Jewish, and his grandparents were "fervent" Zionists. Was there social cohesion of a Jewish character? Of course. Even the Stephen Glass scandal at the New Republic years ago– the fabricator–had a Jewish component; Marty Peretz is comfortable hiring Jews, even if they're not the most ethical. Ruth Shalit.
I am not saying this is evil. (We can talk about the neocons and the Iraq war some other time.) It's sociological. Whatever rationale an elite puts forward for being the best leadership of society–ala, the Meritocracy and SATs–elites have always had social cohesion. When the WASPs were in the saddle, E. Digby Baltzell, the Philadelphia sociologist, complained that they were discriminating on a social basis: thru clubs and boardrooms. The Gentleman's Agreement. He wanted to bring that order to an end, and let energy and talent in, by which he meant Jews.
Baltzell was upset about dingbat WASPs who got ahead for no good reason. And I suppose you could say I'm upset about ethically-challenged Jews who got a leg up.
Nor am I saying that the Jewish elite runs the Establishment. But it certainly seems a good portion of the Establishment–if you look at the Council on Foreign Relations, or the fundraisers behind Hillary Clinton, or the guy who has angered WASPS by wanting his name on the New York Public Library, Stephen Schwartzman.
Comes now a conman whose rise has a social flavor. A source tells me that the Federation in Washington has sent out an email to their top
contributors that due to Madoff, they have lost a sizeable portion of their
endowment. The Lappin foundation, which Madoff has brought down, had an ethnocentric Jewish/social agenda: it is trying to stop intermarriage. Let's see if the press continues to ignore what this tells us about the new American establishment.
(Steve Sailer has his own interesting take on the same issue here; he sees the decline of Jewish power…)
