Forward has a piece on the Brad Sherman-Howard Berman race in Los Angeles, two redistricted Jewish congresspeople, going at it in a combined district, and brings up a taboo subject, rich Hollywood Jews:
According to one of its contenders, the fight to represent the newly redrawn 30th congressional district in California’s San Fernando Valley may be framed as a peculiarly Los Angeles kind of class struggle: rich Hollywood Jews versus working folks in the Valley.
“This whole race is a Valley thing,” Rep. Brad Sherman told the Forward in an interview September 4. “There is a Beverly Hills-centered Jewish community that has a lot of money and power that is less aware of my efforts, because there is a lack of respect for the San Fernando Valley. And the Valley is aware of this.”
In most circumstances, a candidate taking a populist line against wealthy Hollywood Jews would soon be hearing from the Anti-Defamation League. But in this case, Sherman’s phone is unlikely to ring. He is himself seen as one of the most influential Jews in Congress. And so, for that matter, is his opponent, Rep. Howard Berman.
….“If you’re going to say what’s going to decide the race, it’s going to be who spent the most time listening to people in Reseda and Canoga Park and Granada Hills, Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills,” Sherman said during his interview, reeling off the names of Valley communities. “Nobody in Beverly Hills knows where Reseda is. That’s the horse race.
Congrats to the Forward, because last weekend I was around lots of Jewish friends with summer houses and I kept thinking, when is the Forward going to write about the most significant sociological condition of Jewish life in America today, wealth. We made it. I want to know how many Jews are wealthy, how many aren’t, and how wealth has affected political attitudes. I want to know what “working folks” means. Are those Valley Jews doing blue collar jobs, any of them? I want to go granular on Jewish wealth. I want to know how much Andrea Mitchell makes and what Tom Friedman is worth, best guess, and how much we actually give to political candidates. Lots of figures get thrown around– 60 percent. What’s the best figure? What does it mean that Michael Steinhardt effectively lobbied for a Hebrew charter school even as the Arabic-language school foundered in New York, was that wealth talking? You don’t have to be moralistic, you could be descriptive. Steinhardt has his own zoo, famously. You can feed the giraffe and talk about the actual conditions of successful American Jews. P.S. Forward, this is a way to kick Tablet’s neoliberal butt on a news story.
