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In 1985 Laurence Tisch, Chairman of the Board of New York University, former President of the Greater New York United Jewish Appeal, an active supporter of Israel, and a man of many other roles, started buying stock in the CBS television network through his company, the Loews Corporation. The Tisch family, worth an estimated 4 billion dollars, has major interests in hotels, an insurance company, Bulova, movie theatres, and Loliards, the nation's fourth largest tobacco company (Kent, Newport, True cigarettes). Brother Andrew Tisch has served as a Vice-President for the UJA-Federation, and as a member of the United Jewish Appeal national youth leadership cabinet, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Political Action Committee, among other Jewish organizations. By September of 1986 Tisch's company owned 25% of the stock of CBS and he became the company's president. And Tisch -- now the most powerful man at CBS -- had strong feelings about television, Jews, and Israel. The CBS news department began to live in fear of being compromised by their boss -- overtly, or, more likely, by intimidation towards self-censorship -- concerning these issues. "There have been rumors in New York for years," says J. J. Goldberg, "that Tisch took over CBS in 1986 at least partly out of a desire to do something about media bias against Israel." [GOLDBERG, p. 297]

     

The powerful President of a major American television network dare not publicize his own active bias in favor of another country, of course. That would look bad, going against the grain of the democratic traditions, free speech, and a presumed "fair" mass media. And if it ever became clear that the CBS news department was in danger of turning into an ad agency for Israel, the resulting controversy would probably defeat Tisch's purpose in helping them.  But word leaked out, that CBS news under Laurence Tisch lived in fear of being ethically compromised.

 

During the Palestinian Intifada (the stone-throwing revolt by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli military rule), a birthday party was held by Jewish TV personality Barbara Walters and her husband Merv Adelson for Jewish Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. Other invited Jewish guests included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and U.S. News and World Report publisher, Mortimer Zuckerman.

 

According to Roone Arledge, the President of ABC News, who was also a guest at the party, a long and heated debate arose about television's depiction of the Israeli military's attempts to crush Arab rioting. CBS President Tisch argued that TV should effectively censor reports on what was happening, that "television ought to be banned in the occupied territories "because it portrayed Israeli soldiers in a bad light. Kissinger had argued the same a few weeks earlier, publicly concerned that "TV cameras incited riots and tarnished Israel's reputation."  Arledge vehemently argued that the media's ethical stand should be to be present and report whatever was happening, when and wherever possible.

 

Barbara Walters and Mortimer Zuckerman covered for Tisch and they all denied that he took such an irresponsibly biased, and disturbing, position.  According to (Jewish) reporter Ken Auletta, however, eight other people at the party testified  -- five to him personally -- that Tisch did.  Jewish guests at the party, led by Tisch, also attacked Arledge's ABC anchorman (who was not present) Peter Jennings, for being -- as they saw it -- too "anti-Israel. "Several guests," writes Auletta, "came away deeply distressed by Tisch's behavior. What disturbed them was that the President of CBS seemed to say that the perceived interests of Israel took precedence over the interests of CBS News. Tisch's reflex, they felt, was to defend Israel, not his network; he was blaming Jennings and the press for reporting Israel's excesses, not Israel committing them. " [AULETTA p. 488-490]

 

Tisch's strong emotions about Israel were exhibited in other ways. After CBS's popular news program, 60 Minutes, did a story about the Jewish lobbying group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Tisch was furious with his employees because the program made Jews, to his eyes, look too powerful. (Curiously, long-time CBS reporter, David Schoenburn, notes that both 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and 60 Minutes reporter, Mike Wallace (both Jewish), "were personal friends of Larry Tisch." [SCHOENBURN, p. 6])  Tisch reportedly even called the reporter of the AIPAC story, Wallace, a self-hating Jew. Tom Wyman, the non-Jewish CEO of CBS, joined in the fray, at another party. He was reported by Newsweek to have complained "that Tisch's enthusiasm for 'pro-Israel' causes and charities might compromise the independent reporting of CBS news."  [AULETTA, p. 164] 

 

This attitude by powerful Jewish media figures reflects a certain tradition, and recalls the case in the late 1940s of Adolph Schwimmer who "became the Jewish state's prime [arms] smuggler in America." Among his close contacts was Herman "Hank" Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Greenspun once noted that he was a Zionist "before I could even identify a picture of George Washington." [RAVIV, p. 40] During Israel's "War of Independence" in 1948, Greenspun traveled to "Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Panama, where he organized false documents, bank guarantees, and arms shipments to Israel." [RAVIV, p. 41] "Hank Greenspun," notes Alex Pelle,

 

      "embarked on an incredible odyssey, plundering a naval depot in

      Hawaii, seizing a private yacht at gunpoint near Wilmington, California,

      and posing in Mexico as a confidential agent of Generalissimo Chiang

      Kai-shek's government. A single driving purpose generated over the

      span of seven months all those seemingly unrelated events: to fill the

      holds of a ship ... with six thousand tons of contraband rifles, machine

      guns, howitzers, cannons, and ammunition, destined for the port of

      Haifa and Israel's beleaguered Jews. In so doing, Hank Greenspun

      had violated the United States' Neutrality Act, the Export Control

      Law, and Presidential Proclamation 2776." Thanks to Jewish lobbying

      pressure, Greenspun was pardoned by President John F. Kennedy

      in 1961. [GREENSPUN, H., 1966, p. ix]

 

                  *********************************************

 

In 1989 the Time Inc. corporate media giant merged with Warner Communications to become Time-Warner Communications, the largest media organization at the time in the world. (Sigmund Warburg, an internationally renowned Jewish banker who represented the London Daily Mirror Group, then the largest newspaper company on earth, had years earlier tried to buy Time, Inc., to no avail). [CLURMAN, p. 31] When the dust had settled this time, Steve Ross, a Jewish entrepreneur who started out working for a funeral home, sat astride the monstrous merger, the highest paid corporate executive in America. His $39.1 million in 1990 as co-CEO, sole chairman and chief decision-maker, was 1,363 per cent above the corporate average. [CLURMAN p. 304] The merger, notes Richard Clurman, "was the creation of the biggest media empire, the corporate interfaith marriage of the sixty-seven-year-old Time Inc., a WASPy blue-chip American institution, for years the largest combined magazine and book publisher on earth, to Steven J. Ross's poker-chip Warner Communications, Inc., the pop entertainment conglomerate whose movies and sounds of music ricochet around the world." The Time Inc. stable included such venerable publishing mainstays as Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People, Money, Time-Life Books, the Little-Brown publishing house, HBO (long time chief: Michael Fuchs), the Book of the Month Club, and television stations. It even held a 20.5% share in the ownership of Turner Broadcasting  (of CNN fame) and 10.5% voting power in it. Warner contributed the likes of Lorimar Television, Atco-East/West Records, Atlantic Recording, Quincy Jones Entertainment, Elektra Communications, DC Comics, as well as the Batman movie, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Bugs Bunny, and the rest of its vast movie-music empire. (By 1997 Time-Warner even owned the rights to the photographs, other images, and words of Martin Luther King, Jr.) In his earlier years, Ross had revitalized Warner-Seven Arts by buying cable-TV monopolies, as well as major interests in the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, Ralph Lauren perfume and cosmetics, and other investments. A month after the Time-Warner merger, federal bank regulators instituted new restrictions to hinder such "highly leveraged transactions." [CLURMAN, p. 33]

 

Steve Ross (whose father changed his surname from Rechnitz, and whose former stepfather, William Paley, for decades controlled CBS) was widely known as a man of dubious ethics and caused consternation among many journalists at Time that such a man was about to take them all over.  He has been an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a 1979 United States Justice Department case investing underworld money laundering operation in suburban New York City. His "top lieutenant" at Warners took the fall and admitted guilt; likewise, Warners' assistant treasurer (who handled Ross's personal accounts) was also convicted of fraud and perjury. [CLURMAN, p. 29]  In earlier years Ross had merged his funeral home operation with a parking lot company, Kinney National Service, which had its own "unsavory reputation." "There were rumors that Kinney was mobbed up [i.e., tainted by organized crime]," notes Fred Goodman, "Caesar Kinney, Kinney's executive vice president and original owner of Kinney's parking lot business, was the son of Emmanuel Kinney, a well-known New Jersey gambler." [GOODMAN, p. 137-138] (In 1969 Ross and the Kinney company bought Warner-Seven Arts from Elliott Hyman for $400 million. [Sam Kinney had been head of production; Benny Kalmensan was the number two man.] For his part, Hyman's earlier company was Associated Artists Productions, which had purchased the entire pre-1948 Warners film library in 1956. Associated Artists' chairman was Louis Chesler, who, notes Andrew Yule, was a man "with established ties to Mafia boss Meyer Lansky. Nor was this AA's only shady connection. Its vice-president, Morris 'Mac' Schwebel, would later be convicted of criminal activity." [YULE, p. 176])

 

The 1989 merger of the two super companies, Time and Warner, also raised issues of conflict of interest. How could Time, Fortune, and other magazines now be expected to give honest reviews and evaluations of Warners movies, records, and other enterprises? Richard Clurman notes the fact, for instance, that an August 1991 Fortune article called "The Deal Decade: Verdict of the 80s" ... "sharply criticized leveraged excesses deal by deal, with the names and numbers of the dealmakers but it skipped one of the highest profiles of them all, the Time-Warners merger." [CLURMAN, p. 305]

 

Among the central negotiators in the mega-merger was the Jewish Vice-President of Time, Inc., Jerry Levin, "chief tactician for Time's merger with Warner," and Ed Aboodi, an Israeli-born "financial consultant" for Warners. Aboodi's reputation, says Clurman is that of a "shadowy mystery man ... [He] was an invisible mystery man to the world outside Warners until the Time-Warner deal." Investigative reporter Richard Clurman found no listing in any telephone directory for his Alpine Capital Company, which is housed in the Time-Warner building. "Aboodi says he has no telephone listing for Alpine because 'people know me and they know how to find me. I've never thought about it." [CLURMAN, p. 165] "Levin and Aboodi," says Clurman, "a Delphic-like oracle and a Talmudic-like exegetist, [are] quite a combination for an intricate modern business deal. Levin even spoke of the 'thaumaturgic (i.e., mystical) significance' of some of their meetings." [CLURMAN, p. 166]  "While his peers have been unabashedly striving to scale the corporate ladder to attain the personal perquisite of power and wealth," notes Connie Bruck, "Levin has long maintained that he has been compelled by something far less mundane, almost mystical: a sense of obligation to bring to fruition the 'manifest destiny' of Time, Inc. and, now, Time Warner." [BRUCK, p. 55] Ultimately, the Chief Financial Officer, the General Counsel, and Secretary of the Board for the new company were all to come from Warners. [CLURMAN, p. 197-198] The new company committed up to $150 million to a fund managed by Aboodi's Alpine Capital company, as well as providing him his $8 million advisory fee.

 

By 1991 Time-Warner announced a deal with the largest of Japanese venture capital trading firms, C. Itoh, and Toshiba; this translated into a Japanese investment of another billion dollars. The massive mega-company then hired former Federal Communications Commission chairman Dennis R. Patrick and "two corporate 'image makers' who had worked at the White House" to help maneuver governmental regulatory policies. Time-Warner "also had on retainer an elegant pack of the most connected Washington lobbyists." [CLURMAN, p. 338] The new Time-Warner soon also acquired Sunset magazine, Lane Publishing, and 50% interest in Six Flags Amusement Parks.

 

"Time-Warner," wrote Richard Clurman in his book about the subject in 1992, "is a combination whose creations (magazines, books, movies, music, cable TV, and programming) are now exposed to the minds and emotions of more people than those of any other commercial enterprise on earth ...  [CLURMAN, p. 33] [Time-Warner executives] frequently predicted that one day '5 or 6 media companies would dominate the world.'" [CLURMAN, p. 338]

 

After the big merger, ruefully notes Clurman, for twenty years a journalist and executive at Time, Inc., "in a bicoastal, cross-cultural anointing, Time's house organ  [had a column on new executive titles] under the heading 'Honorable Menschen"  [a Yiddish pun]. Within the same two weeks, Nick Nicholas [the co-chairman of Time-Warner, eventually dumped from that position], was given a American-Jewish Committee Human Relations Award in Los Angeles and Steve Ross was named Man of the Year by the Entertainment Division of the UJA [United Jewish Appeal] in New York." [CLURMAN, p. 314] (Steve Ross was "one of the role models" for Oskar Schindler in Stephen Spielberg's film Schindler's List. "To prepare [actor Liam Neeson] for the part, the director reportedly showed pictures of Ross ... a wheeler-dealer of legendary proficiency." [KELLMAN, p. 10] Schindler was also likened to another Jewish media mogul, Michael Ovitz, "on top of the mountain pulling strings in every fiefdom down below." [KELLMAN, p. 10]

 

When Steve Ross subsequently died of cancer, Gerald Levin replaced him as head of Time-Warner after a struggle for power, successfully firing presumed heir, Nick Nicholas. (Levin's son, Lee, is studying to be a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary. [BOXER, T., 5-26-01] Soon Norman Pearlstine, formerly the head of the Wall Street Journal and Jewish, was installed as editor of Time magazine.

 

More recently, in 1995, Disney's Jewish chairman Michael Eisner announced the $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities-ABC to create an even larger corporate media monolith, relegating massive Time-Warner to second size. Disney-ABC controls, aside from the obvious, everything from the Anaheim Angels baseball team and the Mighty Ducks hockey team to Miramax Films (co-chaired by the Jewish Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob) and the ESPN sports network (Jewish president and CEO, Steven Bornstein).  Disney also owned Fairchild Publications which included fashion magazine Jane, W, Supermarket News, Women's Wear Daily, Chilton Books, Los Angeles Magazine, and numerous newspapers and TV stations. Not to be out-fattened, Gerald Levin at the heal of Time-Warner soon absorbed Ted Turner's media empire, Turner Broadcasting, including CNN.  [BRUCK, p. 58] Turner was relegated to second in command at Time-Warner. Head of the Turner Broadcasting System division in 1999? Brad Siegel. The new chief of CNN in 2001? Also Jewish: Walter Isaacson, formerly Time Inc.'s editorial director.

And this is how a Jewish ethnic online magazine described Brad Turrell, number 12 in its 2001 "Fifty Most Influential Jews in America":

     "While Turrell was the head of communications for the WB television network, he
     began a religious odyssey that transformed he and his family into observant
     Jews. Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. In April, he was promoted
     to the top communication slot for all of Turner Broadcasting which includes TNT,
     TBS Superstation, the WB Network, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies,
     Turner South and Boomerang, the CNN News Group Networks, which includes
     CNN/U.S., CNN Headline News, CNNfn, Accent Health, CNN Airport Network,
     College Television Network (CTN), CNN Radio Network, CNN.com, CNNfn.com,
     CNNfyi.com and MyCNN.com and Nascar.com. With all the recent claims [by
     Jewish lobbying organizations] of CNN's alleged media bias against Israel, it will
      be interesting to see how Turrell handles the position." [JEWSWEEK, 2001]

The aforementioned Weinstein brothers "run a company [Miramax] that released more movies than any other in the U.S. in the year 2000 and had the eighth-largest box-office receipts." "After Disney paid $60 million for Miramax in 1993," notes New York Magazine, "[Harvey] Weinstein spent his time buying his way to the Oscar platform and getting in touch with his inner thug by screwing over far more delicate artistic sorts ... But all the legendary bad behavior [by him] cannot obscure an objective fact: Harvey Weinstein is a cultural good. Pulp Fiction, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and Shakespeare in Love have all become a part of the national narrative, framing the way people dance, talk, and fight ... [Weinstein] is a pushcart peddler who is more than happy to put his thumb on the scale when the old woman is buying meat,' says [fellow Jewish] producer Saul Zaentz. 'He has not qualms about it ... 'People say, 'Are you tough?' I say: 'Facing [Jewish Hollywood moguls] Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, you know, Stephen Spielberg ... Why the hell would you have to be tough in this industry to survive? Those guys are just a walk in the park?'" [CARR, D., 12-03-01]

(Among Weinstein's most recent projects -- like so many Jewish moguls -- is one with a Holocaust theme (this one based on a piece of fiction by Jewish novelist Leon Uris, Mita 18.) "'I'm preparing to direct a movie about the Warsaw Ghetto. About Jews kiling fucking Germans in great numbers,' he says with enthusiasm.") [CARR, D., 12-03-01]

"It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture," wrote Jewish author, film critic, and talk show host Michael Medved in 1996,

 

      "Any list of the most influential production executives at each of

      the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizable

      Jewish names." [MEDVED, p. 1] ... Consider the well-publicized

      reshuffling that recently rocked the Walt Disney Company, involving

      some of the mightiest and most highly paid media moguls. In this game

      of corporate musical chairs, Disney C.E.O. and Chairman of the Board,

      Michael Eisner lost the services of his movie production chief, Jeffrey

      Katzenberg, who became part of the much-heralded new "dream team" 

      (formally incorporated as DreamWorks SKG) with Steven Spielberg

      and David Geffen. {[In 1990 Forbes magazine called Geffen -- a former

      agent and record producer -- the richest man in Hollywood." [KOTKIN,

      p. 62] The first project out of DreamWorks was also by a Jewish

      producer, Gary Goldberg, whose earlier "gentle, semi-autobiographical

      look at a middle-class Jewish family" lasted 35 episodes in 1991-92 on

      CBS [CEROWE, p. F1]] Meanwhile, Eisner created a new position at

      Disney for his omnipotent super agent Michael Ovitz and gave broader

      responsibilities to his fair-haired boy, Joe Roth, former head of 20th

      Century Fox ... These headlines underscored the ironic fact that the

      famous Disney organization, founded by a gentile Midwestern who

      allegedly harbored anti-Semitic attitudes now features Jewish personnel

      in nearly all its most powerful positions."  [MEDVED, p. 37]

 

Among these personnel is also Michael Lynton, appointed to be the head of Disney's movie division in 1994. At the very start of Eisner's tenure at Disney, Katzenberg headed the Disney studios, fellow Jew Richard Frank headed television, and David Hoberman was the chief at the film division. [SCHWEIZER/SCHWEIZER, p. 5] Joseph Shapiro became a Disney Senior Vice President in the 1990s. Steven Bornstein is (2001) chairman of Walt Disney Internet Group, heading Disney's commercial explorations of the world wide web. Even the president of the Disney-founded California Institute of the Arts is Jewish, Steven Lavine. In earlier years, during Saul Steinberg's attempt to lead a hostile takeover of the famous WASP firm, some observers were concerned that the "take over battle might be regarded as an attempt by Jews to topple one of the temples of Protestant America." [TAYLOR, J., p. ix]  At that time, when Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney, held the largest individual stake in the company, his lawyer was also Jewish: Stanley Gold. [TAYLOR, J., p. 3]  Gold eventually became  "a financial power through Roy Disney's Shamrock Holdings and one of the largest foreign investors in Israel." [TUGEND 10-22-99])

As Carl Hiaasen wrote, in his 1998 volume Team Rodent -- How Disney Devours the World:

     "In December 1997 Disney chairman Michael D. Eisner exercised company
      stock options that brought him $565 million in a single swoop. The notion of
      attaching such a sum to one man's job is both obscene and hilarious on its face,
      yet it's pointless to debate whether or not Eisner deserves it. He got the dough.
      It happened in the same month that Business Week chose Disney's board of
      directors as the worst in America. The reason: Many seemed to have been
      handpicked not so much for their business expertise as for their loyalty to the
      autocratic Eisner. Among the company's directors are his personal architect, his
      personal attorney, the principal of his children's elementary school, and seven
      current and former Disney executives 'Fantastic' is how Eisner has described his
      choices for the board. But critics say it's a meek and malleable group. That's
      precisely what was needed to sit still for the ludicrous $75 million platinum parachute
      given to Michael Ovitz [also Jewish] as compensation for fourteen whole months as
      president of the Walt Disney Company." [Hiaasen, C., 1998, p. 38-39]

 

In 1997, when Lilian Disney (Walt's widow) donated $50 million towards building a Los Angeles cultural center called Disney Hall (named in honor of her husband), Variety noted lingering (Jewish) animosity towards him:

 

      "So far [her donation is] the only notable sign of financial support from

      the film industry or its players for the new concert hall in downtown Los

     Angeles ... The fact that the hall bears the name of Disney [is] possibly a

     turnoff to other studios." [JOHNSON, p. 11]

 

"Not everyone was happy with the 'inevitable' changes [resulting from the arrival of Eisner and his new management at Disney in the 1980s]," notes Joe Flower, "Letters to the Los Angeles Times, homeland newspaper to the company and the entertainment industry, ran heavily negative, complaining of the compromise in quality in Disney's Saturday morning cartoons, the 'commercialism' of the new management's projects and the dilution of the Disney name." [FLOWER, p. 192] In 1985 Disney announced that pop star Madonna would star in one of its films (she eventually didn't) and affiliates of the great bastion of "family entertainment" began to produce R-rated films. The movie Pulp Fiction (produced by a Disney affiliate, Miramax) was decried by some for its graphic and celebratory violence. By 1987, when Disney had a quarterly profit increase of 159%, Chairman Eisner got a $2.6 million year-end bonus while rank-and-file Disney employees found their health insurance deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses doubled. [FLOWER, p. 257]

Jewish publisher Paul Krassner wrote the following, in delight, about what he believed to be massive cultural changes in America with the (symbolic) death of Walt Disney -- a tearing down of hypocrisy and illusion. In context here, however, his words ring as an indictment of the Jewish take-over not only at Disney, but throughout American culture where formal "WASP" values of genteel civility have been replaced by brash, vulgar, Freudian, in-your-face Jewish ones:

   "[Walt] Disney's death occurred a few years after Time magazine's famous 'God is Dead' cover, and it occurred to me that Disney had indeed served as God to that whole stable of imaginary characters who were now mourning in a state of suspended animation. Disney had been THEIR Creator and he had repressed all their baser instincts, but now that he had departed, they could finally shed their cumulative inhibitions and participate together in an unspeakable Roman binge, to signify the crumbling of an empire. I contacted Wally Wood and, without mentioning specific details, I told him my general notion of a memorial orgy at Disneyland. He accepted the assignment and presented me with a magnificently degenerate montage. Pluto was pissing on a portrait of Mickey Mouse, while the real, bedraggled Mickey was shooting up heroin with a hypodermic needle. His nephews were jerking off as they watched Goofy fucking [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 142] Minnie Mouse on a combination bed and cash register. Dumbo was simultaneously flying and shitting on an infuriated Donald Duck. Huey, Dewey, and Louie were peeking at Daisy Duck's asshole as she watching the Seven Dwarfs groping Snow White. The prince was snatching a peek at Cinderella's snatch while trying a glass slipper on her foot. The three little pigs were humping each other in a daisy chain. Jiminy Cricket leered as Tinker Bell did a striptease and Pinocchio's nose got longer ... [This] became so popular that I decided to publish it as a poster. The Disney corporation considered a lawsuit but realized The Realist was published on a proverbial shoestring, and, besides, why bother causing themselves further public embarrassment? They took no action on me, and the statute of limitations finally ran out." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 142]

 

As Disney profits soared and its "family values" reputation corroded, in 1997 the Southern Christian Baptist Convention initiated a boycott of all Disney products, in part because of Disney-ABC's homosexual sit-com, "Ellen." In 1997 too the Catholic League for Religion and Civil Rights, already protesting a Disney-sponsored feature film called "Priest,” successfully lobbied at least seven corporations to pull their ads from a new Disney-ABC series called "Nothing Sacred," which featured, as some expressed it,  "an inner city priest's struggles with his religious beliefs." The offended Catholic organization decried the TV program for containing "slanderous assaults" against the Church.  (Similarly, in 1992, a few Catholic newspapers refused to accept advertising for a novel by Jewish author Erich Segal, Acts of Faith, the story of a love affair between a Catholic seminarian and an Orthodox Jewish woman.) The conservative Focus on the Family organization also instituted its own boycott against any product with a Disney label. In 1995 the well known Disney "family entertainment" company was scandalized when it was revealed that the director, Victor Salvo, of a new Disney movie called "Powder," was a convicted child molester. In 1999 Disney invited controversy with its film about the life of New York mass murderer David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam." Even the killer himself was outraged by the movie. "Let me tell you something," said Berkowitz from prison, "Walt Disney must be turning over in his grave." [HARDEN, p. 22]

 

As Rabbi Daniel Lapin notes about the aforementioned Disney movie Priest,

 

     "When it came to Priest, there were few courageous Jewish leaders

     out there who stepped to the defense of Catholics ... It was

     appropriate for Jews to join in the denunciation of Priest. After all,

     the head of Disney as well as the heads of its distribution subsidiary,

     Miramax, are Jewish. We may feel that making such an observation

     is in bad taste. If non-Jews make the same observation we no doubt

     will immediately recognize them as anti-Semites. However, this kind

     of intimidation will not stop many Americans from making that

     observation. Neither will it stop them from seeing as insulting that

     the companies just happened to choose Good Friday as the date

     for this film's national release." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 311]

 

In 1994 Disney faced claims that its Lion King character was pilfered from a 40-year old Japanese story by Tezauka Osamu. In 1990 advocates for the homeless managed to get Disney to stop selling a tramp toy. In 1996 the World Development Movement protested Disney's exploitation of toy-makers in Third World countries. In 1997 nearly forty organizations joined the National Hispanic Media Coalition protests against Disney and its ABC network for alleged discrimination in hiring. In 1997, after media embarrassment, Disneyland reinstated a discount program for the disabled it had tried to quietly rescind.  In 1997, too, Disney CEO Michael Eisner (already since 1984 the highest paid executive in the United States at $660 million over 11 years), succeeded in getting a ten-year future "compensation package" for himself that could be worth close to $800 million, a sum attacked at a Disney shareholders meeting by about twenty investor organizations, including the California Public Employees Retirement System.  After a failed 14-month hiring of Eisner's (Jewish) friend Michael Ovitz to be groomed as the next Disney heir to power, Ovitz was awarded a controversial $128 million severance package. [GRELLEY, Persp, p. B9; FISHER, M, BAPTISTS, p. A1; MATZER, p. D8; HORN, p. 3; BURRESS, p. A1; CHICTRIB, 12-20-90, p1, 8; GUARDIAN, 12-4-96, 1, 19; BURRESS, p. E1; BRAXTON, p. F2; MILLER, p. A1; LIEBERMAN, D, USA, p. B3; FARHI, p. D1, SLATER p. 298, 327; SEGAL, N, p. 5]

 

 (In the 1990s the Disney-ABC conglomerate began buying up and gentrifying Manhattan's Times Square area. All the low-life adult bookstores and other such merchants were shifted, en masse, to another area. And who was positioned to sell the real estate in the newly designated porno site? "Just about the whole neighborhood," noted London's Daily Telegraph, "it turned out, was owned by half-a-dozen old Jewish families.") [LAURENCE, C., 10-30-95, p. 17]

 

In 1992, the Disney film "Aladdin" came under attack from outraged Arab and Muslim groups. Condemnation starts with its opening song: "Oh, I come from a land / a far away place / where the caravan camels roam. / Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face / it's barbaric, but, hey, it's home." [SHAHEEN, J. 12-21-92, p. F3] Professor Jack Shaheen complained again about Disney four years later:

 

      "Nearly one year after Disney bashed Arabs in 'Aladdin,' ...

       [its] studio executives promised they would in the future consult

       with Arab Americans so as not to repeat the mistakes. Soon after,

       in 'The Return of Jafar' (1996), they displayed gobs of hook-nosed

       Arabs referred to in the film as 'desert skunks.' That same year, Disney

       continued trouncing Arabs in ... 'In the Army Now' ... In 1995,

       Disney's Christmas feel-good family film 'Father of the Bride, Part

       II, writers inserted a foul, rich, Arab-American couple, the Habibs...

       Collectively, Disney's relentlessly ruthless images advance suspicion

       and hatred. Although other studios perpetuate injurious clichés ... only

       Disney violates Americans of Middle East heritage." SHAHEEN, J.,

       8-12-96, p. F31]

 

This anti-Arab, anti-Islam tenor, of course, is a recurring theme from Hollywood. In 1998, for instance, a non-Disney film, The Siege, by director Edward Zwick, came under especially heated attack by Arabs and Muslims. From the apologetic side, "Zwick and [Siege producer Lynda] Obst, both Jewish, have said that they intended the 20th Century Fox film to combat racism." [PFEFFERMAN, N., 9-4-98] The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee strongly felt it did something else, calling it "insidious, incendiary, and dangerous" for Arabs and Muslims. "There is no doubt," agreed Montreal Gazette reviewer Bill Brownstein, "... that The Siege does incite racial hatred toward Arabs ... The image that will linger long after the lights come back on is that of U.S. soldiers herding up every Arab in New York and shunting them off to mini-concentration camps." [BROWNSTEIN, B., p. A3]

In 2000, London's daily newspaper The Independent noted the new movie Rules of Engagement, directed by William Friedkin and produced by Paramount, whose head of the film division is Sherry Lansing. Friedkin and Lansing are husband and wife -- and they are both Jewish:

     "The Arab nations -- and the Islamic world in general -- have become the new
     stock enemy, a powerful and unreasoning force in True Lies (1994), Executive
     Decision (1995), GI Jane (1997) and The Siege (1998) -- in which Bruce Willis
     rounded up Arab Americans in an attempt to stop a Hezbollah-type terrorist
     group blowing up New York. Even The Insider (1999) -- a film about corruption
     in the tobacco industry, for heaven's sake -- tacked on a Syrian prologue in which Al
     Pacino took on a pack of mad-ish mullahs. And Rules of Engagement? This film is
      absolutely off the scale,' says Hussein Ibish, communications director of the
     American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Commitee, a Washington-based pressure
     group. 'I've never seen anything quite so vile. I felt like I was being physically
     beaten, which is a reaction I've never had encountering a work of art. It was
     mind-bogglingly vicious. I'm amazed that a major American entertainment company
     would actually release such a thing." [SWEET, M., 7-30-00]

In 1999, the Disney company found itself embroiled in yet another controversy, this one political. It had allowed the state of Israel to have an exhibit -- the largest -- "on display at the new Millennium Village at [Disney World] Complex's Epcot Center in Florida." [LOS ANGELES JEWISH TIMES, Aug 27-Sept 2, 99] Muslim and Arab organizations were concerned that Israel would portray Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, an assertion at odds with the Muslim and Arab view.

 

Rarely publicly expressed, there may be an angry undercurrent in popular perception about the reshaping of Disney's public image: a perceived negative Jewish influence in the mass media's shaping of modern American values, a theme which is not new. "During Hollywood's pre-second World War Golden Age," notes J. J. Goldberg," it was commonly argued that Jews were insensitive and hostile to Christian values and were shaping an American culture that offended the American Christian majority." [GOLDBERG, p. 284] In later years even Jewish authors could be found who complained about a noticeable shift in media-defined American values. "A distinct majority of [producers and writers in Hollywood] are Jewish," wrote Jewish critic Ben Stein, "They do not hold criminals responsible for crime but rather place the blame on society." [PRAGER, p. 63]

 

"There may be something more serious behind these boycotts [against Disney], Lehrer [an Anti-Defamation League official] and others suspect," says Joel Kotkin, "a revival of the traditional concerns among various groups about 'Jewish control' of the means of mass communications. Disney ['s] ... leadership comprises some of the most visible and powerful Jewish figures in the industry." [KOTKIN, DISNEY, p. 12]

 

In protesting the Disney-ABC TV series "Nothing Sacred' (which has extremely low ratings, yet was renewed for a second season anyway), the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, William Donohue, noted in 1997 that

 

        "Perhaps the most aggravating aspect of 'Nothing Sacred' is the

        audacity of executive producers David Manson and Richard Kramer,

        to admit that their purpose is to create 'dialogue among Catholics' about

        the teachings of the Church. Who ever asked -- or appointed -- these

        two men, both of whom are Jewish, and both who believe in nothing,

        to foment dialogue in my Church? .... 'Nothing Sacred' is political

        propaganda against the Magisterium being waged by producers who

        are outsiders." [DONOHUE]

 

In 1999, a Disney affiliate, Miramax Films, produced yet another Catholic-bashing movie, Dogma, "Kevin Smith's controversial satire of Roman Catholicism." [GEIER, T., 11-13-99] The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights claimed to have garnered 300,000 signatures in protest of the film. The Miramax Jewish co-chairmen, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, eventually "personally bought back" the movie from its parent company and forwarded distribution rights to another firm, Lion's Gate  (co-presidents also Jewish: Mark Urman and Tom Ortenberg).

 

In 1992 the Jewish film critic and talk show host, Michael Medved, was taken aside by an unnamed” best-selling author" and "popular television commentator" at a "media accountability" conference for a heart to heart talk. "What I don't get," the unnamed Gentile said, "when I look at Hollywood, is why is it that so many of the people who are responsible for the worst garbage turn out to be Jews? It's sort of become an obvious question, but nobody likes to talk about it, because nobody wants to sound like a bigot ... How come they're so set on trashing everything that the rest of us care about? I'm afraid we've got more and more people out there who are wondering about the same thing." [MEDVED, p. 315]

 

"To hear this sophisticated and dynamic public figure draw a connection between Jewish involvement in Hollywood and the current degradation in Hollywood," says Medved, "hit me with the force of a blow to the chest. No one could ever accuse him of anti-Semitism; for many years he had compiled an admirable record of service to Jewish causes and he'd made several trips to Israel." [MEDVED, p. 315, p. 70] (Jewish assault on non-Jewish and Christian values is an old theme. In 1927, Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland, remarking on the pornography, prostitution, and general mass media trades, noted the "large and influential group of Jews who are attempting to break down Christian morality. Let us go to the decent Jews -- and thanks be to God there are decent Jews and lots of them -- and ask them to join hands with us to solve the common problem of commercialized vice." [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000, p. 142]

 

Hollywood movies and television at-large have been increasingly attacked in recent years for propagating a range of decadent values.  82% of Americans polled in a 1989 Associated Press/Media General survey felt that today's movies had too much violence, 80% felt there was too much profanity, and 72% too much nudity. 72% of a Parents magazine survey supported prohibition "against making fun of religion" in the mass media. A 1991 Gallup poll showed that 58% of Americans were "offended frequently or occasionally" by prime-time programming. A 1989 Time/CNN survey documented that 67% of the American public believes the violence in movies was "mainly to blame" for rising teenage violence; 70% supported "greater restraints on the showing of sex and violence" in the movies. [MEDVED, Hollywood, p. 4]  In the 1992 Presidential election both Bill Clinton and Robert Dole criticized Hollywood for glorifying drugs.  In 1999 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy released the results of a joint report that studied the content of the top movie rentals and 1,000 most popular songs of 1996-99. 98% of the films and 27% of the songs "contained reference to either alcohol or drugs, 26% of movies portrayed illicit drug use in a humorous context." [OLDENBERG, p. 8B]  And in a 2000 report, the Federal Trade Commission "accused the entire [entertainment industry] of aggressively selling violent and sexually explicit films, video games and music to kids." [MSNBC, 4-24-01]

 

"That this [film and TV] industry," says Michael Medved, "more firmly associated with Jews than any other business in the world, is almost universally viewed as a destructive force in our society should be viewed with concern." [MEDVED, p. 42]  Not even focusing on the Hollywood world, in 1999, Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote an extraordinarily unusual, and stunning, appraisal of the collective negative effects of the modern Jewish community upon the values of America:

 

    "My firm conviction is that we must engage in an honest exploration of

    the problems and shortcomings of the Jewish community and Jewish

    communal leadership. Instead of focusing on imagined enemies, we

    should ask whether dogmatic commitment to a secular-liberal vision is

    encouraging dislike for the Jewish community. Without such honest

    self-appraisal, Jews will become more and more disliked -- not by

    crazed individuals but by decent Americans distressed over their

    rapidly deteriorating culture and the role of Jews in that agenda. It

    cannot escape the notice of ordinary Americans coping with the

    challenge of raising responsible children in a hostile world that many

    Jewish names and groups lead the fight for policies these Americans

    see as causing the country's decline." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 42]

 

Jewish-dominated Hollywood and its movie and music world has always been a hotbed for all sorts of vices, including drugs. All sorts of people partake in these realms, and there can be created long lists of Tinseltown drug addicts and dealers, of course, but Jews are to be found -- as in so many fields -- profoundly disproportionate in them (Jewish mobster Arnold Rothstein, in the early 20th century, is even credited by some with beginning the syndicated drug trade in America).  As early as the 1930s, actress Lana Turner notes her surprise at the drug interest of her Jewish husband, famous band leader Artie Shaw:

 

     "When I came back Artie and Phil [Silvers, a well-known Jewish

     comedian] were smoking what they called 'reefers.' I'd heard of

     marijuana, of course, but I'd never seen it before. It was associated

     mainly with jazz musicians. Artie and Phil offered me some, and I

     said no." [TURNER, L., 1982, p. 58]   

Debbie Reynolds, another "shikseh" innocent, notes he drug world of her Jewish husband, singer Eddie Fisher:

"After his stint in Vegas, Eddie came back to Los Angeles to do a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, with Andre Kostelanetz. He had arranged for me to attend the show with Irving Berlin and General David Sarnoff, the founder of RCA, which owned NBC. There were often a number of much older, very successful men around Eddie, including Eddie Cantor, who is generally credited with having discovered him ... (REYNOLDS, D., 1988, p. 101) ... Whenever Eddie was working, he was surrounded by people. Milton Blackstone, Eddie's manager was always there, along with several of Eddie's childhood pals -- like Joey Forman and Bernie Rich -- who were now part of what was, I would soon learn, the inevitable entourage ... (REYNOLDS, 1988, p. 101)... The night at the Bowl there was also a strange man whom I had seen briefly in passing every night at the Sands. A frumpish-looking character, always in an unpressed navy suit. He was sinister, like a Vincent Price character in a murder movie. 'This is Dr. Max Jacobson,' Joey said as the doctor extended what was a warm, yet clammy hand ... 'He just gives Eddie a vitamin shot before the performance, to give him a little more energy ... It's just vitamins. Gives you a lift. We all get 'em. Even Milton, You should have Eddie get the doc to give you a shot sometime." [REYNOLDS, D., p. 101] [All these men described by Reynolds were Jewish. Max Jacobson is the notorious doctor who led many Hollywood stars to drug addiction, injecting them with amphetamines.]

 

In more recent years cocaine has become an especially popular Hollywood drug. In 1974 Paramount Pictures' head of production Robert Evans was replaced, largely because of his continuous problem with cocaine. In 1980 he was convicted for cocaine possession. [MCDOUGAL, p. 393, WICK, S., 87] In 1982 Jewish actor Richard Dreyfus "was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and 31 tablets of Percodan." [WOODWARD, 1984, p. 418] Likewise, in the 1990s actor Robert Downey, Jr. spent a year in prison for drug abuse. In an extreme case, in 1983 Hollywood agent Roy Radin, also Jewish, was found murdered, a result of his involvement in a drug ring. [WICK, p. 144] Radin, " a six-foot, three-inch, 300-pound cocaine addict ... made a fortune producing traveling vaudeville shows for Police Benevolent Associations across the country. 'The Roy Radin Review,' as it was called, headlined the likes of Georgie Jessel and Tiny Tim ... [Radin] sometimes took 75 percent of the proceeds." [GAINES, S., 1998, p. 246] Radin, notes singer Eddie Fisher, "was the sleaziest person I'd ever known. He was guzzling cocaine." [FISHER, E., 1999, p. 312] Bert Schneider's and Bob Rafelson's film BBS company "ethic was the raucous parties, with bags of dope and bowls of coke openly displayed on coffee tables." [MCGILLIGAN, 1994, p. 202]

 

Rachel Abramowitz notes the post-1960s elite that has come to rule Hollywood:

 

     "[Executives Paula] Weinstein and [Mark] Rosenberg and their radical

     friends typified the leftists with the cause manqué who poured into

     Hollywood from the [political] battlefields of Columbia and Stanford,

     ready to take on life on the studio expense account. Unlike their

     forebears, they weren't self-made scrappers but tended to be well-tended  

     progeny of the upper-middle class with down-home hippie roles ... They

     drank Perrier, did coke and grass [cocaine and marijuana] ... Paula

     Weinstein was one of the new breed of Hollywood executives ... [Their]

     intoxicants were cocaine and work."  [ABRAMOWITZ, R., 2000, p.

     79, 134]

 

In 1991, Jewish academy award-winning film producer Julia Phillips (among her products: The Sting, Taxi Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) wrote an autobiographical book about her life in the upper echelons of Hollywood movie making.  Here are some snippets from her expose about her experiences in the behind-the-scenes real-life world of Tinseltown that makes America's movies and molds popular culture, helping towards an answer, perhaps, to the question 'Where does Hollywood's on-screen interest in drugs come from?’:

 

     *  "[Backstage at a Rolling Stones concert at Madison Square Garden]

     there is a smelly Israeli named Freddie who seems to be very important

     to everybody. He carries two medium sized bottles filled with rock

     cocaine. He offers some to Goldie [Hawn] and some to me. Fuck

     you, Mr. Under-Assistant West Coast Promo Man. We turn him down;

     I've got my own." [PHILLIPS, p. 197]

 

     *  "Our little baby [is] asleep innocently in another room while we, two

     smart New York Jews, are imbibing in [heavy drugs]." [PHILLIPS,

     p.235]

 

     * "Jack Spratlin is a middle-echelon Hollywood drug dealer ... [He] is

     an acid casualty. He was meant to be one thing -- an upwardly mobile

     street Jew from New York who came to Hollywood to be an agent

     and a luminary -- but he became another because of drugs." [PHILLIPS,

     p. 235]

 

     * "I let Spratlin fuck me from behind in the closet in front of the mirror

     just before I leave for the morning." [PHILLIPS, p. 327]

 

     * "The seductive thing about freebase, for me anyway, is that at first I

     have the illusion that I am doing substantially less cocaine than if I

     toot it ... I learn a rough [drug] recipe from a nice Jewish dealer in

     the Valley." [PHILLIPS, p. 358]

 

     * "One morning Rottweiler wakes up in bed in a bad mood. We've run

      out of blow the night before and he's down downed himself out with

      Quaaludes. Like all male junkies, he uses dope as a reason not to

      bathe. Like all Jewish girls, there is nothing in the world to keep

      me from a daily shower and shampoo. Not even freebase." [PHILLIPS,

      p. 358]

 

      * "I actually smoke freebase in the hospital, right up to the abortion."

      [PHILLIPS, p. 376]

 

       * "I sleep with Michael Brandon, but I do a taste of this and that as

       sexual aids. Basically, I mix Quaaludes and Atvion and pot ... Upon

       awakening the next morning, I look at him and he is cute, but I

       surprise both of us by bursting into terrible heaving sob/tears. Being

       Jewish and funny, Michael defends himself with some pretty good

       jokes." [PHILLIPS, p. 453]

 

Ned Wynn (of partial Jewish heritage: actor, screenwriter, and son of comedian Keenan Wynn), recalls his first encounter with cocaine in the Hollywood world, thanks to singer Cass Elliot (born Ellen Naomi Cohen):

 

     "I had been introduced to cocaine by Cass Elliot, the lead female

     singer with the Mamas and the Papas. An enormous woman of

     appetites yet unfathomed, Cass had literally chased me around

     at a party John had taken me to one night. She had cornered me

     and actually spooned coke into my nose. Caught like a rabbit in

     the glare of Cass's eyeballs, I wrinkled and twitched and snorted

     and lit up like a little light bulb. Cass, you dog. I was in." [WYNN,

     N., 1990, p. 199]

Here's what Jewish author Susan Bluestein Davis (husband of late movie star and drugs/AIDS burn-out Brad Davis) notes about Hollywood and cocaine:

"[In the late 1970s] Like any hot actor, Brad had an aura, a frenzy about him, and wherever he went, people feted him with cocaine. At parties, meetings, dinners. The drug was everywhere and used by everyone, from stars and directors right down to the lowest grip. Everyone had it supplied. Meetings would be taken and cocaine was part of the refreshments. It was on every set, often written in as a soft expense on the film's budget. And not just for people you read about in Variety, but friends, agents I had known in New York who were now out in Los Angeles setting up their own agencies, their own production companies -- these people used it as if it were nothing."[DAVIS, S, 1997, p. 81]

 

In 1995, Marvin Shick wrote an article in the Jewish Week, saying that:

 

      "Much has been made of the abundance of high-profile Jews in the

       lower-depths of the entertainment industry. While it won't do to simply

       say it ain't so, for it is,  ... I do not feel especially guilty because of the

       wrongful behavior of certain Jews, whether they are secular sleaze

       merchants or chasidim ... But I am embarrassed, even hurt, when

       wrongdoers are honored, which happens too often in our fervid world

       of organizations and fund raising. It is my understanding that in

       Hollywood 'humanitarian' awards are handed out promiscuously,

       with Jewish organizations well in the lead ... It's ... a mistake for

       our community to have so little to say about the cultural depravity all

       around us ... It is insufficient for us to act like a community of amateur

       constitutional lawyers whenever someone shouts 'First Amendment' to

       protect the cesspool of moral corruption." [SCHICK, p. 5]

 

Jewish film critic Steve Walz noted with concern the rise of violently and morally reckless "teenager films" in the late 1990s. "The most controversial teen flick [Cruel Intentions]," he observes, has "several Jewish and half-Jewish stars, writers, producers, etc. involved in this flick, which basically depicts wicked teenagers trying to bed each other based on vicious dares ... Teenage crime figures are on the rise and anyone who tells you that there ISN'T a direct correlation between what teens see on the big screen or small screen and their anti-social relations is a flat out liar." [WALZ, 3-1-98] The plot of Cruel Intentions, noted the Los Angeles Times, "revolves around a rich New York City high school girl who snorts cocaine from her crucifix and bets her stepbrother he can't deflower a certain virgin. She offers him sexual relations with her as the prize, if he wins." [JENSEN, E., p. F1]

 

Jews in fact have a long history of testing the limits of popular morality and exploring sexuality's potential for profitability. They dominated the early 1900s vaudeville scene and were prominent in the development of the striptease as entertainment, as part as the package known as burlesque ("the most sexualy suggestive and sexually explicit of all of New York's popular media"). [FREIDMAN, A., 2000, p. 62]   After all, as an earlier chapter evidences, and as Yale professor Donald Davis phrases it, "the Jewish pimps and vice lords ... dominated the white slave trade traffic and its 'sex industry' in the early twentieth century." [DAVIS, D., p. 29]  "Jewish male comics," also notes Andrea Most, "regularly appeared in drag on the Broadway and vaudeville stage." [MOST, A., 1999, p. 322]

In the early to mid-20th century, a number of anti-vice organizations sought to curtail some trends in the New York entertainment industry, which was largely Jewish. (Sometimes underscoring ethnic/religious undercurrents, these included expressly Catholic organizations like the Legion of Decency and the National Organization for Decent Literature). "New York's position as the nation's cultural mecca," notes Andrea Friedman, "and the important role played by entertainment industries in the city's economy, made the conflicts over obscenity that occured there unique in their importance to municipal life ... The substantial role played by Jews in New York's entertainment industries made debates about obscenity especially important to many Jewish leaders." [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000, p. 10] In 1942, New York City refused to renew city burlesque theatre licenses, shutting them all down. [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000, p. 62] "Jews," notes Jewish scholar Friedman,

      "were also well represented among New York's theatrical producers, and burlesque
      in particular was notable for the presence of Jews among producers, managers, and
      entertainers ... The visibility of Jews in these industries nourished Christian
     fears that commercial culture in the metropolis would become even more
     corrupt and corrupting than it already was. Their association with an entertainment
     world built around the commodification of sexuality seeemed to sustain a
     preexisting paradigm of antisemitism that fused prejudices regarding
     Jewish greed and sexual immorality in the conviction, as historian Edward
     Bristow had phrased it, that Jews 'organized widespread conspiracies to
     corrupt and pollute the Christian world.' In the United States, as in Europe,
     many Christians subscribed to the view that Jews were so avaricious
     that they would permit neither legalities nor morals to stand in their way
     of their accumulation of wealth." [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000 , p. 141]

Friedman also notes the main reason for eventual Jewish religious activism in some anti-obscenity groups -- fears of anti-Semitism:

     "Some of New York's Jewish religious leaders also became more vocal in debates
     about obscenity during the 1920s and 1930s. To a greater degree than Protestants and
      Catholics, however, their participation came in response as much
     to the existence of anti-obscenity campaigns as to the existence of obscenity. Rabbis     
     entered into anti-obscenity activism in the attempt to counter Christians'
     perceptions of Jews as a different, alien, and more primitive people, by
     demonstrating that they shared the 'Christian' morals of their Protestant
     and Catholic brethren and by trying to control the behavior of other Jews.
     Prompted by the concern that Christian condemnations of obscenity
     might fuel antisemitism (and vice versa), they sometimes joined in such
     condemnations in self-defense. For Jews, anti-obscenity activism became a
     strategy for protecting the Jewish community by policing it." [FRIEDMAN, A.,
     2000, p. 140-141]

The most famous stripper of all time, Gypsy Rose Lee  (real name: Rose Louise Hovick) was Jewish, as was her early forum -- Minsky's Theatre (of "The Night They Raided Minsky's" fame). The theatre founders were Abe and Billy Minsky, grandsons of the chief rabbi of the Russian city of Minsk. Another Minsky, Herbert, was the "maestro of burlesque." [COOPER, p. 42] (The Minsky's New Gotham Burlesque House was raided on April 8, 1937, and its Jewish manager, Sam Kraus, jailed. Other Minsky venues included the Republic and Oriental Burlesque sites. As Jay Maeder observes, "New Gotham operator Abe Minsky was one of numerous Minsky brothers who had largely cornered the stripper business in New York." Jewish "civil rights" lawyer Morris Ernst declared that the raid was a "step in the direction of fascism.") [MAEDER, J., 6-26-2000] Elsewhere in New York City, among many other Jewish madams, was "Polly Adler, the Polish-born madam of New York's most famous bordello of the 1920s and 1930s." [MCDOUGAL, p. 92]     

Jewish comic and eventual TV superstar Milton Berle recalls Adler's brothel:

"When I had a night off from the Paradise, John Garfield [the actor, born Julius Garfinkle], who was a good friend, and I went over to Polly Adler's for dinner. Sure, the world knew Polly as a [brothel] madam, but her friends knew her as an intelligent woman, fun to be with, and a good cook. After dinner, Polly excused herself because she had to make some telephone calls to arrange for girls for her clients. John and I were talking when I said, 'I don't know about you, Julie (his real name was Jules), but I feel sort of horny.' John thought he might feel the same way, so we spoke to Polly about it, and she said she could get us two of her $100 girls -- Polly handled only the best -- and send them around to wherever we said. John and I went our separate ways to await our deliveries. When the doorbell rang at my place, there was Carole [a woman Berle had been dating and already having an affair with]." [BERLE, M., 1974, p 186]

A little earlier, "the most famous madam in turn-of-the century New York was Rosie Hertz. Saving enough from her own prostitution, she and her husband, Jacob, opened several brothels on the Lower East Side during the 1880s ... The epitome of the 'white slaver,' Hertz was called by one judge the 'godmother for prostitutes.' Another critic considered her 'as much a public feature of the lower East Side ... as the Brooklyn Bridge." [GILFOYLE, T., 1992, p. 295]

Dallas, Texas? When Jack Ruby (Rubenstein) murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, he owned the Carousel, a local strip tease joint. As Gerald Posner notes, "Ruby's main competition was from the Theatre and Colony Clubs, owned by two brothers, Abe and Barney Weinstein. In 1961, they had introduced amateur strip-tease dancing." [POSNER, p. 362] Atlanta, Georgia? By 1999, owner Steve Kaplan's Gold Club "nude dancing" business had been "indicted on federal racketeering charges that included prostitution, credit card fraud, money laundering, police corruption and ties to the Gambino organized crime family." His lawyer, Alan Begner, was also Jewish. "Since 1982," noted the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, "Begner has carved a lucrative niche as a lawyer of adult entertainment establishments," representing about half of the 45 in metropolitan Atlanta. "I knock out laws," he explained to the newspaper. Begner's interest in strip joints began when another Jewish owner (Emmanual Isaacs of the "She Club") asked him to represent him. [RANKIN, B., 12-5-99, p. 2D]
   
The Associated Press further noted in 2001 that Gold Club owner Steven Kaplan (club manager: Norbert Calder) was

     "accused of building a $50 million fortune in part by providing prostitutes
     for celebrities. Atlanta's Gold Club is one of the most profitable nude clubs
     in the country, popular among convention-goers and visiting celebrities.   
     Federal investigators say it is also a high-priced brothel that pumps cash into
     the Gambino crime family ... [The Federal indictment against Kaplan] says
     Kaplan ordered more than 20 beatings of people who did not repay loans
     at high rates of interest." [COURT TV, 4-2001]

The most famous "sex club" in history (prospering in the 1970s and 1980s before the AIDS epidemic) is probably Plato's Retreat, based in New York City. Its owner was also Jewish: Larry Levenson. As Jewish scholar David Allyn describes it:

     "First of all, you have to picture the Ansonia Hotel, which is a late 19th century
     wedding-cake of a building in the heart of the upper west side in New York. In
     the basement of the Ansonia was Plato's Retreat, then the world's most famous
     sex club. Men and women would stroll about the Ansonia lobby in nothing but
     towels. In the club, they would have sex with possibly a dozen or so people
     in a single night. Plato's Retreat represented the commercial version of what was
     happening in people's apartments and living rooms across the country."
     [BOOKMARK, 2000]

In the early movie world, seminal Jewish "vamp" film actress Theda Bara "scandalized the mores of the middle-classes ... Local boards issued edicts condemning her films." [HYMAN, p. 118-119] "The first sex symbol [Bara] in movie history," says M. H. Goldberg, "was Jewish. (It is interesting to note that two other sex symbols in movie history -- Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor -- converted to Judaism.)" [GOLDBERG, H. M., 1976, p. 166] A little earlier, Anna Held, of Polish Jewish descent, celebrated a "naughty French persona" in the Ziegfield Follies and "was an early icon" of "America's burgeoning cult of celebrity at the turn of the century." [LAVITT, P., 2000, p. 263, 268] Vienna-born Jewish actress Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Kiesler) pushed mores in the movie world with the European film Ecstasy (1933), featuring partial nudity and daringly new degrees of eroticism. The film was banned in the U.S. till 1940.

 

In the early years of the 20th century, Sholom Asch's play "God of Vengeance" was performed in New York in Yiddish and then in English off-Broadway without incident. "Asch's tale centers on Yankel, a Jew who runs a shady downstairs brothel with his ex-whore wife, yet is obsessed with protecting the chastity and piety of his young daughter." When the play was finally performed to a broader public on Broadway, it was "shut down by New York police, a landmark censorship case ... The actors, producer, and owner of the Apollo Theatre" were all arrested and their court trial became "the first jury conviction of American entertainers charged with presenting 'immoral' fare." Variety magazine called the play "the most disgusting play every presented on Broadway." [BERSON, M., 4-2-2000]

 

Cartoon character Betty Boop? The Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave, notes Amelia Holberg,

 

      "created and controlled one of the great 30s sex symbols, animated

      Betty Boop. Betty's cartoons, remembered vividly for their overt

      sexuality and often grotesque imagery, are even more provocative

      when viewed in relation to the lives of her working-class Eastern

      European immigrant, Jewish creators ... Betty's initial disappearance

      can be traced to the Hays Production Code Office, which determined

      Betty Boop to be too racy for general audiences in 1934." [HOLBERG,

      A., 1999, p. 290-291]

[Chaim Bermant notes a little more about Will Hays and the tearing down of popular mores: "The Jewish dominance of Hollywood did not, of course, pass without comment. By the end of World War I it became clear that the cinema was becoming, if it had not already become, the supreme influence in the cultural life of America, affecting its tastes, its habits, its outlook. There was a growing clamour -- to quote the words of one influential pressure group -- 'to rescue the motion pictures from the hands of the Devil and five hundred un-Christian Jews.' To defend themslves against such criticism, Mayer, Laemmle, Goldwyn and the other un-Christian Jews grouped themselves into the Motion Pictures Prodducers and Distributors of America Inc., and invited Will H. Hayes to preside over them. In doing so they were not merely attempting to buy-off criticism, they were buying respectability."] [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 102]

The Fleischer brothers also created Popeye, and many other characters in the 1930s. In fact, "Jews represent 80 percent of the pioneers and leaders of the comic book industry." [GOLDBERG, M. H., 1979, p. 118] In the molding of popular American culture, Mad magazine (publisher: William Gaines. Editors Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman. All Jewish. Kurtzman formerly worked for the communist paper the Daily Worker.) [HEILBRUNN J., 6-01] Mad's "most popular artists" were also Jewish: Mort Drucker and Al Jaffee. [GOODWIN, G., 2001, p. 159] Mad magazine was influential in creating a new kind of adolescent. "Americans of Jewish background," note Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter,

     "developed a direct and important influence on adolescents and even pre-
     adolescents in othe ways. Starting in the 1950s, Mad Magazine developed
     wide popularity among this group, and, as Marie Winn had pointed out,
     it played a significant role in 'the move toward free expression among
     children; its relentless exposure of parental dishonesty caused shock
     waves and reaction among its young readers.' From the beginning
     Mad's editors have been Jewish and, as they themselves would agree,
     hostile to the American civic myth." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982,
     p. 108]

Joe Shuster and Jerome Siegel created Superman. Bob Kane created Batman; Stan Lee created Spiderman and The Hulk. Jewish all. [ETKES/STADTMAUER, 1995, p. 128] Stan "the Man" Lee "revived Marvel Comics. He invented the superhero as anti-hero ... A 1965 college poll conducted by Esquire ... revealed that student radicals ranked Spider-Man and the Hilk alongside the likes of Bob Dylan [also Jewish] and Che Guevara as their favorite revolutionary icons ... The outsider hero had arrived as the most celebrated figure in youth culture, and Marvel had him." [HEILBRUNN, J., 6-01] Head of DC comics (Superman, et al)? Also Jewish: Jenette Kahn (1998).

The Jewish Forward noted the Jewish dimension to the comics world and the blockbuster movie Spiderman in 2002:

      "Sure, Spiderman's great. He's a nebbish who happens to have super-human
      powers. He's got radioactive blood, he detects trouble with his Spider sense,
      he catches thieves just like flies, all while smashing box-office records by taking
      in $114 million his first weekend as a movie star. According to Dan Raviv,
      however, the real heroes of Marvel Comics are the two Israeli men at the
      company's helm, Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter and Avi Arad. In this real-life drama,
      they're the two little guys who wrestled Marvel away from sparring billionaires,
       transforming a bankrupt company into a highly profitable one. Exactly how
      two underdogs beat seasoned tycoons at their own game is the kind of fairy
      tale that movies are made of, and it makes for interesting reading in Raviv's
      latest book, 'Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel
      Comics Empire and Both Lost' (Broadway Books). The good guys are the
      immigrant owners of a small toy company — albeit one with exclusive rights
      to license Marvel toys. And the bad guys are two titans of finance: Ronald
      Perelman, the Revlon chief and takeover artist who ran Marvel into bankruptcy,
      and corporate predator Carl Icahn [both Perelman and Icahn are also Jewish]
      — a model for Michael Douglas's character in 'Wall Street' — who attempted
      a hostile takeover. In the end the Israelis, predicting the Marvel superheroes'
      ability to jump from comic book pages to the silver screen, unexpectedly seized
       control of the company ... The story of Marvel is a Jewish one indeed. Founded
      in 1939 by Martin Goodman, Marvel was a part of the so-called "golden age"
      of comics, when hordes of young Jewish writers and artists, most of them
      struggling immigrants' sons, created armies of imaginary superheroes like
      Superman and Captain America, whose mission was to wage war against Nazis
      and their ilk. At Marvel in particular, the key players throughout the decades,
      including Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Lieber — better known as Jack Kirby
      and Stan Lee, the creators of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the early 1960s
      — have been almost exclusively Jewish." [KEYS, L., 5-10-2002]

Cartoonists Jules Feiffer, Al Capp (the author of L'il Abner; Capp's original name was Alfred Gerald Caplin), Herblock (Herb Bloch), Ralph Bakshi, Rube Goldberg, illustrator Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Nicole Hollander, and many others are also Jewish. Isador (Fritz)Freleng was the "creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Pie, Speedy Gonzalez, and the Pink Panther." [ETKES/STADTMAUER, 1995, p. 128] "To my mind," says Stan Sulkes, echoing legend about Jewish history, "no one is more Jewish than Bugs Bunny. Or more resourceful. Surrounded by enemies, he survived by his wits, thwarting all the Elmer Fudds of this world unwilling to let him live in peace. Happily, I'm not alone in that view. Another transplanted New Yorker recognizes Bugs' ethnicity too. 'It was no accident,' observes David Gilner, director of Libraries for Hebrew Union College, 'that his animator was Fritz Feleng, and his voice supplied by Mel Blanc -- both of whom were Jewish." [SULKES, S., 4-21-97]

A former major in the Israeli army reserves, Ranan Lurie (now living in the United States) is the "world's most syndicated political cartoonist;" he is featured in 106 countries and 1,100 newspapers. [LIEBENSON, p. 13CN, 21] Betty Cohen even is president today of the Cartoon Network, the cable TV channel that has 60 million subscribers in 144 countries throughout the world. [POLLAK, S., 1-7-00]

Cartoonist Albert Hirschfeld (who once worked for the communist magazine The Masses) has appeared, for over seven decades, "frequently and prominently on the pages of the New York Times. He has published several cofee-table volumes, and a Manhattan gallery, Margo Feiden, deals exclusively with his drawings and limited edition prints ... Twice during the 1990s he received commissions for postage stamps." Will Eisner "made an important name for himself both as the father of his own comic strip and as developer of 'instructional' comics." His company, American Visuals, has contracted for organizations as diverse as the Girl Scouts and the American Dental Association. [GOODWIN, G., 2001, p. 151, 154]

In the 1950s, the Jewish-dominated comic book industry raised familiar issues -- public concern that they were influential in the degradation of popular morals and values. In 1955-56 the U.S. Senate held investigations into the matter, releasing a report entitled "Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency." The Senate document noted that

     "on first impression, the present comic book industry would seem to comprise
      many different publishing firms with no apparent relationship to one another ... On
      closer scruutiny, however it is found that the picture is entirely different ... The
      676 comic book titles [that were examined] are published by 111 companies
      owned by only 121 persons or families in addition to 1 corporation ... The
      majority of the publishers maintain editorial offices in New York City."
      [U.S. Senate, 1955-56]

Subsections of the report included "Techniques of Crime Taught by Crime and Horror Comics," "Criminal Careers as Glamorous in Crime and Horror Comic Books, and "Defenders of Law and Order [Are] Frequently Represented as All Powerful Beings Who Kill and Commit Other Crimes to Defend 'Justice.'" Jewish comic book entrepreneurs who are singled out by the report include direct-mail advertiser Samuel Roth "who has for many years been engaged in using the mail to advertise lewd and lascivious material," and Alex Segal who "testifed that 'by mistake' one of his trays of addressograph plates bearing the names of 400 children was routed to the publisher of sex literature." In the listings of owners and distributors of comic book businesses, among the best known are Marvel Comic group (owners: Martin and Jean Goodman) and Archie Comic Group (owners: Maurice Coyne, John Goldwater, and Lewis H. Silberkleit). [U.S. SENATE, 1955-56]

Mad magazine's William Gaines also produced "the greatest of the under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight genre." These comics, featuring new explorations of gore, include Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, Shock Suspensestories, Frontline Combat,

      "and a few other titles [that] made the struggling company profitable and Gaines a
      fully employed pop culture mentor of the first magnitude. But this upstart Jewish
      kid was soon put out of business by a crusading psychiatrist from the old country,
      a nasty bunch of Senators, and a coalition of PTA and American Legion, sheriffs
      and bishops, editors and aldermen. The Comics Code that was created to deflect
      the heat couldn't help Gaines. The slander was so thorough that his books were
      returned unopened by retailers even after the Code seal was applied. By the end
      of 1954, after just a four year run, the EC [Gaines' company] comics were all gone,
      except for the satirical Mad." [TEBBEL, J., 1999]

As Jacob Heilbrunn notes, in a review of a book about comic books by scholar Bradford W. Wright,

     "EC comics offered something of a precursor to the upheaval of the 1960s,
     questioning authority before it became fashionable to question anything. In perhaps
     the most notorious panel printed by EC comics, a murderous baseball team
     plays a midnight game with the limbs and entrails of a victim. Little was left to the
     imagination ... Another issue depicted a man hodling a bloody ax in one hand and a
     woman's severed head in the other. 'Corpses in various states of decay and reanimation,'
      Wright says, 'regularly adorned the covers.' 'A commercial expression of cultural
     defiance ,' he writes, 'EC brilliantly perceived the alienated generation among
     young people and recognized youth dissatisfaction as a marketable commodity.'
     The reaction came quickly. By 1948, Catholic schools were conducting bonfires
     of comic books ... Soon enough, William M. Gaines, the publisher of EC, found
     himself facing off against a Senate investigative committtee headed by Estes
     Kefauver. It was a rout. Kefauver delcared that a panel in the July issue 'seems
     to be a man with a woman in a boat and he is choking her to death with a crowbar.
     Is that in good taste?' 'I think so,' was all Gaines could answer." [HEIBRUNN, J.,
     6-01]

Moving along in the Jewish influence world, even the nightclub business, says Kenneth Kanter, "was invented by a Jew, Jack Levy." [KANTER, p. 38] Billy Rose, another Jewish entrepreneur, was "a pioneer of nightclub entertainment. He opened in 1924 with a small club for people of modest means, and he remained only modestly successful till he built up the Diamond Horseshoe, which became the largest, plushiest and most celebnrated establishment of its type and which was deciedly for people of immodest means and even less modest taste. Here too the accent was on glamour, with successive arrays of splendid women splendily semi-attired." [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 90] [See elsewhere in this volume discussions of Jewish ownership of everything from Club Med to the Cotton Club]. Glasgow, Scotland? Stefan King ("half-Jewish and half-Catholic") "opened Glasgow's first gay nightclub." [MULFORD, S., 2000, p 35]  "By 1920," adds Stephen Birmingham, "much of the Prohibition liquor trade was in Jewish hands, and a good number of the speakeasies and nightclubs where would-be stars could do their turns was also Jewish owned." [BIRMINGHAM, p. 190]

 

In 1999, the Village Voice interviewed Luke Ford, author of A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Films and a convert, of all things, to Judaism. "Publishers Weekly " Ford said,  "took me to task for that 'offensive generalization' about Jews but it's true. The big machers [in the pornography] industry are Jewish -- Steve Hirsch, Paul Fishbein (who runs and publishes Adult Video News), and David Sturman, who owns [production company] Sin City." [BUNN, March 3-9, 99]  Fishbein, notes the Los Angeles Times, is the "editor and publisher of the Van Nuys-based trade magazine Adult Video News, generally considered the authoritative guide to the $9 billion U.S. sex business ... Fishbein became a [porn] industry spokesman and advocate, a role he has retained to this day." [COLLINS, S., 7-8-99, p. C1]

As Jewish scholar Jay Gertzman notes: "David Hebditch and Nick Anning, researching the pornography business in the mid-1980s, report that 'some industry insiders claim that porn in the United States is essentially a Jewish business.'" "If this is so," adds Gertzman, with a little spin control for Jewish economic endeavors, "it is because Jews have for a very long time cultivated the temperament and talents of the middlemen, and they are proud of these abilities." [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 289]

 

In his book, Ford goes further, pointing to a strong Jewish influence across American culture that helped swing open the doors to increased sexual permissiveness, an overhaul of traditional moralities, and, ultimately, increased popular tolerance of pornography, noting that

 

     "Those who pushed America to a more liberal view of sex were mainly

     male non-Jewish Jews (Jews alienated from Judaism and Jewish life

     as well as the Christian culture embraced by a majority of Americans)

     including Samuel Roth of the 1957 Supreme Court case [that tested

     laws concerning the depiction of sexuality]; Grove Press publisher

     Barney Rossett; the owner of Olympia Press, Maurice Girodias, and

     his father, Jack Kahane, a Paris publisher and author of sexually

     explicit novels; comedian Lenny Bruce; filmmakers Russ Meyer,

     David Friedman, and Randy Metzger; Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm

     Reich; Screw publisher Al Goldstein; Eros publisher Ralph Ginzburg

     [Ginzburg served time in prison on obscenity charges for his magazine

     Eros; he later became editor and publisher of Moneysworth)]

     [GREENBERG, M., p. 54; his publications Blue Ball and Intercourse
     were mailed from the conservative Pennsylvania Dutch area: GERTZMAN,
      J., 2000, p. 287] ]; publisher Edward Mishkin; Jack Valenti,

     president of the Motion Picture Association of America; defense lawyer

     Stanley Fleishman; Playboy playmate and Hugh Hefner's ex-lover Barbara

     Klein (aka Barbie Benton); Hefner's personal secretary, Bobbie Arnstein;

     philosopher Herbert Marcuse; psychologist Albert Ellis; authors

     Philip Roth, William Styron, and Norman Mailer; and Supreme

     Court Justice Abe Fortas. They carried on a hundred-year history

     of radical Jews challenging the reigning order." [FORD, p. 21]

 

(Ford's above list, however, is wrong on at least one count: William Styron isn't Jewish. It's not hard to understand, however, where the error came from. As Truman Capote once noted about Styron's presence in the Jewish literary establishment, "if ever there was a goy Yid, it's Bill Styron.")  [VOLKMAN, p. 96]

 

Among those in Ford's tally, after a "watershed" court case over obscenity, Barney Rosset's Grove Press published, in 1959, D. H. Lawrence's then-scandalous Lady Chatterly's Lover; Rosset also "precipitated another censorship brouhaha in 1968 when Grove's Evergreen Films imported the sexually explicit I am Curious Yellow from Sweden." [BLACKWELL, E., 1973, p. 417] Among works published by Kahane and Girodias that have become standards of literature were controversial works by Henry Miller, and Lolita.

Samuel Roth is noteworthy in the pornography trade for many reasons. Although some might portray him as a free speech hero, he pirated editions of both James Joyce's Ulysses and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, to the protest of both the Joyce and Lawrence estates. Imprisoned twice, 1937-1939 and 1957-61, Roth was labeled "the dirtiest pig in the world" and "the louse of Lewisburg [prison]" [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 219] Roth in 1936 "received the most severe prison sentence possible under the law for brazenly using the Postal Service to distribute flagrantly obscene books ... Roth was the most often incarcerated, the most feckless, and quite likely the most resourceful booklegger of his time, challenging moral and legal authorities with a quixotic bravado." [GERTZMAN, J., 1999, p. 22] Other "chief mail-order erotica dealers were Esar Levine and Benjamin Rebhuhn." [GERTZMAN, J., p. 26] Both served prison terms on obscenity charges. "Great 'art erotica' suppliers" included Jake Zeitlin, Harry F. Marks, Ben Abramson, and David Moss. [GERTZMAN, J., 1999, p. 61] Alleged Jewish porn pushers at a Congressional investigation of the New York pornography system included Irving Klaw ("self-styled King of the Pin-ups"), Edward Mishkin, and Abraham Rubin. [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 278] Martin Kamin was a "supplier of of borderline erotica." [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 177] Other "offenders" in the erotica trade included Earl Marks, Solomon Malkin, Alex Field, Henry Klein, Raymond Thomson, Al Picker, Joseph Seiffer, Max Gottschalk, and David Moss. [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 31] Jewish erotica book publishers included William Faro, Panurge, Falstaff ("Falstaff gave special prominence to the work of Iwan Bloch," also Jewish, "the father of sexology") [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 193], Robin Hood House, the American Anthropological Society, American Ethnological Press, Jul-Mar, Julian, Risus, Biblion Balzac, Pickwick, Parnassus Book Shops, Abbey, Allied Book, Emerson, Pioneer and Franklin. [GERTZMAN, J., 2000, p. 192-193]

Jewish scholar Jay Gertzman, whose own uncle's bookshop was once raided in Philadelphia, [GERTZMAN, J., p. 287] notes that Jews built the "erotica" book business in New York (the heart of American publishing) and that there was an

      "absence of any single ethnic group of erotica dealers in New York City prior to
      the Jewish presence ... In several cases, the erotica dealer's relatives were business
       partners. One could trust uncles and brothers, and possibly no one else ... The
       underground printing of many banned erotic classics ... was the work of two brothers,
       Adolph and Rudolph Loewinger; another pair, David and Jacob Brotman, was
       responsible for a large part of the lubricious under-the-counter pamphlets and
       paper-bound books [moral watchdog groups] decried as flagitious. Jack Brussel, Sam
       Roth's partner at the start of the latter's career, enlisted the aid of his first wife ...
       Benjamin Rebhuhn's  office manager was his nephew, and his wife was listed as
       director of the Falstaff Press Inc. Esar Levine and his brother Benjamin, close friends
       of  the Rebhuhns, were editor and business manager, respectively, of the Panurge
       Press."       [GERTZMAN, J., p. 29, p. 30]
    
By 1939, according to a major anti-smut organization, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, 28 of 32 people arrested that year in New York City for obscenity-related law-breaking were Jewish (the number may have been even higher: two of the 32 did not have their religion/ethnicity listed. [These figures are cited by Gertzman, who accepts them as credible. [GETZMAN, J., 2000, p. 29]

 As Gertzman notes, in classical Jewish outsider-insider terms,

     "Erotica dealers formed a tight-knit, and therefore persistent, resourceful, and
     resilently successful entity. They were easy to stigmatize as a group [by non-Jews]
     set apart from the majority, even if they had the same goals and methods of doing
     business as general book dealers. In New York at least, during the period from
     1880 to 1940, many were members of Jewish immigrant families. Jewish erotica
     dealers seem to have become prominent in the field soon after the eastern
     European immigrants began arriving in record numbers in 1880."
      [GERTZMAN, J., p. 28]

The Jerusalem Post concluded a review of Gertzman's book about the Jewish dominated smut-trade like this:

     "Gertzman himself acknowledges towards the end of his book that his uncle
     once ran the most notorious 'dirty bookshop' in Philadelphia. For that
     matter, Sam Roth's grandson is none other than Prof. James Kugel, the eminent
     Bible scholar at Harvard University. If there's a more complicated and
     surprising tribe on earth, I've yet to hear about it." [NESVISKY, M., 3-9-00]

There are many other Jewish public figures, in various fields, that might merit addition to a Luke Ford-like list of Jewish assault upon dominant culture morality. In literature, homosexual Allen Ginsberg's 1950s-era obscenity trial in San Francisco about his poem "Howl" (another landmark in popular culture) escalated him thereafter to fame. As Ginsberg's Jewish ideological nemesis, "neo-Conservative" Norman Podhoretz, notes:

     "As the 60's wore on, I came more and more to see all this [hippie era] as a
     new kind of plague ... I ended with a lament for the victims it had claimed
     among the 'especially vulnerable' young ... [There were] shades of antinomian propaganda
     Ginsberg had done as much as anyone else in America to spread ... Ginsberg
     was also fulsomely praised as a pioneer of the gay-rights movement, which indeed
     he was. Yet so far as I have been able to determine, no one thought to draw
     a connection between the emergence of AIDS and the rampant homosexual
     promiscuity promoted by Ginsberg (with buggery as an especially 'joyful'
     feature that is described in loving detail in poem after pornographic -- yes,
     pornographic -- poem. And I could find only one mention (in the Weekly
     Standard) of Ginsberg's active sponsorship of the abominable North
     American Man Boy Alliance (NAMBLA), an organization devoted to the
     legalization of homosexual pedophilia. ('I don't know exactly how to define
     what's underage,' he once explained, quickly adding that he himself had 'never
     made it with anyone under fifteen.')" [PODHORETZ, N., 2000]

The 1966 (Jewish comedian) Lenny Bruce trial was also one of the trials of the 20th century. [GOODWIN, E., 1995, p. 301] He and Cafe Au Go Go owner Howard Solomon were eventually found guilty of obscenity. Bruce's "chief attorney, Efraim London, [was] a veteran of more than 250 censorship and obscenity cases ... The verdict seemed to unhinge Bruce. He became obsessed with appellate litigation. Those legal wheels were still grinding when, on August 3, 1966, he was found dead in his Hollywood home, a hypodermic syringe nearby. An autopsy revealed the presence of morphine. Death was recorded as accidental." [KNAPPMAN, E., 1995, p. 301-304]

A good friend of Lenny Bruce was Paul Krassner, editor of the satire magazine, The Realist, self-described as "the hippest magazine in America." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 44] Krassner was also Jewish. Another Jewish close friend, Lyle Stuart (born Lionel Simon) was editor of "an anti-censorship tabloid called Expose ... Lyle became my media mentor and my unrelenting guru." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 32] Krassner's autobiography explores his adventures and influence in the so-called 1960s-born "counterculture." Krassner also began writing a column for Stuart's magazine called The Independent, which also featured the sexual works of Albert Ellis, eventually anthologized as Sex Without Guilt. [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 32] "When I had been working for Lyle [Stuart]," says Krassner, "Ralph Ginzburg was preparing An Unhurried View of Erotica. I recommended that Lyle turn down the opportunity to be copublishers, which he did. Nevertheless, he guided Ginzburg through the book's publication -- finding him a typesetter, a printer, a distributor, a mailing house, and when the Post Office seized Ginzburg's mailing piece, Lyle sent attorney Martin Scheiman to Washington to obtain release of the mailing." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 97] (This ring of publishers/writers also includes William Gaines, also Jewish, head of a comic book dynasty [see later discussions of him and Mad magazine, and the U.S. Senate attacks upon his products' content.)

      "An Italian magazine, Playman, had published full frontal nude photos of Jacqueline Kennedy taken on a Greek island by the grace of a telephonto lens. Lyle Stuart brought the issue from Italy and gave it to Al Goldstein, who reprinted the photos in his raunchy tabloid, Screw. Then Larry Flynt published a five-page spread in Hustler." [KRASSNER, P., 1993,p. 237] Krassner is proud enough of his following observation, which he shared with Lenny Bruce and in his autobiography: "One time we were walking around and passed a newstand where, on the cover of Newsweek, there was a photo of Caroline Kennedy, the president's young daughter. I commented: 'She probably plays with herself with a bobby pin.' 'What a great image,' Lenny said. 'Can I have that [for my comedy routine]?'" [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 68]

Krassner notes the tenor of The Realist, the magazine he ran and founded: "Campus bookstores were banning The Realist. Students whose parents had burned their issues often wrote in for replacement copies, but I was publishing material that was bound to offend. For example, Madalyn Murray was a militant atheist who was challenging the constitutionality of compulsary Bible reading in pubic schools, and she concluded her article: 'I feel that Jesus Christ is at most a myth, and if he wasn't, the least he was, was a bastard, and that the Virgin Mary obviously played around as much as I did, and certainly I feel she would be capable of orgasm.'" [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 50]

Krassner eventually moderated Playboy magazine's "Playboy Panel." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 60] Despite accepting the Feminist Party Media Workshop Award in 1974 [p. 228] as publisher of The Realist, he eventually became publisher of Larry Flynt's Hustler pornography magazine. Krassner [with Hustler editor Bruce David] presided over a controversial Hustler cover that shows "a woman's body being stuffed into a meat grinder upside, down, so that only her legs were still showing ... The cover was destined to become an unofficial symbol of male oppression at feminist rallies. In fact, when I attended a feminist conference with an old friend, Jane Bode -- whose book on rape, Fighting Back, had just been published -- she asked me to walk in separately from her and we would meet later ... [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 246] ... My main editorial regret [as publisher at Hustler] was that I hadn't been able to publish that 'Jesus and the Adulteress' photo spread. The nearly life-size poster which was supposed to be included as a pull-out centerfold would instead remain on my wall as a memento of those six months at Hustler. There was Jesus, a generic barbershop-calendar Jesus, looking reverently toward the sky as he covered up the prone Adulteress. Her head was bleeding from stones that had been cast upon her. And she was showing pink. Sweet, shocking, vulneable pink ... Although Hustler had been accused of exploiting women, actually it was guilty of exploiting men's addiction to pornography." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 250]

Among the many articles Krassner oversaw during his time at Hustler was Marilyn Katz's "abortion rights" discussion. "In another building a few blocks away, [his own] The Realist shared offices with Flynt's conspiracy researchers, Mark Lane and Donald Freed." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 239, 240]

In the early years of the twentieth century, warring against Victorian era morality, Jewish "anarchist Emma Goldman also fostered a new permissiveness; she toured the country, lecturing on subjects as 'The Limitation of Offspring' and "Is Man a Varietiest or a Monogamist?' She challenged feminists who advanced chastity, insisting that liberated women faced more danger from too little sexual experience than they did from too much." [LEIDER, E.M., p. 49] In the early 1890s, Goldman "became the lover of [Alexander] Berkman and after a while, of his artist friend, Fedya, as well. The three lived communally... Even certain radicals found Emma's honesty on matters of sex hard to tolerate." [SHULMAN, A., 1970, p. 10, 11] Goldman even once attempted to work as a prostitute to raise the money to buy a gun for an assassination. [SHULMAN, A., 1970, p. 10]
   
Speaking of prostitutes, perhaps the most influential as the most "famous prostitute in the world" is Xaviera Hollander, whose 1971 book The Happy Hooker was a best-seller. (Hollander's "first fiance's name was Frank Apfelbaum ... he transformed himself into Frank Allen.") [HOLLANDER, X., 2000, p. 39] A daughter of a Holocaust survivor/Dutch psychiatrist, it was her father "who instilled in her a love of Yiddishkeit and a passion for Jewish culture." "She began running a high-end brothel out of a brownstone on the Upper East Side," notes the Jewish ethnic magazine, Moment,

     "where her clients included a man who asked a lot of questions, soon arousing
     Hollander's suspicion. The man turned out to be Eric Kohn, a Jewish journalist
     researching a book. The two decided to collaborate on an autobiographical
     account of Hollander's life, and one year later The Happy Hooker exploded onto the
     the scene -- eventually selling 16 million copies ... Addicted to diet pills and unable
     to control her kleptomania ('I got orgasms from stealing,' she says), she was
     arrested for stealing a $40 nightgown. That theft, coupled with the fact that she was
     a confessed crinial in the States, led her to eventual deportation and divorce ...
     Businessman Arnold Blitz, a friend of Hollander's, has this to say: 'Xaviera
     is not an ambassador for Jewish culture -- but for Jewishness." [LIPKIN, L.,
     FEB 2001]

In 1924, two eighteen-year-old men from very affluent families in Chicago, Nathan Leopold and "his friend and lover Richard Loeb," made international news for what was then popularized by its sensationalism as the "crime of the century." Psychiatrist David Abrahamsen notes that the men

     "kidnapped fourteen-year old Bobby Franks, and Loeb beat him to death. They
      stripped the body from the waist down, and although the evidence is inconclusive,
      one or both of them probably performed a sexual act on it ... In the perspective
      of all that has happend since the 1920s, the murder of Bobby Franks hardly
      qualifies as the crime of the century, as it was seen then. But at that time the brutality
       and senselessness of the act exploded like a bomb in the public consciousness. People
      began to realize that society was changing in some frightening way. The youth
      of the two murderers (this was the beginning of the tidal wave that came to be
      called juvenile delinquency), the sexual undercurrent of their crime and the fact
      that theirs was the first major trial to use the testimony of psychiatrists on
      the background and state of mind of a defendant made an indelible
      impression on the millions who followed the sensational case in the newspapers."
      [ABRAHAMSEN, D., 1983, p. 41-42]

In 1997, the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California even featured an article about the early 20th-century German Jewish medical doctor, Magnus Hirschfeld, an

     "openly gay sexologist, who founded a famed Berlin institute that studied sexual
     behavior and sold sex aids in its gift shop, [and] embodied the Nazi's most-despised
      attributes ... [The] founding of Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee [is]
     believed to be the first organization devoted to the legal rights of homosexuals and
     other sexual minorities ... 'In a sense, he was the founder of gay liberation as a kind of
     political, legal movement,' [says Jewish scholar David] Biale, 'He's a very
     important figure in gay history' ...In 1919 ... Hirschfeld established his Institute
     and Museum of Sexology. A former mansion was divided into consulting offices,
     study rooms, laboratories and a large museum devoted to every aspect of human
     sexuality, especially the 'Derangements of the Sexual Instinct' ... [Some visitors]
     left accounts of the strange exhibits and vast array of erotic artifacts and aphrodisiacs
     found in one of Berlin's most curious atttractions. The institute was one of the first
     cultural organizations liquidated by the Nazis, who destroyed the building and its
      contents." [KATZ, L., 6-6-97]

Rabbi Daniel Lapin notes fashion designer Rudi Gernreich's influence in America in the 1960s:

 

     "When Rudi Gernreich, a Jewish socialist from Vienna, settled in Los

     Angeles and foisted the topless bathing suit on a shocked America,

     it seemed titillating and daring. Many will recall the newspaper

     photographs of grim-faced policemen clutching towels around the

     shapely torsos of giddy young women while escorting them off

     public beaches ... A few hailed the flagrantly homosexual Gernreich
     as the hero of the avant-garde." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 2]

    

Such Jewish influence is common in popular culture. In 1995 Jewish fashion media mogul Calvin Klein came under fire by critics who compared his clothing "ads to child pornography." [GIROUX, p. 16-17] The Israeli Nakash brother, who own the Jordache jeans company, pushed daring new levels of "lewd" imagery in their own ad campaign. [BYRON, p. 34-35] The Jewish Bulletin had a feature on famous Jewish homosexual fashion mogul Isaac Mizrahi in 1998:

     "Viewers saw little-known sides of Mizrahi in 'Unzipped,' the 1995 documentary
      about him. Filmmaker Douglas Keeve was, at the time, in a relationship with the
      designer. In one scene, Mizrahi put a sheer scrim behind the catwalk and had
      models change their outfits in full view of the audience. That kind of chutzpah
      gave viewers insight into his bold personality ... 'To this day the designer
      remains active in Jewish charities. 'I do what I can,' he says. 'I'm a zealot, a
      real lover of the Jewish faith." [SCHLEIER, C., 1-2-98]

Then there is Jewish fashion photographer Helmut Newton. "It is impossible to deny the impact he has made," noted England's The Independent in 2001,
   
      "on fashion photography in particular ... To radical feminists, Newton is the
      antichrist. This is the man who photographed a woman on all fours with a saddle
      on her back, and another sitting on her underwear or an unmade bed, with a gun
      in her mouth ... Newton's vision is fuelled by sex, status, power and, above all,
      voyeurism ... Small wonder, then, that much of the photographer's most successful
      imagery has become far more famous than the garments he has chosen
      to photograph ... Newton's influence is everywhere ... In the Sixties and Seventies,
      Newton's decadent vision may have been labelled 'porno chic,' but today the rest
      of the world has finally caught up with him and it's just plain chic. There is
      barely a stylist, photographer or designer working in fashion today who can
      fail to acknowledge Newton as an influence ... Helmut Newton was born to      
      middle-class  Jewish parents in Weimar Berlin in 1920, and the decadent spirit of that
       place at that time is imprinted on his work ... Accusations of misogyny are still
       constantly made against Newton's work." [FRANKEL, S., 5-9-01]

In 2001 Rabbi Ira Korff complained that "the suggestiveness in the media these days is increasingly irresponsible -- it's really pornography -- and its been bothering me more and more." Korff should know what he's talking about. He is the former president of National Amusements Inc., which owns Viacom, the second-largest media conglommerate on earth (controlled by Jewish mogul Sumner Redstone). "Korff," notes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "says the worst purveyor of violence and profanity on TV is Music Television (MTV,) which is owned by Viacom. But he adds, 'I have no interest in attacking Viacom, and MTV is an ethically run business.' After all, much of his own wealth was made while serving as president and later consultant to National Amusements Inc." [HAUSMAN, T., 6-22-01]

Arnold Shaw notes some 1960s-era New York Jewish influence in the rock music world:

     "The Fugs, a New York city group led by Tuli Kuperberg and Ed Sanders, are
     generally regarded as the first underground group. Political and pornographic ...
     they worked at shocking and repelling ... They received virtually no airplay, since
     disk jockeys woried that the pronunciation of their name would be offensive.
     Although appearances frequently prompted people to walk out on them,
     they did secure a recording contract ... [including Golden Filth] ... With a
     name taken from a pornographic paperback, the Velvet Underground helped
     make underground Rock largely a New York phenomenon. Led by Lou Reed
     [also Jewish] (b. early 1940), the group became part of Andy Warhol's
     Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a multimedia show, in 1966. The subject of Reed's
     songs eliminated airplay for the records they made: heroin, in 'I'm Waiting
     for the Man'; cocaine, in 'Run, Run, Run'; sado-masochism, in 'Venus in Furs';
     and transvestitism, lesbianism, and homosexuality in other songs." [SHAW, A.,
     1982, p. 396]

From France, singer Sergio Gainsbourg [born Lucien Ginzburg]

     "is still most famous in Britain for his number one 'Je t'aime moi non plus': the
     scandalous anthem which was in the British charts 30 years ago. He and
     [actress Jane] Birkin simulated their lovemaking so effectively that the
     single was banned by the BBC and formally condemned by the Vatican
     ...Yet Gainsbourg is the greatest popular musician France has ever produced ...
     Echoes ofhis favourite technique, of murmuring profanities against
     a delicate and beautiful harmony, can be heard in many contemporary
     records, not least the later work of Leonard Cohen ... Towards the end of his
     life, the singer's media apparances beame ritual provocations: in one
     television broadcast, he subjected a veteran paratrooper -- horrified
     by Gainsbourg's dub version of the Marseillaise -- to a torrent of
     obscenities, pausing only occasionally, to inflate condoms. On another notorious
     live show, sharing a platform with a young Whitney Houston, Gainsbourg,
     then 58, turned to the presenter Michel Drucker and declared, in English,
     'I want to fuck her.'" [CHALMERS, R., 1-4-00]

"The rest of the country," once joked Jewish comedian Woody Allen, "thinks of us [New Yorkers] as homosexual Jewish communist pornographers. I think of us that way, and I live here." [BROWN, A., 11-2-97] When Jewish White House intern Monica Lewinsky became sexually involved with President Bill Clinton, she shared the following joke to him: "Why do Jewish men like to watch pornos backwards? So that they can watch the prostitute give back the money." [FORWARD, 10-23-98, p. 1] "I'm such a sex machine," begins controverial radio talk show host Howard Stern's autobiography, " I could take a piece of wood and turn it into something erotic, something sensual, something perverse." [STERN, H., 1995, p. 3]

Despite Jewish pre-eminence in the porno world, it's not kosher to face this issue squarely. So how did feminist Susan Griffin examine -- like so many - the issue of Jews and pornography, in her 1981 book Pornography and Silence? She didn't mention them at all, except as a forum for railing at length about Jews as victims of "anti-Semitic" stereotypes, and forcing a link between sexual pornography and anti-Jewish hostility (both from the same reservoirs of sick minds). "And yet it is precisely because of the madness of the anti-Semitic or pornographic idea," she declares,

     "and precisely because it is a delusion, that it must assault reality and try to
      change it. A man 'believes' in anti-Semitic propaganda, or the pornographic
      ideology, because the illness of his mind REQUIRES that he believe these ideas
      to be true. Yet illness is of its very nature resistant. Thus, when a madman is
      told that he does not see the world correctly, and when he is given evidence
      against his prejudices, he will refuse to see the truth, and he will even distort this
       evidence to support his own delusion. But most significantly, he will even change
       reality so it supports his mad idea of the world. This is what anti-Semitism and
       pornography requires of their believers. THE DELUDED MIND MUST TRY TO
      REMAKE THE WORLD AFTER AN ILLUSION." [author's emphasis] [GRIFFIN,
       S., 1981, p. 121]

Griffin has more to say about this subject, using the innocense of Jews as an attack upon the pornographic (anti-Semitic) mind:

      "The same mind [of Adolf Hitler] that dreamed of itself as the bearer of culture
       conceived that its nemesis, the destroyer of culture, was the Jew. As a shadow
      to the fantasy of Aryan dominance, the anti-Semite invented an enemy of awesome
       proportions. In the fabricated document known as 'The Protocols of the Elders of
       Zion,' the anti-Semite imagined a congregation of Jews who meet in a cemetery to
      plan the death of Aryan culture. Of course, a pornographic image lies at the center
      of this imagined plan. Thus the imagined Jews in the imagined cemetery contrive a
       lurid plot to 'demand marriage between Jews and Christians.' Together they enjoy the
       idea of defiling Gentile women. And as the meeting adjourns, a huge and shapeless
       golden calf emerges from the tomb to symbolize the materiality of the Jew, just as
      the fear of matter and mortality have emerged from the mind the anti-Semite in this
       fantasy of evil power." [GRIFFIN, S., 1981, p. 175]

Even Judy Blume, a well-known Jewish writer of children's books, is "routinely" listed among America's "most censored U.S. authors" for testing moral boundaries. Outraged parents continually raise complaint. In 1997 alone, there were nine efforts to take her books for children off library shelves, particularly for undercurrent sexual themes. Blume's juvenile book Deenie, for example, addresses masturbation, and Forever includes a penis named Ralph. [WOULFE, M., 7-20-98; JENKINS, E., 4-13-99, p. 134] Famous Jewish novelist Judith Krantz notes that "My most famous piece [while a writer for Cosmopolitan], about which I'm still asked, was called 'The Myth of Multiple the Orgasm,' inspired by a book by a general practitioner Dr. Rubin, who insisted that any woman who settled for less than fifty orgasms during a single sexual session was being cheated." [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 236]

How about Willie Hammerstein's influence upon popular culture? As Marybeth Hamilton notes, by 1913, his Victoria Theatre

 

      "became New York's top-grossing vaudeville playhouse, renowned

      (or notorious) for its garish attractions -- in Hammerstein's phrase,

      for its 'freak acts' ... [Siamese twins, etc.] ... But more compelling

      than these physical and geographical oddities were the freaks of

      publicity, the city's most notorious inhabitants, men and more

      frequently women who had made names for themselves through

      their links to New York's criminal and sexual underworld, in headline-

      grabbing vice raids, 'Love Nest,' scandals, and murders ... The emphasis

      was on sexual scandals, especially those featuring young, attractive

      women." [HAMILTON, M., 1995, p. 3]

 

Exploiting their notoriety, Hammerstein hired such people from real-life, sensational news items to appear at his forum as performers.

What about Anton LeVay's influence upon modern morals, particularly in attracting alienated youth? LeVay, born Howard Stanton Levey, and known as the "Black Pope," founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966 and was bathed with media attention. Creating a web of lies about himself, "'he has constructed,' noted one reporter, 'a personal history untruthful in every fact that can be verified.'" [GRACE, K., 7-28-97] "'His Satanist's Bible' (1967) proposed a sub-Nietschean philosophy wherein might equals right, and immediate self-gratification constitutes the chief duty of man. 'Be simply animal man,' the Satanist's Bible instructs, 'hate your enemies, and if someone smites you, smash him ... Susie Atkins, one of [Charles] Manson's knife-wielding groupies, blames La Vey for her descent into depravity and murder." [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 11-11-97, p. 25] More than a million copies of Levey's books have been printed. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11-8-97, p. 8]

LeVay, who died in 1997, notes the Church of Satan's web site, was "a self-loathing man of Jewish descent who embraced fascism toward the end of his life." [CHURCH OF SATAN/1] His own daughter, Zeena, notes that he "routinely beat and abused those of his female disciples with whom he had sex, forcing them into prostitution as part of his 'Satanic counseling' and collected their earnings. In 1986 [Levey] was a passsive witness to the sexual molestation of his own grandson by a long time friend." [CHURCH OF SATAN/2]

The traditional Jewish animosity towards Christianity is reflected by Levey in almost cartoon form. Levey's Church of Satan teachings are of course antithetical to those of Christianity. "Behold the crucifix," wrote Levey, "what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree ... [Levey's book] advocates ritual masturbation, rites 'to summon one for lustful purposes or establish a sexually gratifying situation,' as well as rites 'to cause the destruction of an enemy'" [HARPUR, T., 3-5-97, p. A7] "For more than a decade," notes the St. Louis Post Dispatch, in evaluating Levey's influence,

     "scholars have noted a growing interest in Christianity's archenemy of goodness.
      The Reverend Richard Woods, a Dominican who relates theoogy to popular
      culture, traces the upward curve [of interest in Satanism] from 1966, the year
      that Anton LaVey's Church of Satan made its debut in San Francisco. The
      same year brought the release of Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levine's movie about
      about a woman who gave birth to the devils' child. In the early 1970s, the book
      and movie 'The Exorcist' titillated millions." [The film The Exorcist was
      directed by William Friedkin, also Jewish]. "[SCHJAEFFER, P., 2-5-89]

Seminal too, of course, to Luke Ford's overview of those that have shaped modern sexual mores in western society is Sigmund Freud, from which so many sexual populists stem.  Feminist Kate Millet, in Sexual Politics, noted Freudianism's "penis envy" and its other oppressive theories as profoundly detrimental to women:

 

      "Although generally accepted as a prototype of the liberal urge

      toward sexual freedom, and a signal contributor toward softening

      traditional puritanical inhibitions upon sexuality, the effect of Freud's

      work, that of his followers, and still more that of his populizers, was

      to rationalize the invidious relationship between the sexes ... And as

      regards the sexual revolution's goal of liberating female humanity from

      its traditional subordination, the Freudian position came to be pressed

      into the service of a strong counterrevolutionary attitude." [MILLET, p.

      178]

As Earl Grollman has observed:

     "Although [Sigmund] Freud was considered a non-believer [of Judaism] and even
      stated his disavowals of the rituals and rites, he did feel that he retained the best
      attributes of the faith. Numerous biographers noted that his home life was warm and
             loving, that learning occupied and extremely high priority and that he had a strong
      feeling of identification with other Jews. Even his doctrine concerning the powerful
      drive of sexual urges grew out of Freud's interpretation of the basic ingredients of
       Jewishness." [Grollman, E., 1965, p. xxv]

In 2001, the Jewish Bulletin noted the case of Rabbi Leslie Alexander who

     "has made it her mission to turn Jews on ... 'Judaism is about giving pleasure
     to one another and having no qualms or inhibitions about it ... When a Jew goes
     before God, they are going to have to answer for every pleasure they didn't take
     We, as American Jews, are saddled with a Christian sexual perspective which
     doesn't at all reflect Jewish ideas. We have all this moral baggage about who we are
      sexually; none of that is Jewish ... We spend so muuc time as a society trying to
     free ourselves from sexual mores. If we had just learned from our own tradition, we
     wouldn't have to try ...The Jewish texts are very blunt and direct [about sex] ...
      Teaching it is lots of fun. My students usually say, 'Whoa! They really said that?"
      [GOLDSMITH, A., 11-23-01]

"Alexander," notes the Bulletin,

     "remembered once reading a text in which a rabbi is telling a group of other
      rabbis about the various things he would consider sexual perversions. 'And
      then, at the end of his speech the rest of the rabbis told him he was wrong' ....
      In addition to loving the 'racy' nature of the subject, Alexander enjoyed teaching
      about Jewish sexuality because it's a way to pique people's interest in Judaism."
      [GOLDSMITH, A., 11-23-01

Profoundly influential, of course, in shaping popular morality is the behind-the-scenes world of mainstream Hollywood:  "Show people had always been careless about morals, and in a town, in an industry, dedicated to peddling glamour and romance, it would be surprising if the passions enacted before the cameras did not sometimes carry over into real life ... Youngsters pouring into Los Angeles, desperate for a movie career, were prepared to risk the perils of the casting couch." [SHIPMAN, D. 1993, p. 136] As noted earlier, the "casting couch" has long been an institution in Hollywood. In crudest form, the results of such sexual expansion inevitably include the likes of famed Jewish Hollywood "madam" Heidi Fleiss and her much-publicized Hollywood drug and prostitution ring in the early 1990s. The ring reportedly included Columbia executives Michael Nathanson and Barry Josephson as important players. [See earlier discussion] William Stadiem notes the Hollywood Jewish prostitute contingent within the genral stable of non-Jewish madam "Alex Adams":

     "Robin was part of an entire group of young privileged hookers Alex had dubbed
     'the JAP [Jewish American Princess] Pack.' They loved nightclubs, Porsches,
     Versace, and coke, mostly went to UCLA on and off, hated the idea of working
     at a real job, and could only soak their parents for so much."] ADAMS, A., 1993,
     p. 55]

 

Hollywood's "Sin City" entertainment playground, Las Vegas, especially renowned for gambling, prostitution and other vices, must also be added to the list of great questionable Jewish influences upon popular culture. (In Hollywood, Al and Lew Wertheimer founded an illegal gambling den in Hollywood called the Clover Club. The Jewish Hollywood crowd later set up such a resort near Tijuana, Mexico, called Agua Caliente.) [GABLER, N., 1988, p. 261] Las Vegas, as an institution, has been profoundly influential in its efforts to sanitize, normalize, and popularize some of the most troubling expressions of human nature as acceptable recreation in western society. As professor Alan Balboni observes, "The Jews and Italians who made up 'the Boys' [the Mafia] were able to develop the burgeoning gaming industry to the point where it eventually became a significant influence on the American scene." [BALBONI, p. ix] Jewish entrepreneurship was not alone in this, but it was central. [See earlier information about the huge Jewish influence in the formation of Las Vegas] For purposes here, we may wonder about the observations of Jewish commentator James Yaffe: "If Jews can be said to have a characteristic vice, that vice is gambling. Even back in the shtetl they were gamblers. Many psychiatrists have mentioned this phenomena to me, yet nobody has been able to explain it exactly." [YAFFE, J., 1968, p. 268] We may also note the case of Mike Rose, the Jewish CEO of Holiday Corporation (Holiday Inn, et al), who "steered [the company] into gambling when it bought into Harrah's in 1980, causing Holiday's president and two directors to resign. Rose later sold the namesake motel chain to create a gambling concern called the Promus Corporation." The company's president, L. M. Clyde, retired "because he could not reconcile his Presbyterian religious beliefs with gambling ... Clyman did not go quietly, and two Holiday directors joined him in resigning on moral grounds." [JOHNSTON, D., 1992, p. 49, photo section]

 

Across the earth, in 1998 conservative Israeli commentator Jonathan Rosenblum lamented the dubious moral status and reputation of the modern Jewish state:

 

     "Once again anti-Semites portrayed us as a sexual libertines and

     perverts to undermine our moral authority. Today we cheerfully

     admit the charges and imagine ourselves beloved by the world

     for it. Are we and our culture similarly honored when a CNN

     documentary claims that we have the highest rate of prostitution

     in the world?" [ROSENBLUM, J., 5-15-1998, p. 9]

 

Rosenbaum probably could not have imagined the grotesque defamation of the holiest of Jewish holies by young Israelis the next year. In 1999, a group of 40 Israeli teenagers visiting Auschwitz and other sites of Jewish mass extermination in Poland under the Nazis, garnered international outrage from Jewish communities when it was discovered that they had "ended a tour of Poland's death camps with a strip show ... only hours after visiting Treblinka, where 900,000 Jews were murdered ... On a previous occasion, Israelis were shocked after a group of [Israeli] army officers went to a casino after visiting Auschwitz." [GROSS, T., 11-28-99]

In 2001, a Jewish community in England made the news when a "stag night with three strippers performing 'sexually explicit acts'" was held at a synagogue (Finchley Synagogue's Kinloss Suite) ... Some of the funds raised was supposed to be for a Jewish charity. [ZERDIN, J., 2-9-01]

 

Jewish American feminist Andrea Dworkin notes her disillusionment with her liberation myths about Israel when she first visited the Jewish state:

 

      "In 1988 I went to Israel ... I was distressed by what I found, including

      Holocaust-themed pornography and battered and raped women. Why

      would I expect it to be different? ... In Israel there is a genre of

      pornography defined by the theme of the Holocaust: women's

      bodies in pieces run down by trains or skeletal standing by open

      ovens." [DWORKIN, A., 2000, p. xi, 168]

Jewish American Paul Cowan noted this anecdote about looking for his Jewish identity in Israel in 1982:

     "I had an enemy in Beersheba, a man named Itzhak, the city's leading stud.
     He'd been a gigolo on the French Riviera, had run drugs from Israel to Syria,
     and now owned his own bar, a place called the Barsheba, where you could often
     find the sort of brawls that seemed so exciting in American Westerns. He was
     always stealing women. I had a particular grudge against him because he had
     seduced Pam, an Englishwoman I was dating, made her a hostess at his bar,
     and had then become her part-time pimp." [COWAN, P., 1982, p. 108]
     [See also "White Slavery" chapter]

In 2001, Israel's state-run television station elicited outrage from women's groups when it broadcast "a video clip of an attacker beating a naked woman whom he had allegedly raped ... The president of the Na'amat women's organization ... said in a a letter .. that she hoped [the station would not] compete for ratings through the use of violence and pornography." [HAAS, D., 2-16-01, p. 2] In 2000, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Arabi claimed that "film producers [in Israel] are tracking down actors who look like current Egyptian stars, and using them to shoot porn flicks in Israel. The films are then imported to Egypt and sctreened for paying customers ... [Film actress] Yusra Alawi told reporters she is asking her attorney to obtain copies of the films and to pursue legal action against those reponsible." [BOULWARE, J., 6-7-00]

The Jewish state was also severely embarrassed by a July 2000 incident in South America that engendered "huge play in the Brazilian media." Israeli diplomat Arie Scher was implicated in the production of child pornography when Brazilian police discovered videos and photographs in Hebrew teacher George Steinberg's home. [NIGRI, S., 7-5-2000] Scher fled to Israel before he could be arrested by Brazilian police. (In 2000, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that South Africa was "one of the world's worst centres for child abuse and child sex slavery ... International crime syndicates based in Nigeria, China, Israel, and Russia have become involved in the South African trade.") [O'LOUGHLIN, 9-9-2000]

 

(On the continued theme of child pornography, in 1996, David Webber, former director of the Calgary Jewish Community Council and Youth Director of Beth Israel Synagogue, was sentenced to six years in prison "for possessing child pornography and molesting seven boys over the past eight years." Police found in his possession 3,635 photos of young boys, 16 pornography videos, 224 books and articles about "man-boy love," and other indicting materials. The provincial prosecutor called Webber an "unrepentant pedophile." [SLADE, D., 10-26-96, p. B5] In 1997, across Canada in Nova Scotia, Stuart Friedman, the cantor at Halifax's Orthodox Beth Israel synagogue was "convicted and sent back to the United States [to his native Baltimore] for possessing and distributing child pornography ... one of the biggest [news] stories to hit Halifax in a long time."  [CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS, 2-6-97, p. 10] Police found a range of pornographic materials, including sets of handcuffs. In yet another child pornography case in Canada, in 1994 Corey Jones, a professional sex offender rehabilitation counselor," wrote that "My head hangs in despair ... when I read of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association coming to the defense of Eli Langer, an artist charged under the new law against child pornography because of an exhibition of paintings which depict children in various sex acts with other children and adults." Langer, arrested at the Mercer Union Gallery, is also Jewish; "his father is an amateur Holocaust historian.") [JONES, C., 1-20, 1994, p. A21; TORONTO LIFE, 7/1994]

 

In the world of American pornography, particularly the film-making side, Luke Ford observes that

 

     "Though only 2 percent of the American population, Jews dominate

     porn. Most of the leading male performers through the 1980s

     had Jewish parents. Leading Jewish pornographers include Wesley

     Emerson, Paul Fishbein, Lenny Friedlander, Paul Norman, Bobby

     Hollander, Rubin Gottesman, Hank Weinstein, Fred Hirsch and

     his children Steve and Marjorie, Steve Orenstein, Theodore

     Rothstein, and Reuben Sturman." [FORD, p. 21]

At his Internet web site, Ford elaborates in a section entitled Jews. "Secular Jews," he writes,

     "play a disproportionate role throughout the sex industry ... Leading modern
     Jewish pornographers include Ron Braverman, John Bone, Wesley Emerson,
     Paul Fishbein, Herbert Feinberg AKA Mickey Fine, Hank Weinstein, Lenny
     Friedlander, Bobby Hollander, Rubin Gottesman, Fred Hirsch and his
     children Steve and Marci, Paul 'Norman' Apstein, Steve Orenstein, Jack
     Richmond (Legend CEO), Theodore Rothstein, Reuben and David
     Sturman, Ron Sullivan, Jerome Tanner, Armand Weston, Sam and
     Mitch (Spinelli). Jews accounted for most of the leading male performers of
     1970s and '80s. Hebrew studs include Buck Adams, Bobby Astyr (Bobby
     Charles), R. Bolla (Robert Kerman), Jerry Butler (Paul Siderman),
     Seymore Butts (Adam Glasser), Roger Caine (Al Levitsky), David
     Christopher (Bernie Cohen), Steve Drake, Jesse Eastern, Jamie
     Gillis (Jamie Gurman), Ron Jeremy (Hyatt), Michael Knight, William
     Margold, Ashley Moore (Steve Tucker), David Morris, George Payne,
     Ed Powers (Mark Arnold aka Mark Krinski), Harry Reems (Herbertg
     Streicher), David Ruby, Herschel Savage (Harvey Cowen), Carter
     Stevens (Mal Warub), Marc Stevens, Paul Thomas (Phil Tobias), Marc
     Wallice (Marc Goldberg) Randy West (Andy Abrams) and Jack
     Wrangler ... Jewish female performers include Avalon, Jenny Baxter
     (Jenny Wexler), Busty Belle (Tracy Praeger), Chelsea Blake, Tiffany Blake,
     Bunny Bleu (Kim Warner), J. R. Carrington, Lee Carroll (Leslie Barris),
     Blair Castle/Brookle Fields (Allison Shandibal), Courtney/Natasha/Eden
     (Natasha Zimmerman), Daphne (Daphne Franks), Barbara Dare (Stacy
     Mitnick), April Diamond, Jeana Fine, Alexis Gold, Terri Hall, Heather
     Hart, Nina Hartley (Hartman), C. J. Laing (Wendy Miller), Frankie
     Leigh (Cynthia Hope Geller), Gloria Leonard, Traci Lords (Nora Louise
     Kuzma), Amber Lynn, Tonisha Mills, Melissa Monete, Susan Nero,
     Scarlett O. (Catherine Goldberg), Tawny Pearl (Susan Pearlman), Nine
     Preta, Tracey Prince, Raylene, Janey Robbins (Robin Lieberman), Mila
     Shegol, Alexandra Silk, Susan Sloan, Annie Sprinkle (Ellen Steinberg),
     Karen Summer (Dana Alper), Cindy West, Zara Whites (Amy Koolman),
     and Ona Zee (Ona Simms) ... Why do Jews dominate porn?" [lukeford.com]

"[Jewish] pornographer Seymour Butts," says Ford,

     "attributes the large number of Jews in porn to the desire for profits. Jews
     gravitate towards money ... If four people compete for a job, and three of them
     are goyim [non-Jews], the Jew, all things being equal, will get the job.
     That's the way I work. If I've got three actors going for a part, and one
     of them is Jewish, and they're all in the same ball park ... sue me." [lukeford.com]

(Note: As the parameters of what constitutes "morality' shifts wider decade by decade, any definition of pornography constitutes a controversial subject. On today's terms, pornography, to this author's sensibilities, is not the public depiction of sexuality itself, but rather the exploitation, debasement, robbing of dignity, devaluation and even ruthless dehumanization of the most intimate of human connections: frail emotions, human weakness, vulnerability, and the act of love and intimate human tenderness despoiled for public entrepreneurial profit).

 

Among the most important Jewish porn performers of all, is Harry Reems (real name: Harry Streicher). Reems, notes omnipresent lawyer Alan Dershowitz, was "a nice Jewish boy making his living by doing what lots of people would pay to do ... [He was] the undisputed king of the porno actors." [DERSHOWITZ, 1987, p. 156, 155] Dershowitz knows Reems' story well because he successfully defended the actor against obscenity-related charges in Memphis. "If Herb Streicher had not become an actor," notes the lawyer, "he would have been a first-rate press agent. Every time a story [supportive of his case] appeared, he placed it in his press kit and sent copies to other journalists. This had a snowball effect ... It was impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine or turn on a TV or radio talk show without coming across some reference to the Reems case. Reems had become an overnight celebrity." [DERSHOWITZ, 1987, p. 171] Dershowitz even attracted the ire of feminist and other outraged groups when he went to court to argue for a student showing at Harvard University of Reem's best known movie, Deep Throat, (an early 1970s porno movie which grossed $60 million worldwide). [DERSHOWITZ, 1987, 184]

 

By the late 1980s, freedom fighter Dershowitz had a growing track record in such matters. Well before Harry Reems, he notes with pride that he "successfully defended the film I am Curious (Yellow) ... [which was] made in Sweden. [It] had been [the] first commercially distributed motion picture to show explicit sex." [DERSHOWITZ, 1987, p. 163]  He next was the lawyer for Terry Levene's movie, Belinda. Levene was convicted of obscenity-related charges by a jury trial; Dershowitz won an appeal for him. [DERSHOWITZ, 1987, p. 176]

 

 In 1995, Nadine Strosse, a professor of law at New York University, even wrote a book entitled Defending Pornography. She defends herself as a champion of free speech with the usual "Jew as oppressed victim" credentialing:

 

     "My father was a Holocaust survivor. I am a Jew. I know from logic

     and from observation and from experience that the more powerless

     you are as a group, gender or ideology, the more you should defend
     your freedom of speech." [GERRARD, N., 1-28-96, p. 15]

Indeed, the very pardigm of the marginalized and popularly despised pornographer rests comfortably upon the Jewish "outsider/victim" model. Both Jew and pornographer commonly ascribe to themselves attributes of moral nobility against a perceived repressive society: in both cases the enemy is Christian culture/values where sexual expression has been traditionally devalued. In the porno context the enemy is configured as prudishness. The struggle of the Jew and pornographer is, in this world view, a struggle against oppression; both Jew and pornographer are declared to be innocent of moral wrongdoing. Their common goal is conceived merely as the struggle for freedom. This, and recent efforts in the (traditionally despised) pornographic world to reinvent itself as heroic is noted by Carina Chocano:

    "If sex in our culture were not so 'steeped in shame and guilt' they argue, and if
    the sex and pornography industry were not marginalized, then pornography would
    cease to reflect harmful attitudes, rear its had out of the gutter, and provide, as
    one of the panelists [at the First Annual World Pornography Conference] put
    it, 'masturbatory catharsis for the masses.' 'That stuff is bullshit,' retorted
    Glasgow Phillips, an author and critic [of pornography], 'To make money in
    this business you have to exploit,' he says,' and it's so easy to do. I mean,
    you are aware of how many dumb sluts there are in this town [Los Angeles]?
    You just cast them." [CHOCANO, C., 1998]

Feminist Diana Russell angrily assailed Strossen's Defending Pornography, saying:

     "Nadine Strossen's objective in Defneind Photography is to destroy the
      reputation and achievements of the feminist movement against pornography.
      To this end, she dishes up the same tired old caricature of us as anti-sex
      prudes, pro-censorship, and in collustion with the right wing ... Strossen's
      book was enthusiastically feted by the media not because it's so brilliant but
      because she's president of the American Civil Liberties Union (an organization
      that has increasingly become a watchdog for the interests of pornogarphers).
      The fact that Strossen professes to be a feminist gives her a lot more clout
      than man would have doing the same dirty work for a dirty industry." [RUSSSELL,
      D., SUMMER 1995]
  
There are apparently no limits to the reshaping of sexual morals. In 2001, Princeton professor Peter Singer ("son of Viennese Jews who escaped to Australia in 1938, shortly after Hitler's invasion") [NASAR, S., 4-10-00, p. A1] made national news, and national ridicule, for a book review he authored at an online magazine, Nerve. The title of the piece was Heavy Petting, where he endorsed bestiality, including lines like this: "Who has not been at a social occasion disrupted by the household dog gripping the legs of a visitor and vigorously rubbing his penis against them ... In private, not everyone objects to being used by his dog in this way, and occasionally mutally satisfying activities may develop." [BILLUP, A., 4-2-01] The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette featured a poignant editorial about Singer, an expert on "bioethics,"and the broad implications of such thoughts from the Ivy League college:

     "[Peter Singer is] a Princeton professor of bioethics who wants to know when the
     sexual revolution is gonna start revolting again. He's ready to get it on with
     the animal kingdom ... He was brought to Princeton with much fanfare by that
     university's president, Harvey Shapiro, who also happens to head up the President's
     National Bioethics Advisory Committee. Yep, these guys are shaping national
     policy. Ethical policy." [ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, 4-8-01, p. J4]

In 1999, Hope Weissman, another Jewish professor, this one at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, was attracting controversy for her class, "Pornography: Writing of Prostitutes." The class featured readings from everything from the Marquis de Sade to Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine, as well as a guest striptease performance by well-known Jewish pornographer-"performance artist" Annie Sprinkle, who gained notoriety for inviting art audiences to inspect her cervix. "Create your own work of pornography," Weissman instructed her class. [PINKERTON, J., 5-20-99, p. B9] In 2001, after public protest Peter Lehman's class "Sexuality in Media" was cancelled. The year before he had "required the students to sign a waiver before screening X-rated movies." [ASSOCIATED PRRSS, PORN, 11-9-01]

 

Annie Sprinkle, born Ellen Steinberg, is "the Jewish porn star/performance artist," [EPSTEIN, R., 10-15-99, p. 18] who is the veteran of so much sexual variety that she "stopped counting her own personal sexual encounters at 3,500." [HELBER, A., 8-19-99] "When I went to [visit the former Nazi concentration camp] Dachau," she once said, "I could see how tied in that was to sex." "How so?" wondered her interviewer. "Well," she continued,

 

     "I'm not clear enough at the moment to really say, but the quest was for

     power and the visceral quality, the bodies, the blood ... I don't know.

     It's just too big to even try to explain, but it was just a sense I had of

     how truly tied in that was with a misdirected sexual energy ... [There

     is] my Jewish tit print. I kind of like the idea of the heart and breast and

     the nurturing to the feeling and the nipple and the sensuality being used

     to create a religious symbol: a Jewish star. And it's not that I'm poking

     fun or anything. I'm honoring both the breast and the Jewish star in my

     mind." [FRIEDLANDER, M., 2000]

(In similar terms, Jewish scholar Michael Govrin describes the holiest of Jewish places: "Jerusalem, God's bride, His place of desire, is always an erotic place of masculine desire. Jerusalem is the biggest harlot of all places, the world's cunt exposed on all the television screens, in an ongoing peep show, day and night. And yet, in the classical paradox of desire, everyone has his Jerusalem virginal and pure, defiled only by the others' abusive and defamatory biographies of her.") [GOVRIN, M., 200]

In 1998, a conference on sexuality was held at the State University of New York at New Paltz; it was sponsored by the college's women's studies program. "What apparently must be called the highlight of the conference," noted the Clarion,

     "was the performance of [Jewish lesbian performer] Shelly Mars, a stripper from
     a bisexual bathhouse. During her performance, 'Whiplash: Tales of a Tomboy,'
     which featured her simulating sex and screaming obscenities, Mars collided with
     the crotch of auddience member Peter Shipley, chairman of a private educational
     group called the National Catholic Forum. Shipley's pen went into her nostril, and
     Mars fell back shouting that she was bleeding. Then she removed her pants and
     blouse and exposed herself."[CLARION, FEB 1998]

Other prominent Jewish porno performers include Randy Becker ("steamy nude pinup boy for the gay community") [GERSTEL, J., 5-22-97, p. B10] and Ron Jeremy. As one Canadian newspaper noted in 1999, "With 1,500 films to his credit over a 22-year career, Ron Jeremy is one of the most prolific and famous porn stars in the history of the business." Jeremy describes himself as a "good Jewish boy" who started out as a schoolteacher with a Master's degree in special education. [GRIWKOWSKY, F., 12-8-99, p. 38] (On a more modest scale, in 1994, a New York policewoman, Carol Shaya, "born in Israel to a Jewish father and Catholic mother," made the news for posing nude in Playboy.) [HALL, A., 7-11-94, p. 2, 21]

In 1998, Rabbi Shmuel Boteach, although underscoring that he distances himself from pornography, even clocked in when an excerpt from his book, Kosher Sex, in Playboy magazine. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 10-26-98, p. A9] In 2001, Boteach sued an Internet dating service, MatchNet.com, a firm he was commissioned to represent. Joe Shapira and Alon Carmel, founders of MatchNet.com, are Israelis, as is Ami Shafrir, another developmental partner in the Internet firm. However, "the heart of Shafrir's business empire was another company with headquarters in the Wilshire Boulevard Building: Amtec Audiotext, an operator of telephone sex lines that he says generated revenue of $60 million in its best year, 1995." Shafrir is also the landlord for MatchNet, in Beverly Hills. Matchnet divisions include Americansingles.com and Jdate, the latter of which "one of every 10 Jewish singles in the United States uses it and ... the site has been responsible for 300 marriages in its four years of operation." Rabbi Boteach was eventually approached by another Israeli, Daniel Nicherie, himself once convicted of bank fraud, who "who told the rabbi that Mr. Carmel and Mr. Shapira were pornographers who had been sued nearly 40 times." "The intrigue [surrounding MatchNet.com]," noted the New York Times, "stretches from Beverly Hills to Israel to the German stock market. The characters include a phone sex entrepreneur, the former convict who took control of his business and a disbarred lawyer obsessed with exposing the underbelly of the online dating industry." [ELLIN, A., 2001]

Then there is Gloria Leonard, also Jewish, past pornography actress, former president of the Adult Film and Video Association of America and president of the "Free Speech Coalition." She notes that she "was at the cutting edge of a phenomenon known as 'phone sex' during my tenure as publisher of High Society magazine, which ultimately resulted in a landmark case fought in the United State Supreme Court, which we won." [WASHINGTON TIMES, 10-12-99, p. A2] Ms. Leonard, promoted as "a name synonymous with quality adult entertainment of all kinds," was once a "convertible bond specialist from Wall Street." [LAFEE, S., 4-29-89, p. D2] In 2001, when she stepped down as president of the "Free Speech Coalition" (a largely porn activist group), she was replaced by "her long time friend and fellow Free Speech board member Mara Epstein. A veteran of the adult entertainment business, Epstein previously ran icandy Entertainment, a DVD producer, and was employed by Laserdisc Entertainment, the exclusive producer of XXX laserdiscs in the early 1990s."
[ADULT VIDEO NEWS, JUNE 2001]

 

Elsewhere, Sandy Kane has, notes Jay Weissberg, "the raunchiest, most Jewish show on cable ... Sandy bills herself as the world's only stripper comic." [WEISSBERG, J., 2000] Other noteworthy Jews in the porn field include Steve Greenberg, co-chair of the Committee on Male Sex Work at the 1997 International Prostitution Conference; Karlyn Lotney, producer of the "San Francisco-based erotic cabaret 'In Bed with Fairy Butch'"; and Carol Leigh ("Scarlet Harlot"), head of the Prostitution Education Network, and founding member of the homosexual advocacy group, Act Up! "Being stigmatized for the way you're earning money," says Ms. Leigh, "is a way to persecute Jews, right?" [COHEN, B., 2000] Other prominent Jewish pornography performers/producers include Nina Hartley, Jerry Butler, Hershel Savage (Harvey Savage), Sam Weinstein (alias Armand Weston or Anthony Spinelli), and Paul Thomas. [JEWHOO, 2000]

Then there is Abby Ehmann who "pledges to meet the tastes of fetishist and spectators who come to her regular Saturday night party, Click + Drag at Club Mother" in New York City. She edits 'Extreme Fetish" magazine, "dubbed the best alternative sex publication in New York by TimeOut magazine. She is on the board of directors of Feminists for Free Expression, an organization that fights restrictions on free speech, and she is a writer and a performer." [KAKOULAS, M., 6-26-00]

Elsewhere, CNN notes the Gold family's British-based Ann Summers sex shop chain "offers customers the opportunity to shop of lingerie and sex aids in their home homes [via meetings like Tupperware parties] ... Chief Executive Jacqueline Gold may be responsible for Britain's sexual revolution. The Ann Summers concept of targeting women was her brainchild ... 'We certainly have contributed to changing people's attitudes to sex, certainly the women's attitudes,' she said." [CNN, 9-10-98]

In his list of Jewish film pornographers, Luke Ford ascribes to Reuben Sturman the nomer "godfather of porn," noting that "although not as well known as Playboy's Hugh Hefner, Hustler's Larry Flynt, and Penthouse's Bob Guccione, Sturman exerted far greater influence. One competitor complained that Sturman did not control the adult entertainment industry; he was the industry." [FORD, p. 22] Sturman himself told the Los Angeles Times that "No one was anywhere near me [in the pornography business]." [JOHNSON, J., 5-31-95, p. B1]  "To expand his hold on the [pornography] industry," noted the Times, "he produced films with one company, sex paraphernalia with another and then sold everything through his own stores." By 1977 an FBI report declared that Sturman had accomplished "an almost total takeover" of the "peep-show industry." [JOHNSON, J. p. B1] The San Diego Union-Tribune noted in 1991 that

 

     "in its 1986 report, the [U.S. government] Meese Commission on

     Pornography singled out Sturman as the administration's top porn

     target. It identified him as the number one worldwide distributor of

     pornography, with financial control of nearly 200 businesses in

     19 states, one Canadian province, and six foreign countries."

     [LAVELLE, P., 1991, p. B1]

 

(Ford cites figures of 800 Sturman adult bookstores in all American states and forty other countries). [FORD, p. 129]

 

Sturman was eventually worth an estimated $100 million. His main company, Sovereign News, noted the Los Angeles Times, was "based in a sprawling Cleveland warehouse which is cynically referred to by some lawmen as the Ft. Knox of pornography." [HOUSTON, P., 1987,p. 20]

 

Sturman, son of Jewish Russian immigrants, depicted himself as a free speech crusader and evaded the law for most of his life. (Omnipresent Alan Dershowitz once defended his deeds, declaring that "the worst thing [Sturman] did was to turn feminists into censors." [JOHNSON, J., 1995, p. B1]) The "Godfather of Porn" was finally sent to prison in 1992 for income tax evasion and interstate transportation of films that depicted "humans eating excrement, women having sex with horses, pigs, chickens and other animals, and acts of sadomasochism." [LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 10-29-97, p. B1] Ralph Levine, a former Sturman partner in a Las Vegas porno bookshop called Talk of the Town, (described by one newspaper as "a gaudy smut emporium on the eastern fringes of downtown Las Vegas") [LAVELLE, P., 1991, p. B1] became a key government witness against him. Another Jewish co-defendant in the case, Stanley Loeb, "pleaded guilty to interstate transportation of obscene materials." [LAVELLE, P., p. B1] Sturman was convicted in 1992 but escaped from a minimal security prison in the California desert that same year, was captured, and later convicted of further charges, including extortion. Another Jewish associate, Herbert Fineberg, was also convicted for the attempted murder of another porn shop owner. [FORD, p. 121-132] Another member of the porno chain, Allan Goelman, was convicted of income tax evasion of $270,000 in personal profits as head of Sturman's "U.S. retail operations." [HOUSTON, P., 1987, p. 20]

 

 "I was a businessman," said Sturman once imprisoned, blandly explaining his activities, "I didn't see [pornography] as good. I didn't see it as bad. It was a product to be sold."  [JOHNSON, J., 1995, p. B1]

 

More recently, in 1999 the Los Angeles Times called 26-year old Seth Warshavsky the "Bill Gates of Smut" and "the most infamous pornographer of the Internet Age." [EHRMAN, M., 6-13-99, p. 26] He founded and heads Internet Entertainment Group (partner: Mark Cohn; Director of Sales and Marketing: Jonathan Silverman).  Divisions include Club Love, Manhole, Sex Fantasy, Girls Girls Girls, and many others. "Depending on who's talking about him," noted the Seattle Weekly,

 

     "[Warshavsky's] either a genius, a misogynist, a respected global

     businessman, an exploiter of children, the Bill Gates of Porn, or the

     Larry Flynt of Cyberspace." [ANDERSON, R., 2-11-99, p. 22]

 

The Seattle-based Warshavsky started out at age 17 with a phone sex business. By 1999 IEG had grossed $75 million in its first three years. Warshavsky had to park his Jaguar after his driving license was taken away -- over 20 moving violations in five years. Warshavsky has been accused of choking a girlfriend in a limousine, "stalking" her, and threatening her former boyfriend. [ANDERSON, R., 2-11-99, p. 22]

 

In 1999 IEG garnered Catholic outrage and a subsequent lawsuit from the Archdiocese of St. Louis. "IEG recently linked its sites to others that carries news of Pope John Paul II's visit a couple of weeks ago to St. Louis," noted the Seattle Weekly, "To make sure Catholics were properly horrified, IEG included an account of papal sex scandals and dirty religious jokes." [Anderson, R., 2-11-99, p. 22] The Archdiocese won a court injunction against IEG's use of the term "papal visit" as a name for one of its websites, a strategy intended to lure the religious to porno that also defamed and ridiculed the Catholic faith. "This was an absurd ruling," declared Warshavsky about the court's decision, "This is a prime example of how the Church has been able to use the legal system to suppress free speech." [SALTER, J., 1-21-99]  (Similarly, in 2001, computer hackers commandeered the militant Muslim Palestinian group Hamas's web site. Visitors to the Hamas home page were subjected to hard-core pornography images that could not be quickly clicked away. Outraged Hamas officials blamed Israelis for the violation.) [FREE REPUBLIC/REUTERS, 3-26-01]

 

In August 2000, NBC's online news site featured an article entitled "The Sultans of Smut." The aforementioned Seth Warshawsky and Jonathan Silverstein (by now president of Cybererotica, whose founder and chief is Ron Levi) made a list of ten of "the influential players in the business [pornography] that built the Internet." Another "player" was Bill Asher, "president of Vivid Entertainment Group, the "world's leading producer of adult films and videos." VEG was founded by Steven Hirsch and David James. VEG also owns Hot Network, "considered the largest hard core adult television network in the country." [BLANKSTEIN, A., 7-1-2000, p. C1] Other Jewish surnames on the list of ten "Sultans" included (Danni) Ashe, who founded "one of the best known adult sites on the web," (Eric) Langen, and (David) Marshlack whose company gained fame by charging a fee for computer users to ask O.J. Simpson a question on the Internet, and setting up cameras that followed a group of co-eds at all moments throughout their private lives ("Voyeur Dorm"). [BRUNKER, M., 10-9-2000]

 

If Mark Kreloff of Colorado-based New Frontier Media is Jewish too (his Executive Vice President, in any case, is Michael Weiner) [ACCOLA, J., 5-21-2000, p. 1G] as many as seven of the NBC's ten star Internet pornographers may be Jewish. (Mark Bruder, president of Santa Monica, California-based Cable Entertainment Distributors is also a porn supplier to New Frontier Media.) [ACCOLA, J. 5-21-2000, p. 1G] Per the 2.5% Jewish percentage of the American population, all things being equal, 7 of 225, not 7 of 10, prominent pornographers should be expected to be Jewish.

Another young Jewish Internet pornography mogul is Great Britain's Benjamin Cohen, the 18-year old founder of JewishNet (sold for 300,000 pounds) and CEO of cyberbritain ("its subsidiaries include the pornography portal, huntforporn.co.uk, and the adult search engine, dotadults.com.") [LEVITT, L., 1-19-01, p. 9] dotadults.com was "the UK's first adult search engine." Cyberbritain Executive Directors include the Jewish enclave of Gerry Defries, Benjamin Cohen, Alex Defries and Daniel Ickowitz-Seidler. Non-Executive Directors include Gary Sterns (CEO of London Jewish News Ltd), Steve Masters, David Green, and Richard Cohen. [M2 PRESSWIRE, 1-2-01]

Still another major Internet pornographic Cohen -- not to be confused with Benjamin -- is Stephen. This second Cohen was successfully sued for stealing the Internet URL "sex.com" from a man named Gary Kremen. Kremen had never envisioned the domain name to be a pornographic home. Cohen, after forging papers to seize the site, and developing an elaborate take over scheme, built sex.com into the premiere Internet smut base, grossing $100 million a year. As the online journal "wired.com" notes about Cohen's history and character:

     "Cohen was convicted in 1991 for posing as a lawyer in a bankruptcy court in
     a scheme to bilk an elderly woman's creditors out of $200,000. According to
     to court records, Cohen assumed the identity of several attorneys, forged
     phony deeds and cashiers checks, and attmpted to hide the woman's assets ...
     Cohen was sentenced to 46 months. It was his second conviction. In 1975,
     he was found guilty of grand theft and check kiting ... Within eight months of
     his prison release, Cohen controlled [by fraud] the Sex.com domain name ...
     By the late '80s, Cohen had set up a real-world meeting place for French
     Connection swingers at a home in Orange County, California. Hundreds of
     couples met at 'The Club' on Friday and Saturday nights to swap partners.
     After neighbors complained, police arrested Cohen in 1990 on charges of
     operating a sex club in a residential zone ... In January 1996, [Cohen's
     group] unveiled its bid to buy a Nevada brothel called Sheri's Ranch and
     transform it into a $100 million 'adult fantasy resort.' Named Wanaleiya,
     the Polynesian-themed resort would feature 500 exotic women who 'would
     not hesitate to see to your comfort and pleasure.'" [BICKNELL, C., 4-13-99]

Then there is Steve Hirsch, who owns Vivid Video. "Of all its achievements," notes Los Angeles magazine,

      "Vivid is most famous for refurbishing the appearance of the video box, wrapping
      it in the glossy-art look of a fashion advertisement that masks its raunchy contents.
      Single, Ferrari-driving Hirsch, who has built up the biggest-selling adult-film business
      in the Valley based on the idea of the old Hollywood studio system, seems equally
      'packaged.' Talking to him is like interacting with a TelePrompter--his well-rehearsed
       CEO lines ("It is important for us to make quality product, work with the best models, get
       our message out") seem scripted by drones in next room. 'He's very intelligent,' says
       every competitor of Hirsch's, yet after asking him for his thoughts, you can't help
      wondering what Hirsch is really thinking. Unlike [non-Jewish pornographer Russ]
       Hampshire, Hirsch did not start out in fast food. In the late '70s, his father quit a job
      as a stockbroker to create one of the first X-rated video-distribution companies in the
      [San Fernando] Valley [today, the premiere pornography production center on
       earth]. Hirsch worked in his dad's warehouse after high school and founded
      Vivid with a partner in 1984. He was 23 years old. Today, Hirsch's father
      works in Vivid's sales division, his sister Marci heads production, and Hirsch--who
      is known for aggressively entering and dominating new markets--sits poised to conquer
      the new DVD technology that could eventually replace the video format, as well as
       mainstream the adult-film industry once and for all." [GARDETA, D., 12-98]

Then there is Steven Orenstein, head of a major porno production firm called Wicked, like many, based in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley (the premiere pornography production zone on the planet):

      "Like [fellow Jewish pornographer Steve] Hirsch, Orenstein was introduced
      to the business by a parent. In his case, it was his mother, a bookkeeper, who
      took a job in accounting at an adult-magazine business and then later helped her
      son secure work at the same company. (Today, she does the books at Wicked.)
      Also like Hirsch, Orenstein came up through the industry, working a series of jobs
      until he struck out on his own, forming Wicked in 1993." [GARDETTA, D., 12-98]
     
And we dare not omit Susan Block from the long list of Jewish sex entrepreneurs. Block, a self-described "sex expert," has an online porno site where she revels in a furious sex hustling and narcissim, herself modeling scanty outfits and apparently living out her porno portrait fantasies (caption to one photo: "Here Dr. Block is in her 'Cyberstars' push-up bra, thong panties and sheer robe ensemble'). And here, at this Internet version of her Dr. Susan Block Institute for the Erotic Arts and Sciences, Block lists media commentary that describes her as "America's hottest sex therapist," an "X-rated alternative to Leno, Letterman, and Nightline" (she has a cable TV show), and "a happily-married, religiously aware Jewish woman." [http://www.drsusanblock.com]

In 1998, reporter Carol Lloyd described the public opening of Ms. Block's "Sex Institute":

     "There must be an explanation for the scene taking place just five feet away. A blond,
      large-breasted woman and a massive black man are fornicating with methodical, casual
       self-consciousness, like two body-builders pumping iron after an injury. He is on top,
      banging away unhurriedly, holding himself away from her with two knuckled fists
      planted on either side of her hips. She doesn't touch him but fidgets with a silver
      vibrator while preening at the small live audience and the roving, carnivorous camera.
      The peanut gallery continues with its kibitzing, trying to make sense of how such
      an explicitly sexual spectacle -- the climax to an evening of broken taboos -- can
      be so deeply, utterly unsexy. The event seemed too good to pass up. Dr. Susan
      Block, a sex celebrity who is, among other items on a groaning résumé, an advice
      columnist, a maker of videos bearing such titles as 'The Fine Art of Fellatio,' the
      author of 'The 10 Commandments of Pleasure,' the holder of a doctorate in
      philosophy, a radio and cable access talk-show host and the cleavage-friendly
      poster child for all things sex-enlightening and self-promoting, was throwing a
      Valentine's Day party to celebrate the opening of her new sexual institute, located
      in an old 1920s speakeasy in the heart of downtown L.A.'s art, fashion, financial
      and convention district ... Max, Susan Block's self-declared publicist, footman,
      butler, husband and sex slave, offers to show me the art ... 'We've got everything,'
      he says proudly, then segues into interview mode. 'I'm the most prosecuted publisher
      in America. I've been prosecuted 20 times and I've spent 18 months in jail.' He ticks
      off the charges on his fingers. 'Industrial espionage, rack ordinances (I put the first
      pair of tits on the streets of L.A.), conspiracy to publish.'" [LLOYD, C., 2-18-98]

 

Yet another Jewish pornography entrepreneur of considerable notoriety, David Friedman, owned the Pussycat Theatre adult film movie house chain; in California alone there were 47 of them. [FORD, p. 26] Friedman was also a pioneer in the production of "soft-core" porn. Called the "Sultan of Sleaze" and "America's Most Notorious Carpetbagger of Cinemadom," between 1958 and 1984 he made 58 full-length films including the likes of Blood Feast, Ten Thousand Maniacs, and Scum of the Earth. [FRIEDMAN, D., p. 8, 10]  Scum of the Earth, notes Friedman, was "about a gang of pornographers ... who lure young college girls into posing for 'feelthy pictures.'" [FRIEDMAN, D., p. 325]  "Herschell  [Lewis] and I," says Friedman, "had a reputation in the burgeoning exploitation film business of the early sixties. It was widely known and agreed upon that Friedman-Lewis Productions could generate more films per dollar than any other source." [FRIEDMAN, D., p. 325] (Other associates in his genre of film world included Howard Golden, S. S. Millard, Louis Sonnery, and Irwin Joseph. Sam Katzman also had production companies for quickly created movies, 4 Leaf and Victory. So did Maurice Conn of Ambassador-Conn.)

The following is what Mikita Brottman notes (complete with psychoanalytic analysis in her scholarly volume Offensive Films: Towards an Anthropology of Cinema Vomitif) about Herschell Lewis' contribution to film. He is responsible for the introduction to popular culture of the grotesque gore movie:

     "Made for a mere $24,000 in 1963, Herschell Gordon Lewis' infamous Blood
     Feast is regarded -- when it is regarded at all -- as the absolute nadir of
     exploitation cinema. Original publicity posters, declaring the film 'more
     grisly than ever, in blood color,' promised its audience they would 'Recoil
     and Shudder' when witnessing 'the Slaughter and Mutilation of Nubile
     Young Girls -- in a weird and horrendous Ancient Rite! ... Even Herschell
     Gordon Lewis has talked about the limitations of the actors' abilities and the
     fact that the script stresses gore at the expense of plausibility and coherence --
     there is something to be said for the film's transgression of classical
     cinema's barriers and limitations ... The film opens with an attack on a young
     girl in the bath. Ramses [the villian] pokes out her eye with a sword, then
     hacks off her legs and wraps them in newspaper. His second victim, Marcie
     (Ashlyn Maretin, Playboy Playmate of April 1964), is making love to
     to her boyfriend on the beach when she is attacked and murdered; her brain
     is removed, still quivering. A third girl (Astrid Olsen) is stalked to a motel
     where Ramses pulls her tongue out of her mouth with his bare hands ... At
     the time of its first release, Blood Feast was reviewed extensively in Time,
     Newsweek and Variety, to almost universal distaste. Ever since, it has
     atttained the status of a cult classic as 'the infamous first gore film' and
     'the original splatter film' ... As for the less respectable face of horror -- the slasher
     movie -- the narrative foundation for this highly ritualized and formulaic tale
     are laid bare for the first time in 1963, in the story of Fuad Ramses and his
     Blood Feast ... [which] stands as the ur-test for a long tradition of
     slasher and stalker film. To pick up once again on the psychoanalystic
     metaphor, Blood Feast is the 'primal scene' of the slasher film genre ...
     Put in its simplest narrative terms, Blood Feast is the story of a blood-thirsty
     fiend, who sets about killing and mutiliating a series of sexually attractive,
     pubescent females one-by-one until only a single girl in the chain remains alive."
     [BROTTMAN, M., 1997, p. 79-80]

And what of the personal ethical life of Mr. Lewis? He was "an ex-college professor with a Ph.D in English and the self-styled 'Wizard of Gore,' [who] lost most of his capital in the courts when he was arrested for his part in a fraudulent car rental agency, along with a series of other mail fraud convictions, including a fake abortion referral agency and a phony gas-saving device. The arrest brought his filmmaking career to an abrupt end." ]BROTTMAN, M., 1997, p. 180]
     
More recently, Zalman King, "the soft-core impresario," has produced, among other films, Female Perversions (directed by Susan Streitfield) and Striptease (directed by Andrew Bergman). [MILLAX, J., 5-23-97, p. 5] He also created the "popular erotic drama series, 'The Red Shoe Diaries,' for Showtime cable television. "I don't consider this soft porn," he told a reporter, "I would just call it erotic filmmaking." [MENDOZA, N., 6-27-93, p. 75]

In the "B" movie genre, among the best known is Roger Corman, whose father was Jewish. Film critic Roger Ebert also notes three more Jews of prominence:

 

     "AIP's [American International Pictures] Samuel Arkoff and James

      Nicholson and the early Joe Levine are the major 1960s figures in the

      exploitation field, but by the end of the decade ... [there was also] Joe

      Solomon." [EBERT, p. 137]

 

 Solomon's works include Hell's Angels on Wheels. His "top director" was also Jewish -- Bruce Kessler. [EBERT, p. 138] Legendary Hollywood hustler Joseph E. Levine? He, says Steven Aronson,

     "wrote the book on promotion; famed for PR gimmicks and publicity stunts;
     owes success to low-level made-in-Rome spectacle-film Hercules, starring
     'Mr. Universe' Steve Reeves." [ARONSON, S., 1983, p. 187]

The creator of Fritz the Cat, "the world's first X-rated cartoon?" [DIAMOND, J., 7-6-92] Also Jewish: Ralph Bakshi, born in Palestine before it became Israel. And as Jewish commentator Barbara Amiel notes about filmmaker David Cronenberg:

 

     "[His] new film Crash has hit London like an unexploded bomb ...

     The story of a group of young people who get their kicks out of

     watching stunt men re-enacting car crashes or videos of famous

     car accidents (Jayne Mansfield, James Dean) has horrified the public

     ... Britain is in the middle of a wave of self-righteous Puritanism and

     the notion that car crashes could sexually excite people is something

     'beyond depravity.'" [AMIEL, B., 11-16-96, p. B6]

Then there is British filmmaker Mike Leigh (changed from Lieberman), "dubbed Europe's best filmmaker by an American distributor." Leigh, who has has "12 full-length films to his name, together with dozens of theatre and television plays, plus lucrative television commercials for McDonalds," is

     "the master of the grungy, the squalid, the sexually menacing and the sexually
     dissolute ... Young Mike himself joined a Jewish youth movement, went
     to Israel and worked on a kibbutz ... Leigh presents his audience with lavatories,
     excrement and urine, farting, vomiting, abortions, nudity, graffiti-infested lifts,
     cannibalism, and, in his play Babies Grow Old ... your actual kitchen sink."
      [KAUFMAN, G., 2-11 96]

In 1988 prominent Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli made Jewish news for allegedly calling the Jewish producers of the film The Last Temptation of Christ  (the film, directed by a non-Jew, Martin Scorsese, attracted widespread condemnation from conservative Christian groups) "Jewish cultural scum in Los Angeles." Zeffirelli later denied those exact words, but still attacked the film's producer, Lew Wasserman, Chairman of MCA, as "a merchant on the lookout for dollars, and not, certainly, of quality films that respect precise universalist values ... I ask Lew Wasserman, with irony: What would he say if one day an Italian decided to make a film about Abraham sodomizing Isaac?" [GRUBER, p. 7]

 

Hollywood-based Christian activists Tim Penland and Larry Poland were hired by the Jewish head of Universal, Tom Pollock, (Universal was MCA's subsidiary that released the movie) and they later co-authored a book about the company's exploitation of them. Hired (without seeing the completed film) to mollify Christian lobbyist groups that were uncomfortable with The Last Temptation, Penland and Poland felt deceived and manipulated by Universal and soon joined the protest against the film. Careful not to enflame anti-Jewish sentiment, Poland nonetheless notes that "My observation is that the higher you go in the power structure of film and television, the more Jewish the industry becomes. If you don't believe me, checkout the corporate directors of the ten biggest movie studios sometime." [POLAND, L., 1988, p. 141]

 

The Jewish community, in so many ways influential in defining public morality (through activism in enforcing a separation between "church and state," dominance in the upper echelons of the mass media, pre-eminence in pornography, as well as mainstream publishing, modern art, etc., as we will soon see) were the subject of a national survey in 2000. According to the Jews and the Public Square Project, researchers discovered the following percentages of support of those surveyed for the following assertions:

 

                                                      Non-Jews     Jews       Jewish "leaders"      

  Homosexuality is Wrong:                  48%           23%           7%

  Do you support "abortion rights?"     56%           88%           96%

  Do you support the displaying

     of the Ten Commandments

     in public schools?                           65%          38%

 

"Jews take a less critical view," noted the surveys' researchers, "of homosexuality, abortion, birth control and pornography than do Gentiles." [PAULSON, M., 7-15-2000, p. B2] (Not surprisingly, the producers of herisque, "push the boundaries" gay sitcom for Showtime in 2000 were Daniel Lipman and Ron Cowen). According to another (1994) survey by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, Jews are also the most sexually promiscuous ethnic group in America. According to their responses, 34% of American Jews have had sex with more than 11 partners by age 18! [HALBERSTAM, p. 141] (As non-Jewish journalist Ross Wetzsteon notes: "I've always been attracted to Jewish women -- in fact, every long relationship I've ever had, including my marriage, was with a Jewish woman ... With WASPs, the code seemed unbreakable -- first date kiss at the door, second date clumsy feel in the car, etc. etc., so you sensed your sexuality was rigidly sculpted; with Jews, on the other hand, it wasn't a matter of 'an easy lay' -- it was the feeling that whatever was going to happen sexually between you would happen, clumsily, perhap, but at least spontaneously.") [WETZSTEON, R. SEPT 6-10, 1998]

Chaim Bermant explains traditional Jewish views about sex like this:

     "One could also discern in some of the anti-Jewish agitation [in early 20th
     century Christian Europe] more than a passing undertone of sexual
     jealousy. The Jew, as we have seen, was thought to be in league with the
     devil and prone to every variety of dark practice, and what could be darker
     or more devilish than sex? (The Jew, in ancient times at least, also had an
     extravagant idea of the sexual tastes and aptitudes of the gentile. The
     Talmud, for example, decreed that one shouldn't stable one's ass with
     a non-Jew in case it should be buggered). That the Jew had and has
     a robust sexual appetitte is well attested from even the most cursory
     readings of the Bible, the Talmud, and more recent, if less sacred,
     texts. 'Be fruitful and multiply' is the first commandment in the Torah
     and what was traditionally regarded amongst Christians as a sordid if
     necessary act was raised by the Rabbis to the level of a holy sacrament.
     But as the Rabbis themselves were to lament, it was carried to unholy
     lengths." [BERMAN, C., 1977, p. 29]

A survey of Jewish Americans in 1989 also noted that "nearly one in five respondents" elicited "skeptical responses" about the existence of God, while "in the general American population, over nine out of ten affirm a belief in God." [WERTHEIMER, J., 1993, p. 63]

The results of an earlier 1980s study about the mores of the entertainment television elite, the molders of popular culture, was published by three Jewish researchers in 1983. 104 prominent members of the Hollywood television world were formally interviewed, randomly selected from a list by Hollywood "insiders" of "key" people in the business, i.e., "Hollywood's most influential television writers, producers and executives." 93% of those interviewed were found to have had a "religious upbringing." Of these, 59% were raised "in the Jewish faith." (7% of the total survey were not raised in a religious milieu. In the context of Jewish pre-eminence in communist movements in the early and mid-20th century, [see discussions earlier] it is safe to assume that a very high percentage of these religiously unaffiliated were also Jewish). [LICHTER/LICHTER/ROTHMAN, 1983, p. 54-61]

 

75%, of the Hollywood elite categorized themselves to be to the left of center politically; only 14% to the right. 97% agreed with a statement that women "have a right to abortion," and only 20% agreed that "homosexuality is wrong." 51% disagreed with the statement that "adultery is wrong." Only 17% of the Hollywood elite "strongly agreed that extramarital affairs are wrong." 70% disagreed with the statement that "There is too much sex on television." 72% disagreed with the statement that "TV is too critical of traditional values."

 

Meanwhile, at the same time, in a 1982 nationwide poll, only 27% of the American public called themselves "liberal," 32% classified themselves as "conservative."  As the three Jewish researchers noted,

 

     "The television elite's social liberalism is also evidenced by their views

     on sex and morality ... On such issues as abortion, homosexual rights,

     and extramarital sex, their views diverge sharply from traditional values

     ... Television creators emerge as upholders of the 'new liberalism' that

     surfaced among upper status cosmopolitan groups in the 1960s."

     [LICHTER/LICHTER/ROTHMAN, 1983, p. 54-61]

Rothman and Lichter noted Jewish influence in shaping popular culture, against the grain of dominant mores:

     "Within the intellectual and artistic communities, Jews were also
     far to the left of their non-Jewish colleagues in the 1930s and
     1950s, and far more active in supporting communist or 'progressive'
     causes. As Jews moved into the professions, government service,
     the media, and academia, they served as a radical leaven for these
     groups and for the ever larger number of Americans coming into
     contact with them." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 331]

Jews have also been prominent in Hollywood as communist activists, a tradition decidedly against American popular opinion. As Neal Gabler noted in 1988:

 

     "One leading communist estimated that 50 per cent of the party's

     members were Jews during its heyday in the thirties and forties, and

     a large minority -- and sometimes a majority -- of the party leadership

     was Jewish. What was true of the national party was even truer in

     Hollywood, where Jews already formed a large part of the left-leaning

     artistic community." [Ring Lardner, Jr., for example, himself a CP

     member, estimated that two-thirds of the communists in Los Angeles
     were Jewish] [GABLER, N., 1988, p. 331]

Dore Schary, prominent Hollywood mogul and national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League from 1963-69, was among those with FBI files as a "strong communist sympathizer." As Laird Wilcox notes:

     "John Sanford, a Communist Party member and Hollywood writer who taught
     with Schary at the Progressive Educational Center in Hollywood, CA, sees Schary
     as somewhat lesss principled. When Sanford's wife, Maggie, refused to testify
     before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Schary went after her:
     'Mention a few names. What does it hurt? Mention the names of people who've been
      named already.' Sanford observed that Schary was 'one of the biggest pricks in the
     business.'" [WILCOX, L., 199, p.. 63]

As Milton Plesur notes about the Senator Joe McCarthy communist "witchhunt" era:

    "In 1952, before the Senate censured McCarthy, a Gallup Poll demonstrated
     that 56 percent of Catholics and 45 percent of Protestants approved of
     McCarthy and his tactics, but that 98 percent of the Jews considered him a menace
     to the country." [PLESUR, M., 1982, p. 135]

Noting the predominance of a "small" group of Jews in the corrosion of America's traditional moral order and American Jewish "leadership" in this role, in 1999 politically conservative Rabbi Daniel Lappin lamented that "decent, ordinary Americans are forced to begin to question whether Jews are bad for this country. I realize how inflammatory this statement is ... I do know that I am not alone in this concern ... [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 41] The spokesmen for groups like the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Veterans of America and Lesbian Task Force are all too often Jewish. Many of the member organizations of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice are Jewish. The membership of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a champion of ultra-liberal causes, is disproportionately high in Jews. The ACLU's leadership is almost reminiscent of a temple board meeting ... [LAPIN, D., p. 279] ... So many of the enthusiasts for the radical homosexual agenda, increased immorality, and expanded abortion rights are Jewish." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 293]

In 1999, the Gay Financial Network announced its list of the the "most influential Gay and Lesbian Corporate Executives." At least four of the top six ranked were Jewish, and they were all influential media moguls:

     1) Kathy Levinson, president and COO of E*Trade
     3) David Geffen, the CEO of Dreamworks
     4) Barry Diller, the CEO of USA Networks
     5) Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association
        of America

     (Lower on the list was Stephen Friedman [vice-president of public affairs for
     MTV]; Seth Radwell, CEO of Doubleday Interactive; David Kuhn, senior VP
     and editorial director of Brill Media, and Steve Fuchs, president of Hampton
     Industries] [BAIM, T., 12-9-99]

In 2001, Publisher's Weekly reviewed William Mann's Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1968, saying:

     "Mann also covers a wide range of ancillary topics, e.g., the history and aesthetics of
        set design; the rise of Los Angeles's 'pansy clubs,' and the special role of Jews (who
       were more likely than gentiles to be open about their sexuality)."
       [PUBLISHERS WEEKLY/amazon.com, 2001]

Chairman and CEO of Canada's first and only (2002) gay television network, PrideVision? John Levy, formerly President and CEO of Cableworks, "one of the first cable systems in Canada to launch high-spped internet acces over cable." Levy also heads The Score, a TV sports network, and "he is the majority shareholder in Headline Media Group, Inc., the company that owns PrideVision TV." [http://pridevisiontv.com/aboutPV/decision.htm]
"Larry Kramer [also Jewish] started ACT-UP" in 1988. [DAVIS, S., 1997, p. 192]

Reviewing a recent biography about Jewish homosexual Hollywood mogul David Geffen, journalist Taki lashed out at the huge influence on public morals exerted by the largely Jewish "Velvet Mafia," :

     "I'm not surprised to read that Hollywood is dominated by a Velvet Mafia of
      rich homosexuals who demand sexual favors in return for work in the movies. In
     fact I would have been surprised if it were the other way around. Those old
     Mittel-Europa Jews who ran Tinseltown in its heyday established the casting -couch
     practice long ago; but, as they say, at least they did it with style and with the
     opposite sex. The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New
     Hollywood is the title of an upcoming book by Tom King, a respected Wall
     Street Journal reporter who it seems has hit pay dirt -- and it's dirt, all right --
     with his expose of the unspeakable Geffen. Geffen invited King to write a book
     about his amazing rise to the top, and allegedly named dozens of former
     boyfriends, many of them now famous stars. Indiscretion aside, Geffen is
     is a lowlife san pareil ... But what bothers me is not the bestiality and arrogance
     of the Velvet Mafiosi. It is the message they send out through their movies ...
     Geffen, of course, denies there is such a thing as a homosexual cabal,
     and, typically, charges anti-Semitism. According to King's book, [Jewish]
     friends like Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin and Calvin Klein, among many others,
     keep a low profile but apparantly indulge in the sexual bacchanals that go
     with the territory. Alleged weekend-long orgies fueled by drugs at which Geffen and
     his powerful buddies run a 'meat market' selecting young men for sex
     are apparently described in detail in King's opus ... Hollywood has never been
     a moral place, far from it, but until the 1960s and 70s it preached a hell of
     a moral lesson. God, the family, patriotism, even Mom were sacrosanct.
     Now it's the exact opposite. Criminals are sympathetically portrayed, cops
     always negatively; people who think same-gender sex is wrong are fascists."
     [TAKI, v.13, no. 10]

In Russia, Olga Zhuk ("I'm Jewish and I'm a dyke") has led the recent Soviet out-of-the-closet homosexual movement. As London's The Guardian noted in 1992:

      "Olga Zhuk can claim the dubious distinction of being the only woman in the
      Soviet Union ever to have been charged under Article 121 of the Penal Code -
      the law that criminalises sodomy between men. It happened in November 1990,
      after Zhuk and a handful of other lesbians and gay men from Leningrad took a
      very deep breath and attempted to register Russia's first ever lesbian and gay
      organisation - the Tchaikovsky Foundation - with the city authorities ... As president
      and perceived 'ringleader' behind the Tchaicovsky Foundation, Zhuk was publicly
      denounced in the Lensoviet and charged with sodomy. But the case never came
      to court, the charges dropped after radical lawyers succeeded in convincing the
      chief prosecutor that lesbians were biologically incapable of sodomising each other."
      [MCKENNA, N., 3-31-92, p. 21]

 

Moving along in the religious sphere, in 1999, the aforementioned Rabbi Daniel Lapin, representing a very rare Jewish perspective, addressed the systematic defamation of the Christian community by major Jewish organizations, declaring that

 

      "I am appalled by the great injustice being perpetrated by those Jewish

      organizations [the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress,

      World Jewish Congress, etc.] that engage in anti-Christian bigotry.

      Although many of them were founded explicitly to fight bigotry, and

      for many years did just that, today the shrill rhetoric and hate-filled

      propaganda found in their direct mail is discriminatory and divisive.

      The very same Jewish organizations would be the loudest protesters

      were anything remotely similar being said by non-Jews about Jews."

       [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 2]

As Yechiel Eckstein, also a rabbi, further noted in 1997:

     "Hollywood's impact on our popular culture is profound and undeniable ...
     More often than not, filmmakers seem to go out of their way to depict people
     of faith in the worst possible light. And while Jews and Judiaism are, by
     and large, portrayed favorably and reverentially, Christians, particularly
     Evangelical Protestants and devout Cathlics, do not fare so well. One is
     left with the distinct impression that Hollywood has a very real and pervasive
     anti-Christian bias. How else do we explain the fact that Christian clergy --
     when they are portrayed at all -- are usually shown engaging in morally
     reprehensible behavior? Or the fact that Christian symbols are associated with
     characters who prey upon society? Or that the crimes of various antagonists are
     shown to be religiously motivated? In Primal Fear, for example, the local
     archbishop is murdered by one of the waifs he exploited in his self-made
     porn films. The lead character in Priest is shown in a homosexual tryst with a
     The sadistic nurse in Misery wears a cross; the rapist in Eye for an Eye sports
     one as well. A killer played by Harry Connick Jr. in Copycat repeatedly invokes
     the names of Jesus. Christian beliefs and symbols are often belittled by Hollywood
     producers and writers. The cherished symbols of faith are put to blasphemous uses.
     Indeed, if there is a Christian character in a film, he is usually depicted as a fool,
     a liar, a cheater, a diabolical murderer or a crazy person ... Could Hollywood
     producers ridicule and malign Christians with impunity if the Christian community
     organized its own equivilant of the Anti-Defamation League?" [ECKSTEIN, Y.   
     2-14-97, p. 4] (Executive Producer of Primal Fear? Also Jewish. Howard Koch, Jr.).

Other noteworthy anti-Catholic films from Hollywood include The Runner Stumbles (1979) about a priest who falls in love with a nun and then goes to trial for her murder, Monsignor (1982) about a Catholic prelate who works with the Mafia, Agnes of God (1985) starts out with a nun giving birth to a baby and then killing it, The Penitent (1988) where the lead character joins a brutal Catholic cult, Last Rites (1988) where a priest gets involved in murder and the the criminal underground, We're No Angels (1989) where two prison convicts escape and pretend to be priests, and The Pope Must Die (1991) which heralds everything from a Pope "harem" to illegal arms deals. Anti-Protestant movies include Crimes of Passion (1984) about a despicable skid-row evangelist, Poltergeist II (1986) features a deranged preacher, The Vision (1987) about a Christian cult that plots to take over the world, Light of Our Day (1987) about a fraudulent minister, The Handmaid's Tale (1990) about a group of Christian fundamentalist fanatics who rise to political power in the U.S., and The Rapture (1991) where a born-again decides it's her religious duty to murder her own child. [O'BRIEN, P.; citing MEDVED, 2000/2001, p. 290-295]
  
Mainstream Hollywood's drastically different portrayals of Christianity and Judaism today is noted by Jewish film critic Michael Medved:

 

       "I can't think of any film that has portrayed the Chasidic community

        [of Satmar, Bobov, and other 'fraud and corruption' fame we have

        met earlier] where that portrayal has been anything but affectionate...

        If you compare the treatment of the Jewish religion to the way

        Catholics and Protestants are shown ... well, Jews are not treated as

        savagely ... The only place where religion is treated reverentially is

        where it's considered exotic, and that is the case with the hasids."

        [EIKIN, p. 29]

 

"One strain of Judaism," concur Jonathan and Judith Pearl, "has been most prominent and visible [on television] ... The appeal of Hasidic Judaism to television undoubtedly lies in its exoticism." [PEARL/PEARL p. 94]

 

      This loving treatment of Jewish Orthodoxy ("Fiddler on the Roof," et al) is evident in modern Jewish fiction as well. "Orthodox Jewish characters and settings," noted Paula Hyman and Deborah Moore in 1997, "now enjoy an unprecedented and variegated focus in new American Jewish fiction ... The fascination with Orthodox settings extended to the mystery novels and to popular fiction as well." [HYMAN, p. 422] "In the fall of 1985," noted Edward Shapiro, "the New York magazine even published a lengthy three-part essay titled 'Holy Days,' which described in favorable terms a Hassidic sect in Brooklyn." [SHAPIRO, Jewish, p. 167] "Orthodoxy," noted Jack Wertheimer in 1993, "has been the beneficiary of much media coverage and has learned to exploit such coverage. Unlike earlier coverage of some Hasidic sects in the general American press, which focused on their exoticism, more recent reports have emphasized the warm communal spirit and decent values promoted by the Orthodox world." [WERTHEIMER, J., 1993, p. 122] [See chapter 2 for an analysis of the spirit and values of this Orthodox world]

 

Robert Avrech is believed to have become Hollywood's "first Orthodox screenwriter" in the late 1970s. By 1999, noted the Baltimore Jewish Times, "more than 30 Orthodox writers now work in the industry, particularly in television." (David Sacks, for example, also an Orthodox Jew, is also the Executive Producer of the TV series 3rd Rock From the Sun, Michael Glouberman is the co-Executive Producer of Fox's Malcolm in the Middle, and Etan Cohen has even written scripts for the risque MTV cartoon series Beavis and Butt-head.) [UMANSKY, El, 2-18-2000, p. 21] Real Hasidim often appear in Robert Avrech's movies. "Although movies are taboo in the Haredi community," noted the Times, "large Chasidic families appeared [in Avrech's last film] as extras for the $200 per day, per person fee. [The families] promised each other they would keep their secret." An earlier Avrech film was Body Double, which he described as "extremely wild, sexy, very violent -- a cult classic." [HIRSCH, R. 6-4-99, p. 18]

 

Even influential horror movies exploring a powerful Satan in a Christian context (particularly, Rosemary's Baby [1968; directed by Roman Polanski, novel by Ira Levin], where the Devil inseminates the lead character, and William Freidkin's The Exorcist (1974), where the lead character, possessed by the devil, stabs herself in the crotch with a crucifix) were Jewish creations. The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures condemned Rosemary's Baby, noting "the perverted use which the film made of fundamental Christian beliefs, especially surrounding the birth of Christ, and its mockery of religious persons and practices." [LEAMING, 1981, p. 88]

 

Defamation of, and attack upon, the Christian world view is evidenced throughout the Jewish entertainment community. Gordon Davidson, also Jewish, has been the first and only artistic director (for 33 years) of the Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency notes Davidson's very first directorial effort:

 

     "For the inaugural drama of the new theatrical venture, the young

     Davidson decided to stage, and direct himself, 'The Devils,' John

     Whiting's tale of a libertine priest, a nun and their sexual fantasies.

     The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese and Davidson's bosses

     at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors were suitably

     outraged." [TUGEND, T., 3-6-2000, p. 11]

(This quote, by the way, is from an article about Davidson by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency entitled "Award-Winning Theatre Director Likens His Role to That of a Rabbi").

Peter Novick notes a similar story in 1964: a play (The Deputy) about Pope Pius XII and his alleged silence about the Holocaust:

      "Almost all Jewish organizations, particularly the Anti-Defamation League
      and the American Jewish Committee, were heavily involved in interreligious
       dialogue, whose agenda was 'make nice' and 'can't we all just get along?' The
       Deputy was definitely not nice, not a contribution to getting along. Catholic
       spokesmen publicly and privately called on their Jewish dialogue partners to
      put pressure on the Jewish producer and director to cancel the play, or at
      least to join them in denouncing it. Implicitly they were saying that if the shoe
      was on the other foot -- if what was at issue was a play sullying the reputation
      of the world's most venerated Jewish leader -- Jews wouldn't hesitate to call
      on them." [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 143]

     "A former Jewish publisher, Paul Krassner, of Larry Flynt's pornography magazine, Hustler, notes that "My main editorial regret [as publisher] was that I hadn't been able to publish that 'Jesus and the Adulteress' photo spread. The nearly life-size poster which was supposed to be included as a pull-out centerfold would instead remain on my wall as a memento of those six months at Hustler. There was Jesus, a generic barbershop-calendar Jesus, looking reverently toward the sky as he covered up the prone Adulteress. Her head was bleeding from stones that had been cast upon her. And she was showing pink. Sweet, shocking, vulneable pink ... Although Hustler had been accused of exploiting women, actually it was guilty of exploiting men's addiction to pornography." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 250] He also notes the anti-Christian theme with his friend, Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce: "And so Lenny decided to dedicate his book [How to Talk Dirty and Influence People]: 'To all the followers of Christ and his teachings; in particular to a true Christian -- Jimmy Hoffa -- because he hired ex-convicts as, I assume, Christ would have." [KRASSNER, P., 1993, p. 63]

Krassner also noted one of his first acts when he took over at Hustler:

   "I didn't know how long I would last as publisher of Hustler, so when editor Bruce David showed me around the next morning, I began exercising power immediately. The cover of the April 1978 issue -- the one that would NOT feature a woman -- was scheduled to be a teddy bear wearing a negligee. I changed it to an Easter bunny nailed to a crucifix, with a basket of painted eggs toppled over in the foreground, and assigned a staff writer to write a piece on 'The Commercialization of Easter.'" [KRASSNER, Pl., 1993, p. 234]

 

Conversely, Jewish themes in the largely Jewish entertainment world are portrayed in loving and respectful terms. In 1999, for example, rabbi Jonathan Pearl (who holds a PhD in Judaic Studies) and his wife published a volume about Hollywood's treatment of Jewish themes and characters on television. The Pearls note that

 

     "While Jews have been known for millions as the People of the Book,

     they could also well have been called, for the past fifty years, the People

     of Television ... Contrary to the commonly held inaccurate belief that

     serious Jewish issues and truly Jewish characters rarely find their way

     into popular TV shows, our intense research -- over the course of fifteen

     years and many thousands of hours of viewing shows -- has revealed that

     literally hundreds of television dramas and comedies have featured Jewish

     themes over the past half century ...  [PEARL/PEARL, p. 1] ... By the

     end of his twelve years on television, Archie Bunker, America's best-

     known bigot, had come to raise a Jewish child in his home, befriend

     a black Jew, go into business with a Jewish patron, enroll as a

     member of Temple Beth Shalom, eulogize his close friend at a Jewish

     funeral, hosted a Sabbath dinner, participate in a bar mitzvah ceremony,

     and join a group to fight synagogue vandalism ... [This show] was far

     from unusual. Since the inception of network television half a century

     ago, hundreds of popular TV shows have portrayed Jewish themes...

     In nearly every instance, the Jewish issues have been portrayed with

     respect, relative depth, affection, and good intentions ... [PEARL/PEARL

     p. 5] ... It follows, then, that most American television viewers, especially

     those who have little personal contact with Jews, gain a large portion

     of their ideas about Jews and Judaism from the small screen." [PEARL/

     PEARL p. 6]

 

In 1999, an HBO feature-length movie was aired about the life of famous Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky. (Lansky's murderous associate-gangster, Bugsy Siegel, was immortalized in not one, but three Hollywood feature films about him in 1991 alone: The Marrying Man, Mobsters, and Bugsy). Echoing the times, when Jewish martyrological legend has become history, even this vicious Jewish thug, Lansky, who headed the greatest criminal empire in American history, is portrayed as first and foremost a victim, the innocent butt of horrible Gentile anti-Semitism and ever entwined, and loyal, to the noble Jewish people. As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency notes, "The two opening scenes set the tone. The first shows the seventy-year old Lansky amid the cluttered tombstones of Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, trying to buy a space for himself next to his grandparents' graves. In a flashback, the seven-year old Meyer Suchowljansky [Lansky] watches in frozen horror as a pious, old Jew is butchered by Polish peasants during a pogrom in his native Grodno."  Later, the film shows Lansky's "muscular pal Bugsy [Siegel] defend him from Irish bullies." [TUGEND, T. 2-22-99]  Such material begins, and frames for apologetic context, the mobster's life of crime.

 

As explanation for this special treatment, we may look to Lester Friedman who observes that "writers of films featuring Jewish characters have, from the story idea to the final cut, historically faced a gauntlet of highly placed Jewish executives." [FRIEDMAN, L., p. 3]  Or as Jewish film scholar Patricia Erens frames it:

 

     "Despite their small numbers in the United States, Jews have enjoyed

     an advantage unequalled by any other ethnic group in America -- a

     virtual control over their own self-image on the screen." [ERENS, P.,

     1980, p. 114]

As the Jewish Bulletin noted about Jewish executive Jerry Offsay, president of programming at Showtime Networks in 2002,

     "Two or three times he has passed on a script that has portrayed Jews
     negatively. 'I can't stop it from being made, but I'm not going to be the person
     who brings it forth, 'he says. In a simiar vein, he mentions a Showtime film -- he
     doesn't want the name printed -- in which the director was planning to cast an
     'idenifiably Jewish character' in the patently villainous role. 'I didn't want
     a Jewish guy playing such a virulently hateful character,' Offsay admits."
     [SCHLEIER, C., 5-29-98, p. 34]

Samples of Jewish-themed programs from Offsay include a play "about the way in which a Jewish family copes with the possibility of a gay child being born," a 1943-era Warsaw uprising story, and 'Rescuers: Stories of Courage' "about non-Jews who risked their lives rescuing victims of the Holocaust." [SCHLEIER, C., 5-29-98, p. 34]

 "Jewish theatre and film producers," noted Jewish author James Jaffe in 1968, "have created the wholly mythological figure of the gentle, inoffensive, philosophical, shoulder-shrugging Jew, ready to give the hero the benefit of his wise warm-hearted advice. [Jewish film critic] Pauline Kael detects him in the kindly old pharmacist in West Side Story, and points out that his chief function is to convince the gentile world how harmless the Jew is." [JAFFE, J., 1968, p. 62]

During World War II, despite the fact that Jews were a tiny American minority, they were amply represented as soldiers in movies: "There was the all-but-obligatory inclusion of Jews in Hollywood platoon rosters: a Feingold in Bataan, a Weinberg in Air Force, A Diamond in Pride of the Marines, a Jacobs in Objective! Burma, an Abraham in Action in the North Atlantic, and a Greenbaum in The Purple Heart." [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 33]

 

Hyper-sensitivity to Jewish themes has a long history in Hollywood, particularly since the World War II (Holocaust) era. Even aside from Jewish insider domination in the shaping of movies, Jews have been so protective of their portrayals in the mass media that in 1948 an umbrella group for Jewish American organizations, the National Community Relations Advisory Council, instituted, in collaboration with the major Hollywood studios, the "Motion Picture Project." "It functioned," notes Neal Gabler,

 

     "to give each of the major Jewish organizations a piece of Hollywood...

     [Its activities involved] reviewing scripts, cajoling producers, keeping the

     big Jewish organizations informed of any movie that might help or hurt

     the Jews ... Some charged that an accusation could be made that a

     'Jewish group was trying to censor the industry,' which, in fact, was

     exactly what it was trying to do." [GABLER, N., 1988, p. 303-304]

 

But even before this self-censoring organization was created, in 1947, Hollywood carefully policed its depiction of Jews for the public. Frederic Wakeman's novel The Huckster, for example, (based largely upon the life of MCA mogul Jules Stein) was made into a movie by MGM. Dennis McDougal notes that

 

     "In Wakeman's novel, the newly respectable Dave Lash [the Stein

     character] was a poor Jew who clawed his way to the top by playing

     footsie with the Mob, then made up for it by giving generously to

     charities that fought anti-Semitism ... In the film version, there is

     no hint that Lash, played by grandfatherly character actor Edward

     Arnold, is Jewish or that his right-hand man is the conniving, deceitful

     agent of the novel. The MGM script transformed Lash's odious [Jewish]

     chief lieutenant into an eager Irish string bean named Freddie Callahan...

     The movie gives not hint that Arnold's character is Jewish or that his

     early criminal conniving had anything to do with being Jewish."

     [MCDOUGAL, 1998, p. 127-128]

 

In another such case, in 1945, Jewish screenwriter Barney Glazer struggled with Warners Brothers executive Jeff Wald (also Jewish) about a film to made called Rhapsody in Blue. Originally a play written by Jewish playwright Clifford Odets, Glazer formally objected to his superiors that the lead character (Jewish in the original version) was now Italian-American. The plan to delete the Jewishness of the character, noted Glazer, was that Warners wanted to do "a study of young genius; that for the greater part of it our hero must be portrayed as an out-and-out little sonofabitch; that the same color and sympathy can be had from say an Italian-American family portrait." [BEHLMER, p. 266] Glazer's complaint was to no avail: the lead character in the film appeared as Italian-American.

 

 In 1994, Newsweek noted another such Hollywood ethnic switching:

 

     "When the play 'Other People's Money' was made into a movie,

     the character of a Jewish corporate raider who takes over a family

     business was changed into a generic 'ethnic' played by Danny

     DeVito [of Italian heritage]." [SOLOMON, J., 5-23, 94, p. 50]

One of the comedians in the British group Monty Python, Terry Gilliam, noted what happened to one character in their movie The Life of Brian:

     "We cut Otto out ...[Monty Python member] Eric was very keen to cut it
      and I think it was because he was living in Hollywood and worried about
      offending 'Jews who run Hollywood' or because he works in Hollywood
      and half his friends are Jewish. I don't know. I thought, 'This is crazy. We
      made a film to offend everybody! If we're going to offend the Christians,
      come on! We ended up cutting it out ..." [HEARST NEWS MEDIA]

Although Jews played a dominant role in Hollywood (and American) communism, including Soviet espionage [see earlier citations; Hollywood Jewish communist screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr., estimated, for example, that two-thirds of the Communist Party members in Los Angeles were Jewish] [GABLER, N., 1988, p. 331], Jewish organizations were active in lobbying the largely Jewish film community to keep that depiction off the movie screens. As Peter Novick writes,

     "Jewish organizations, throughout the fifties and well into the sixties, worked on
     a variety of fronts to prevent, or at least limit, the association of Jews with
     Communism in the public mind. Thier principal co-operative venture was the
     'Hollywood Project,' in which they jointly employed a West Coast representative
     who lobbied movie producers to avoid any unsympathetic reprsentations of Jews.
     A good deal of this lobbying dealt with the Jew-Communist issue. The producer
     of I Married a Communist promised to see that no Communist character had a 'name
     that can even remotely be construed as Jewish.'" [NOVICK, P., 1999, p. 95]

Fearing the spread of anti-Jewish hostility (especially in the context of a Hitler-style fascism), Jewish organizations were also influential in policing Hollywood film content in the 1930s. Rabbi William H. Fineshriber, for example, "who became active in film industry affairs in the early 1930s on behalf of the Reform Central Conference of Amreican Rabbis," took personal credit for convicing MGM to abandon a proposed film called It Can't Happen Here. [HERMAN, F., MARCH 2001, p. 66] As Felicia Herman notes about this era:

     "Although the ADL [Anti-Defamation League ] and AJC [American Jewish Committee]
     occasionally corresponded on their own with film industry figures, by far the
     closest relationship between a Jewish organization and the Jews in the film
     industry existed through the LAJCC [Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee].
     Leon Lewis, the former national secretary of the ADL, had created the LAJCC
     in 1934 as an autonomous, self-appointed umbrella organization of local
     representatives of all of the major national Jewish organizations as well as local
     Jewish social and communal leaders. Many of the LAJCC's members enjoyed
     personal and professional links to Jews in the film industry, and a week after the
     LAJCC's founding, the organization created a Motion Picture Committee comprised
     of prominent Jewish studio executives like Irving Thalberg, Jack Warner, Joseph
     Schenck, and Harry Cohn. These men reguarly met with with Lewis to discuss film
     issues relevant to the Jewish community and to contribute funds to the LAJCC's
     work in ferreting out local antisemites and Nazi sympathizers. Lewis thus became
     the point man for Jewish-Hollywood relations, and often at the behest of ADL and
     AJC, he utilized the connections fostered by the LAJCC's Motion Picture Committee
     to try to shape films with Jewish content." [HERMAN, F., MARCH 2002, p. 68]

 A planned film about Hitler, entitled Mad Dog of Europe, was eventually shelved after Jewish concern about Jewish predominance in Hollywood and how such a movie could backlash Jewish interests. "The film's would-be producers were all Jewish," says Herman,
     
     "and the film made particular reference to Nazi antisemitism. Upon investigating the
      project, Jewish leaders concluded that the script was 'so fanatical' that 'there may be
     a very unhappy kickback from it. They therefore utilized many of the tools at their
      disposal to prevent the film from being produced. The Jewish efforts to stop Mad
     Dog of Europe received little public attention, just as Jewish leaders desired: as much
     as they could, they kept their dealings with the motion picture industry a quiet affair,
      attempting to stave off the charge that the Jews were 'controlling' Hollywood."
     [HERMAN, F., 2001, p. 69]

The Judeocentric, ardently pro-Israel Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles also plays today a significant role in censoring prospective movies with Jewish themes or characters. As Josh Spector notes:

     "Rabbi Abraham Cooper is not your typical Hollywood power broker. But a
     a thumbs down from Cooper and his colleagues at the Simon Wiesenthal
     Center recently proved enough to convince Paramount Classics to back
     away from a potential distribution deal with this year's Sundance grand
     jury prize winner, The Believer [about a real-life Jew who became a neo-Nazi
     leader], proving just how influential special interest groups have become in the
     Hollywood machine ... Parmount's decision to consult the rabbi and his
     colleagues at the Wiesenthal Center is not unprecedented. The Los Angeles-
     based organization has been active in the entertainment industry for a number
     of years, often reviewing scripts and consulting with filmmakers and studios
     on Jewish-related productions ... 'This is a nightmare,' [The Believer's
     director/writer, Henry Bean, who is Jewish] said, 'The fear of political correctness
     is encroaching on every aspect of the artistic process.'" [SPECTOR, J.,
     2001]  

Curiously, even the old Hayes Office, the censorial organization that for decades oversaw Hollywood films, apparently maintained a double standard in its policing of ethnic defamations. As Gerald Gardner notes about the (Jewish) Marx Brothers: "The Marx Brothers seem to have been immune to charges of ethnic humor. The same censors who made Walt Disney change the feigned Jewish accent of the Wolf in The Three Little Pigs, raised no objection to Chico's improbable Italian accent, his absurd, tight-fitting jacket and pointed hat." [GARDNER, G., 1987, p. 115]

 

Apparently Italian-Americans have often served as Jewish-dominated Hollywood's dumping grounds. Aside from the considerable film/television maligning of Christianity, Islam, Arabs, and other religious and ethnic genres, a 1982 report by the Commission for Social Justice noted that "television is lacking in portrayals of positive Italian American role models." (Likewise, a 1983 TV commentator complained that "never have so many Blacks appeared on television, yet never has their image been so stereotyped." [PEARL/PEARL p. 9-10]) In 1999, an Italian-American, Bill Dalcerro, wrote an editorial in the Los Angeles Times about the HBO-produced TV program "The Sopranos." This series, complained Dalcerro, "not only revels in negative, cartoonish images of a specific community -- Italian Americans -- but was congratulated for doing so last week by a flurry of Emmy nominations from the television industry. How can this be?" [DELCERRO, B., 7-26-99, p. F3] Perhaps, one wonders, because both the show's creator/executive producer, David Chase, and its producer, Todd Kessler, are Jewish, as well as a majority of important figures in the television industry.

Brian Viner, of the England's Jewish Chronicle, notes how Judeo-centric themes in the Sopranos show can be turned to even slander Native Americans:

  "Fans of the 'Sopranos,' the sublime television series about the lives, love and psychotherapy sessions of New Jersey mafiosi, currently shown here on E4, will be aware that there is just one Jewish character: Hersh Rubin, trusted adviser or consiglieri to the godfather, Tony Soprano. In the latest episode, the Soprano family henchmen became aggravated by a campaign among Native Americans to besmirch the name of the genoan Christopher Columbus. But Hesh sides with the Native Americans -- a Jew must always take the side of the oppressed, he said, and the Old World discoverers led by Columbus had done some terrible things, such as giving the Indians blankets deliberately infected with smallpox. Then, however, a Native American associate made the mistake of comparing Columbus with Hitler. Hesh saw red. The Holocast, as an example of evil, was way out on its own, he said. He accused the man of 'covert anti-Semitism.' The Native American protesting strongly, was asked to leave his house. This scene was doubtless inspired, at least partly, by the readiness of some Jews to see anti-Semitism where it manifestly does not exist, although, as the old gag goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. As for Hesh himself. I guess he was inspired by a phenomenon that some Jews prefer not to see where it manifestly does exist, the Jewish gangster. There have, in fact, been plenty of them. The notorious Jack Spot, for instance, was a powerful operator in the London underworld in the the 1950s." [VINER, B., 11-29-2002, p. 37]

 

 In 1980, Daniel Golden noted that:

 

     "The dominant portrayal of Italians in American film is within the gangster

     genre, a cinematic heritage that stretches from Little Caesar (1931) to its

     apotheosis in both parts of The Godfather.... Indeed, much early

     anti-Italianism is merely a continuation of anti-Catholicism." [GOLDEN,

     D., 1980, p. 77-78]

 

Golden, a Jewish author, blames such bias on "WASP America's obsession and prejudices against 'foreign influence.'" [GOLDEN, D., 1980, p. 75]

 

Hollywood Jewry's stereotypes of the Irish? As Dennis Clark and William Lynch note:

 

     "For the millions, the revelations and fantasies produced by the motion

     picture industry during the twentieth century were powerful formative

     influences ... The fact that Jews played such a vital and extensive role

     in the film industry had both positive and negative effects upon Irish

     participation ... The Irish in the movies often were the Irish as seen

     by Jews, with the disparity and distortion that always attends one

     group's portrayal of another. For example, Jewish families were seen

     as close and peaceful, though tense, but Irish families were usually

     seen as rude and violent." [CLARK/LYNCH, 1980, p. 98, 103]

As Jewish comedian Milton Berle declared: "The Irish ignore anything they can't fight or drink!" [BERLE, M., 1996, p. 303]

 

Generic Slavs? As Caroline Golab observed in 1980,

 

     "The Slavs were not, until recently, popular victims of Hollywood's

     fascinating propensity to stereotype. Of the thousands of movies

     produced in the past sixty years, probably less than two dozen

     contain Slavic-Americans as major or minor characters. What is missing

     in quantity, however, is more than made up in quality. American film

     not only helped perfect the Slavic stereotype, but was largely

     responsible for nationalizing it ... In its heyday, vaudeville made

     frequent use of the caricatured Jew, Italian, or Irishman. The Slav

     made infrequent appearances, if he made any at all. Only in the

     Yiddish theatre did he reappear again and again, usually as the poor,

     dumb, easily duped peasant ... Slavs have such low social standing

     that, more often than not, they are portrayed as being one thin line

     above the blacks in the American social hierarchy." [GOLAB,

     C., 1980, p. 135, 140]

 

An angry professor of Ukrainian descent, Lubomyr Prytulak, was motivated to create his own Internet website (Ukraine Archives) after watching an October 1994 CBS 60 Minutes report that unjustly defamed Ukraine and Ukrainians with a one-sided emphasis on that country's alleged anti-Semitism. The program was entitled "The Ugly Face of Freedom" and Prytulak began an online project to refute 60 Minutes' biased view of Ukrainian history. At the time of the show's airing, complains Prytulak, all the principals in the CBS hierarchy were Jewish, including Laurence Tisch, chairman and CEO; Eric Ober, president of CBS; Dan Hewitt, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes; Jeffrey Fagar, Producer of the "Ugly Faces of Freedom"; and Morley Safar, the host of the report. Two people interviewed in the program, defaming the Ukrainian people, Simon Wisenthal and Yaakov Bleich, were also Jewish. [PRYTULAK, UKRAINE ARCHIVE]

 

Andrew Gregorovich, also of Ukrainian descent, for thirty years the head of the Toronto library system, responded with his own outrage." The program about Ukraine, he wrote, "is an amazing program because after Morley Safar's first two sentences it becomes a textbook example of distortion and propaganda about the relationship of Ukrainians with Jews." The program, the author notes, was apparently timed to coincide with "the first official visit to North America by the President of Ukraine." Among the many outrageous inaccuracies in the CBS program, the Ukrainian word "Zhyd" (which is not pejorative and means "Jew") is translated as "kike." Likewise, at one point in the program Safar declares that "Thousands of Ukrainians joined the [Nazi] SS and marched off to fight for Nazism." "This is said simultaneously," notes Gregorovich,

 

      "with marching men who four times in the program shout 'Slava natsiyi!'

       (Glory to the nation!) To the viewer this sounds as if it is a cheer for

       Nazism but all it reflects is the phonetical similarity of the sound of the

       Ukrainian word for nation to Nazi. The Ukrainians did not join the

       Galicia Division No. 14 (Waffen-Grenadierdivision der SS) to fight

       'for Hitler' as Safer said. They were fighting against the USSR and

       the Russians in order to win independence for Ukraine."

       [GREGOROVICH, 1994]

 

Even one of the men interviewed on 60 Minutes, Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, an American Jew, later stated that "I feel that the broadcast did not convey the true state of affairs in Ukraine. I also would like to state unequivocally that my words were quoted out of the context that they were said." [GREGOROVICH, 1994]  Even the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, felt moved to note that the 60 Minutes program about the Ukraine was "a simplistic and stereotypical image." [KUROPAS, M., 1995] Another individual interviewed on the program, Cardinal Lubachivsky, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, complained that "I must also add that my office was misled as to the actual thrust of the report ... Mr. Fagar [the producer] presented the piece as one about 'post-Communist Ukraine' ... I can only deduce that the goal of the report was to present all Ukrainians as rabid anti-Semites." A few hundred people of Ukrainian heritage demonstrated for a retraction of the program (to no avail) at CBS studios in Washington and New York. [KUROPAS, M., 1995]

 

(In 2000, there even arose a controversial Internet web site posted by people of Serbian descent, calling themselves the Serbian Defense League. This site, especially shrill in its anti-Jewish polemic, holds the Jewish community guilty of injustices against, and defamations of, the Serbian community). [ONLINE: COMPUSERB.com]

 

In 2000 too, an angry author of Native American descent, Olin Tezcatlipoca, noted the hypocrisy of Steven Spielberg's loving and sacred treatment of Jewry in his films and the defamatory historical inaccuracies concerning another people in his firm's film "Road to El Dorado":

 

     "Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks (the producer), and Universal

     Studios (the distributor) [owned by the Jewish Bronfman family]

     present the story of two Spaniards who stow away to the New

     World in the 16th century and wind up saving the village of El

     Dorado from a powerful priest intent on carrying out human

     sacrifices. This is a an outrage, given the reality that the Spanish

     conquerors were responsible for the genocide of 23 million of our

     people -- killing 95% of our population." [TEZCATLIPOCA, O., 4-

     10-2000, p. F3]  [One may also wonder here, of course, about the

     Jewish subtext of a priest who celebrates ritual murder].

 

As Gretchen Bataille and Charles Silet observed in 1980:

 

     "Hollywood has presented an extremely distorted picture of American

      Indian peoples. From our childhood on, Hollywood has bombarded

      us with cartoons and movies which show the Indian as the 'bad guy'

      or, at best, a tragic anachronism from out of the past." [BATAILLE/

      /SILET, 1980, p. 36]

 

 In a surprising corner, Hollywood's popular depictions of Jewish women has even engendered outrage from Jewish females who feel defamed.  One 1998 study by the Zionist women's Hadassah organization complained that in Hollywood Jewish women are commonly portrayed in the mass media as "pushy, controlling, selfish, unattractive, materialistic, high maintenance, shallow, domineering, who nag their husbands and spend all their time cooking and shopping."  [MARKS, M., 4-23-98, p. 5] Rarely publicly spoken, the essence of this Jewish women's outrage is merely an in-house, intra-Jewish psychological war:  Jewish males versus Jewish females. The "Jewish American Princess" and nagging Jewish mother stereotypes are, after all, Jewish creations, perpetuated by Hollywood's Jewish male elite who should recognize either the truths or inaccuracies of the subject.

 

Ironically, despite sensitizing America to the singular righteousness of Judaism, the rampant graphic violence celebrated as entertainment by today's television and motion picture producers has begun to pay disturbing dividends for Jewish efforts to sensitize people to the Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust. In 1994, for example, a group of 69 inner-city Oakland, California, high school students on a field trip to see Schinder's List were evicted from the theatre for rowdy -- and celebratory -- behavior during the most gruesome Nazi murder scenes. [BARTOV, p. 49-50]

 

In July 1991, there was a "grand opening" of Time-Warner's Comedy Central cable channel, a joint venture with Viacom (also Jewish-owned -- see later. Warner is also notorious for its distribution of some of the most anti-social and vicious "rap" songs in history, including a song called "Cop Killa" which evoked widespread condemnation and public protest towards the mega-corporation). The show aired at 5:45 PM, a prime time for children. Richard Clurman describes the program with disgust:

 

       "[The] narrator-host on the roof of an office building screamed: 'The

       smell of urine is wafting up from the streets, and the urge to spit here

       25 stories above the city is almost unbearable.' Then he introduced the

       piece de resistance: 'the Love Goddess,' a bimbo decked out in a gold

       lame evening gown, squealing "Hello pigs," as she slipped into a 'Love

       Harness much like the one she has next to the bed at home.' then she

       wrapped her legs around a greased flagpole atop the building. Burly

       riggers hoisted her inch by inch up the pole, declaring her safe because,

       said one of them, 'I always packed a safe rigging. I have a condemn on

       right now.' For safety, the riggers, the host assures us, are all "wearing

       condoms." As the Love Goddess slowly slithers up the pole she trilled,

       'Oh, honey, this feels good, baby. I'm glad you greased up this pole.

        This makes me hot, makes my hormones dance. This is more satisfying

        than being serviced by Big Foot. Oh, look, I see a woman breast-

       feeding her baby. Oh no, that's Cher with her new boyfriend. I'm ready

       to go husband hunting. I like my men hot, packed and unloading

       everything," she screamed. 'If you want to get off, I had multiples.'

       Narrator: 'We can see up your dress and that's pretty frightening too.'

       Cut to promo for another feature: A wild-eyed comic, after some talk

       about diarrhea, describes what this show is, opening the stalls of

       public restrooms,' and surprising people." [CLURMAN, p. 323-324]

 

In 1995, Delores Tucker of the National Political Congress of Black Women attended a Time-Warner stockholders meeting to read to executives, face to face, the misogynist lyrics of one of the company's bands (Nine Inch Nails). In 1997 a 14 year-old boy in Kentucky murdered three classmates "after a prayer meeting." He told police that "he had seen it done before in a movie [The Basketball Diaries] that featured a teenager dreaming about gunning down students at a Catholic high school." The Associated Press called the company (New Line Cinema, owned by Jewish mogul Ronald Perlman) that made the movie, but Steve Elzer, vice president of publicity for the firm, refused comment. [BRIDIS, 12-5-97]

 

In 1999, Dylan Klebold (whose mother is Jewish) soared to notorious fame when he was involved in the murder of 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. There were mixed reports about his background, but he participated in a Passover seder the month before the atrocity. "Some people in the Jewish community," said a Jewish official at Klebold's mother's home town, "have a sense of disquiet because of the news media playing up the irony of somebody who has a Jewish heritage in their family being involved in an incident of such tragic overtones on Hitler's birthday." [DICKTER, A., 4-30-99, p. 18]

 

In the publishing world, by 1977 this is the ethic that Michael Korda, a popular author of Jewish heritage, and for thirty years the editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster, heralded as a growing trend for popular American culture in his own book, Success!, reflecting both the worst of Old World Talmudic ethics and the absolute stereotype of a Jewish Shylock:

 

       "Before you read any further, stop and tell yourself:

         * It's O.K. to be greedy.

         * It's O.K. to be ambitious.

         * It's O.K. to look out for Number One.

         * It's O.K. to have a good time.

         * It's O.K. to be Machiavellian (if you can get away with it).

         * It's O.K. to recognize that honesty is not always the best policy

            (provided you don't go around saying it).

         * It's O.K. to be a winner.

         * It's always O.K. to be rich." [original author's emphasis; KORDA,

            p. 4]

(Korda is from a very wealthy mass media family. His uncle, Alexander Korda, was "one of the most legendary and flamboyant of all film tycoons" who "brought to stardom" Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, and Vivien Leigh, among others. [KORDA, M., 1979, dustjacket]

 

By 1998, Studios USA (chairman: Greg Meidel), a division of the USA Network (chairman: Barry Diller), both Jewish-directed and both Jewish-owned by MCA and the Bronfman family, bowed to public demands to morally civilize its Jerry Springer "talk show," a program that regularly featured "chair-throwing brawls" and which was "a target for politicians, religious groups, and television executives offended by its fights, coarse language, and nudity." [BRAXTON, G, p. F2]  The Dallas Morning News described Springer (the son of German-Jewish Jews who escaped the Holocaust) as "a bottom feeder whose syndicated talk show epitomizes the worse television has to offer ... He once apologized for writing checks to prostitutes while serving as the married mayor [1977-81] of Cincinnati." [BARK, p. 41A] In 1998 Springer, the "Sultan of Sleaze," reportedly paid $600,000 to ensure that a secret film of him "romping with a 21-year-old porn star while her stepmother looked on" wouldn't publicly surface. [COREY/WITHERIDGE, 11-2-98] (Bruce Dubrow, also of Jewish heritage, the Springer show's Executive Producer, "created and launched both the 'Sally Jessy Raphael Show' and 'The Jerry Springer Show." [STARR, M., 1-4-99, p. 74] He later became Executive producer of the Joy Browne show. Talk show host Rikki Lake is Jewish too. Sally Jessy Raphael's father was also Jewish.) [JEWHOO, 2000]

 

A kindred spirit is TV personality Geraldo Rivera (son of a Puerto Rican father and Jewish mother). The Washington Post noted that Rivera was "the man who ... spent much of the 80s and 90s getting rich off his trashy daytime talk show, to which he lured teen satanists and mother-daughter prostitutes, while he brawled with skinheads who broke his nose and had fat from his buttocks implanted surgically in his forehead." [GROVE, p. C1]

 

Yet another Jewish TV talk show host was blasted in the Washington Post. "The most vulgar show I've seen," wrote Patricia Priest, "was a recent 'Maury Povich' episode. The program featured an unbelievably crude discussion of women's breasts." [PRIEST, p. C1]  Executive Producer of the Maury Povich show? Amy Rosenblum, a former producer at the Sally Jesse Raphael Show. Earlier in his career, Povich did television news; moving from Chicago to CBS in Los Angeles, Dick Goldberg was his news show 's producer. Alfred Geller is Povich's agent. [POVICH, M. 1991, p. 131, 207] And Povich's father, he notes, "was the respected, not to mention all-powerful, sports editor and columnist for the Washington Post." [POVICH, M., 1991, p. 46]

Executive Producer of the Howie Mandel show? Diane Rappaport. And further behind many of such shows is "one of television's foremost specialists on syndication launches," Bonnie Kaplan, who has promoted a variety of talk show formats, including the Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, Ophra Winfrey, and Joan Rivers shows, among others. [FEDER, p. 49]

A 2001 column by Michael Kelly in the Washington Post noted the influence of Jeff Zucker upon popular culture:

     "Mr. Zucker is the very role model for us. He is the president of NBC Entertainment.
     As such, he is responsible for 'Fear Factor,' NBC's 'reality show' in which
     people who are desperate enough for money are induced to risk bodily harm
      and endure national humiliation. Contestants on 'Fear Factor' have allowed hundreds
     of rats to swarm over their bodies and have been chased, in protective clothing,
     by attack dogs. Mr. Zucker mocks those who find something wrong with this.
     'We're having fun, we're having a great summer,' he told reporters this week.
     'Get a life.'" [KELLY, M., 7-25-01]

Yet neither the likes of Singer or Rivera or Zucker can compare to the level of decadence reached on a television talk show in Israel. In 1995 Haim Kreissel wrote with alarm in the Jerusalem Post:

 

     "On January 9, the TV talk show Popoliticia featured a discussion on

     snuff movies [films that depict people actually tortured and killed for

     later viewing pleasure] ...  The tragic result of all the publicity will be an

     increased demand for such movies. Far worse, some Israelis may feel the

     need to produce them themselves ... Two well known Israeli

     philosophers, Adi Tzemah and Yosef Agrassi, were invited to the

     program ... To summarize the philosophers' positions, morality and

     esthetics are two disparate areas, and never the twain shall meet. While

     both philosophers condemned those who made snuff movies, both saw

     a possible esthetic value in these movies. They appeared to be

     recommending that we judge them on aesthetic grounds, much as

     people used to watch gladiator shows. Woe to the society whose wise

     men think along such lines." [KREISSEL, p. 6]

     

 

**********************************

 

Two of America's most influential newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post  (which, in turn, owns Newsweek), are owned by families of Jewish heritage -- the Ochs/Sulzbergers and Grahams, respectively. Chairwoman Martha Graham's father, Eugene Meyer, bought the Post in 1933. At the Times, Sulzberger-related executives in recent years have included Arthur Sulzberger, Steve and Michael Golden, and Daniel Cohen. Other influential Jewish positions at the Times by the early 1980s included the Executive Editor, Managing Editor, Associate Editor, and Editorial Page Editor. (Another Jew, Fred Michael Hechinger, was president of the New York Times Company Foundation).

As New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel (who was with the Times from the early '50s to 1994) confessed in his 1999 autobiography:

      "Instead of idols and passions, I worshiped words and argument, becoming
      part of an unashamedly Jewish verbal invasion of American culture. It was
      especially satisfying to realize the wildest fantasy of the world's anti-Semites:
       Inspired by our heritage as keepers of the book, creators of law, and storytellers
       supreme, Jews in America did finally achieve a disproportionate influence in
       universities and in all media of communication. Punch Sulzberger [owner of
      the New York Times] unconsciously abetted this movement. He felt born to
      the publisher's chair and had none of his father's hang-ups about being Jewish.
       Israel's ambassadors to the United Nations lived just a few floors below his
      Fifth Avenue apartment and always enjoyed easy access to him and to his table
      at The Times. Within a few years of Punch's ascendancy, there came a time
      when not only the executive editor -- A. M. Rosenthal -- and I but ALL the top
       editors listed on the paper's masthead were Jews. Over vodka in the publisher's
       back room, this was occasionally mentioned an any impolitic condition, but
      it was altered only gradually, without any affirmative action on behalf of
      Christians." [author's emphasis: FRANKEL, M., 1999, p. 400-401]

 

Joseph Goulden notes the editorial bent at the influential New York paper: "Having reported from Cairo, [Rick] Smith understood the Arabs' side of the endless Middle East conflict; while not anti-Israel by any means, he came under constant criticism from [Executive Editor A.M.] Rosenthal for supposedly 'slanting' bureau stories towards the Arabs." [GOULDING, p. 303]

 

The Times acquired the Boston Globe in the 1993; it also owns 21 other newspapers throughout America, 10 magazines -- including Family Circle, Golf Digest, and Tennis, and eight TV and two radio stations. In 1999, the Boston Globe noted that "in a surprise move that ended 126 years of leadership of the Boston Globe by the Taylor family, the New York Times yesterday replaced publisher Benjamin B. Taylor with Richard H. Gilman, senior vice president of operations at the Times." [JUROWITZ, p. A1] Gilman is also Jewish.

 

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and the Washington Post's Katherine Graham are also "co-chairmen" of the International Herald Tribune, the best known international English daily newspaper. [David Ignatius stepped down as the Executive Editor of the International Herald Tribune in 2002] The Time's daily rival in Manhattan, the New York Post, has also been owned -- off and on over the years -- by Jewish entrepreneurs -- at one time owned by heiress Dorothy Schiff -- granddaughter of famous investment banker Jacob Schiff. (Peter Kalikow bought the Post in 1988). In 1976, Schiff's biographer noted that "the owner, publisher and editor in chief of the [New York Post] is Mrs. Dorothy Schiff, who has been called 'the most powerful woman in New York,' an accolade she rejects." [POTTER, J., 1976, p. 9] Her managing editor for the paper? Byron Greenberg. [POTTER, J., 1976, p. 16] Earlier, "J. David Stern , whose papers included the Philadelphia Record, bought the Post in the early 1930s and dropped the word 'Evening' from its masthead." [POTTER, J., 1976, p. 161]

The New York Post during Schiff's tenure (1950s to 1970s) became not only a mouthpiece for Zionism, but for the terrorist Irgun organization. As Jeffrey Potter notes:

     "'I don't think Dolly [owner Dorothy Schiff] was nearly as aware as I
      was of the political direction of the paper," Paul [Sann, then Executive
      Editor of the New York Post] says."[Her husband] Thackery was very
      close to the Irgunists and Menachem Begin. They were a must --
      conferences, interviews -- but we were pushing their cause instead of
      covering it. I was against those bastards -- I don't knock them now they
      got a stake -- but they were very, very suspect to me. I knew some of
      them; they were creepy. They had an inordinate access to our columns.'

"Dorothy," continues Potter in his biography of her,

     "it is clear, was not wholly unaware of the way her paper's columns
      were being used: 'These terrorists [Schiff said] and other pressure
      groups would come to [my non-Jewish husband] Ted in the office.
      I think it was a psychological thing; he was jealous, he wanted his
      own thing, and walked right into their hands. I didn't know they were
      terrorists until I found out from one of our reporters, Fern Eckman,
      but of course the Haganah [the early Israeli army] were more moderate.
      Ted was apolitical originally, and in becoming far left, he may not
      have understood he was in the hands of fellow travelers ... Henrietta
      Szold, who was of German Jewish descent and started Hadassah
      [the Zionist women's organization], was the first of the early Zionist
      leaders I met. I was in my teens and told her that I wanted to dedicate
      myself to Palestine [today known as Israel]. She asked me what I could
      do and I said I could sew. She didn't seem to think that would be useful.'"
       [POTTER, J., 1976, p. 201-202]

 

By 1979, one survey identified 25-30% of the employees of the elite and influential media organizations as Jews. (No further study has been done to chart this trajectory in recent years, nor explore the details of their percentages in the highest echelons of power. "When one looks at the key decision-making positions," noted Jewish scholar Charles Silberman about the 25-30% figure, "the Jewish role appears to be even larger." [SILBERMAN, p. 153]). These "elite" media corporations of the most weighty influence in the study included the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, and the ABC, CBS, and NBC television networks, as well as PBS (Public Broadcasting System).

 

Also by the 1980s, at least three senior editors at the Washington Post were also Jewish, as was the former editor of the Wall Street Journal and its then-current Managing Editor. A Jew could also be found as the Editor of Newsweek, the Managing Editor of Time, the Editor of the U.S. News and World Report, as well as the Presidents of CBS and ABC News Divisions, and company presidents of both PBS and National Public Radio.  [WHITFIELD, American, p. 134-35, SILBERMAN, Certain, p. 153-154]  Maurice ("Reese") Schonfeld was also president at Ted Turner's CNN, and a member of its Board of Directors, at the company's emergence in 1980. In earlier years, Burt Reinhardt was a Schonfeld partner in a venture with a UPI news service. "As his ITNA service grew, Schonfeld became known in the business as the Electronic News Godfather." Reinhardt later became executive vice-president at CNN. Sam Zelman started out as vice-president and executive producer. [WHITTEMORE, H., 1990, p. 12, 28, 57, 69] (CNN President Schonfeld later became Chairman of International Network News and head of the TV Food Network). By the 1990s, Bradley Siegel was president of TNT (Turner Network Television).

 

As American-born Israeli Ze'ev Chafets noted in 1985:

 

     "Many of America's leading editors are Jewish, including A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, Howard Simons, managing editor of the Washington Post, Henry Grunwald of Time, Marvin Stone of U.S. News and World Report, William Shawn of the New Yorker, and Edward Kosner of New York magazine. Recently Norman Pearlstine was appointed editor of the Wall Street Journal." [CHAFETS, 1985, p. 277]

 

By 1987 the President of Times-Mirror (Los Angeles Times) was Jewish (David Laventhol, honored by the Anti-Defamation League in 1990), as was the editor of Fortune magazine. [CHRISTOPHER, p. 151-152]  Richard Schlossberg III was also CEO of the Los Angeles Times in the 1990s. Although by 1998 the New York Post was owned by Rupert Murdoch -- a non-Jewish media baron with close ties to Jewish organizations -- the paper's president and publisher was Martin Singerman. (Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting has also been headed by a steady series of Jewish directors including Barry Diller, Joe Roth, and Peter Chernin. The CEO of Murdoch's Fox Kids Worldwide? Haim Saban. Murdoch's public relations agent? One Howard Rubenstein. (Rubenstein, noted the New York Daily News, "is one of the city's most influential and respected powerbrokers." [PIENCIAK, p. 20] Murdoch has also "contributed to the favourite Jewish charity," noted London’s Daily Telegraph, "a smart move in a Jewish-run industry."  [ROBERTS, G., p. 1])

 

One of Murdoch's former Jewish executives, Michael Clinger, at another media holding, "until recently ... lived in the plush Swiss ski resort of St. Mortiz before recently seeking refuge in Israel."  There was, in fact, an outstanding arrest warrant for Clinger and he was formally sought by Interpol for "conspiracy, fraud, and insider dealing ... He remained a fugitive from justice. The last attempt at extradition, through Interpol in February [1996] remains unanswered by Israel." [FARRELLY, p. B3]  In 2000, yet another former executive of a Murdoch company found himself in serious trouble. Once a former manager of the New York Post and also a millionaire real estate developer, Abraham Hirschfeld was convicted of hiring a hit man to murder former business partner Stanley Stahl. [WONG, E., 6-17-2000, p. B2]

One of Mudoch's biographers (Thomas Kiernan) notes that

     "Murdoch ... as publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Post, had a large Jewish
      constituency, as he did to a lesser degree with New York magazine and The Village
     Voice. Not only had the pre-Murdoch Post readership been heavily Jewish, so too,
     were the present Post advertisers. Moreover, most of Murdoch's closest friends
     business advisers were wealthy, influential New York Jews intensely active in
     pro-Israel causes ... There was no way, then, that Murdoch could allow the Post
     to relax its traditional advocacy of Israel as he turned it into New York's main
     organ of Reaganite orthodoxy. His first solution to the problem was to expand
     and banner the paper's stable of politically conservative columnists who happened
     to be Jewish. Norman Podhoretz and Dorothy Rabinowitz were just two of the    
     Post's right-wing voices ... His second solution, which was to use the paper's
     news pages to glorify Israel more intensively than ever while regularly deriding
     the actions of its Arab enemies, was not so subtle ... Much of the Post's reportage
     of events in the region was shamelessly slanted, distorted, and on more than one
     occasion, fabricated from the bare, dry, factual bones of wire service copy."
     [KIERNAN, T., 1986, p. 262]

 

Another non-Jewish mogul who spent some time in the Hollywood limelight was Kirk Kerkorian, of Armenian heritage. He bought control of MGM in its dying years in the 1970s, and later United Artists. And, like anyone who expects to survive in the mass media world, he too surrounded himself with Jewish partners, executives, agents, lawyers and others of the standard movie-making and news world parade. His first choice to run the studio was his "tennis-playing friend" Herb Jaffe, who turned his offer down. [BART, p. 32] Others at Kerkorian's MGM included president and CEO Frank Rosenfelt; Frank Rothman (later CEO of MGM/UA); and Frank Yablans (another head of MGM at a different time). When Gentile Alan Ladd Jr. was picked to be share power as president and CEO with Yablans, "the nucleus of his own team" was all Jewish: Jay Kanter, Richard Berger, and John Goldwyn. [BART, p. 231]  Other prominent Kerkorian-era chiefs included Chief Financial Officer Sidney Sapowitz; production heads David Begelman, Daniel Melnick, Freddie Fields and Paula Weinstein; Herbert Solow; Peter Bart; lawyer Gregory Bautzer ("Kerkorian's eyes and ears in the filmmaking community"); [BART, p. 17] Roger Birnbaum, Ileen Maisel, and Lee Rich, among others. Kerkorian had earlier built his fortune in Las Vegas, where he had many Jewish business associates, including Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz. [BART, p. 47-51]  Kerkorian was also beholding to Jewish criminal financier Michael Milken who helped sell MGM "junk bonds" to finance some Kerkorian enterprises. [BART, p. 129-130]

 

Perhaps as summary to all this, former MGM Jewish executive Peter Bart notes that when Kerkorian eventually began negotiating over a year's time to sell MGM off, the then-head of the company, Alan Ladd, "became a sort of Wandering Jew of executives, which was ironic since he was he was one of the few non-Jews to ever become a head of production." [BART, p. 255]  There was apparently a Jew in the shadows here though. "The strongest influence on Laddie's [Ladd's] career was probably [his father's] second wife, a former starlet and agent named Sue Carol." (She was also Jewish ; her original name was Evelyn Lederer). [FABER, STEPHEN/GREEN, MARC; cited at FIRM, 2001]

 

In the news world, by the late 1980s, six of the top seven editorial positions at the New York Times were held by Jews (their correspondent to Israel was also a Jewish-American, Thomas Friedman), and three of the four most influential positions at the Wall Street Journal.  As noted Joshua Halberstam in 1997, "The Wall Street Journal ... has been under the editorial control of Jews for years (Warren Phillips was the CEO of Dow-Jones, the company that owns the paper, and the paper's former editor-in-chief is Norman Pearlstine, who is now the editor of Time)." [HALBERSTAM, p. 19]  (Warren Phillips was succeeded as head of Dow-Jones by another Jewish executive, Peter Kann. Dow-Jones also controls the economic journal, Barron's).

 

A note here about Pearlstine, former editor of the Wall Street Journal and now chief at Time magazine, and the interconnectedness not only within the upper echelons of the mass media, but crossing into the financial world of Wall Street too. Pearlstine -- with a presumed responsibility to the credo of "objective" journalism -- has been accused of being far too friendly with some of Wall Street's most prominent (Jewish) financial predators. "As Pearlstine began to settle into his new job [at the Wall Street Journal]," notes Francis Dealy, a fellow executive at Dow-Jones, "he began to relish the relationships formed with Wall Street celebrity deal makers the likes of Ronald Perelman, who acquired Revlon in a hostile takeover, Henry Kravits, of RJR-Nabisco fame, and Joe Flom ... perhaps the biggest mergers-and-acquisitions attorney on Wall Street." [DEALY, p. 239]

 

In March 1991 reporter Laurie Cohen submitted a formerly approved story at the Journal to her superior, Dan Hertzberg, about the looming default of $400 million by corporate raider Eli Jacobs. The story in its original form never made print. "We can't run that," Hertzberg eventually told Cohen, "Jacobs is a good friend of Norm's." [DEALY, p. 247] When the story did finally make the Journal, it was rewritten and appeared in the back of the stock section; the word "fraud" had been excised. [DEALY, p. 251]

 

Pearlstine admitted in an interview that "I'm a friend of Ronnie's [Perelman] and Nancy [Pearlstine's wife] is on his payroll. [Dow Jones executives] Peter [Kann] and Warren [Phillips] know all that ... Yes, I've been to seder [a Jewish religious gathering] at Ronnie's, and so have a lot of other people like Joe Flom, Eli [Jacobs], and others ... Ronnie and I come from the same suburban Philadelphia background ... Besides, I like to know the people I write about..." [DEALY, p. 307]  In the wake of the many criminal accusations against Michael Milken, when the junk-bond king decided upon a massive public relations campaign to counter his negative image, he hired Norman Pearlstine's old girlfriend, Linda Robinson, to lead the task. [DEALY, p. 308]

 

(In 1999, Time magazine designed a publicity stunt, soliciting votes by Internet from people around the world for a "Person of the Century" for their year 2000 issue. Initial balloting placed Jesus Christ in the lead, but he was ruled by Time management to be ineligible because he wasn't born in the past century. With Christ's rejection, by existing vote tally, that left Adolf Hitler as the tentative new #1. This choice is also offensive to Jewish sensibilities. Whether "Person of the Century" has anything to do with "good" or not, this prospect of Hitler in the lead didn't sit well with Jewish groups so, not surprisingly, they banded together in a crusade to stuff votes for their own man, assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who soon led the "Person of the Century" pack.) [KURTZ, p. A12])

 

There is often an incestuous nature between members of the mass media and its newsworthy subjects. Jewish newscaster Ted Koppel and former Jewish Secretary of State Henry Kissinger "are old friends." [HERTSGAARD, 1991, p. 53] In 1982, a 60 Minutes producer, Bill Willson, tried to get reporter Mike Wallace to do an expose on Katherine Graham, head of the Washington Post. "I don't think I want to do that story," Wallace told Willson, "Kay Graham is a friend of mine, and I play tennis with her in the summers of Martha's Vineyard. Why don't you get someone else to do it?" [HERTSGAARD, M., 1991, p. 53] For what it's worth, both Wallace and Graham are of Jewish heritage, as is 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt who finally vetoed the Graham story. For Hewitt's part, his "two closest friends on the West Coast were Lew and Edie Wasserman." (To Hewitt's credit, a program entitled "Hollywood and the Mob," that included Wasserman, destroyed that friendship). [HERTSGAARD, M., p. 53]

 

In a 1991 story about the newsroom at 60 Minutes, reporter Mark Hertsgaard singled out Hewitt and Wallace as chronic sexist offenders, for years sexually harassing their female employees:

 

     "Mike Wallace's abuse of underlings is legendary. Again and again,

     colleagues chose the word bully to describe his lacerating treatment

     of subordinates ... Wallace is accused of repeatedly making lewd

     comments about women's physiques and bedroom abilities, pinching

     their bottoms and both snapping and unhooking their bra straps."

 

For Hewitt's part, former 60 Minutes reporter Sally Quinn wrote that "Everybody knows that Hewitt makes passes at women with aspirations. But nobody talks about it. If you're smart, you'll keep your mouth shut." Another female employee told Hertsgaard about Hewitt's physical attack upon her:

 

     "Before she knew it, he grabbed her and started to kiss her. With

     great strength, he grasped both her forearms right below her elbows

     and 'rammed me up against the wall ... I was shaking. I remember

     he had stuck tongue down my throat' ... The women who say they

     experienced the harassment emphasize that they refrained from protest

     for fear that, in a community as small as network TV, making public

     accusations against men as powerful as Wallace and Hewitt would

     mean they would never get hired or promoted again." [HERTSGAARD,

     M., 1991, p. 82]

 

Reporter Hertsgaard later had the opportunity to expand about workroom conditions at 60 Minutes in a feminist Internet journal, Mothers Who Think. His original article had appeared in Rolling Stone magazine (whose editor is also Jewish, Jann Wenner). As Hertsgaard later noted:

 

     "The entire piece almost never ran because Don Hewitt tried to kill

     it and (Rolling Stone editor and publisher) Jann Wenner almost went

     along with him. They did emasculate the piece by taking out a lot of

     the damaging material. You'll see in there that there is one basic

     episode involving Don. There were four that I had reported ... Don

     tried to kill it by talking to Jann Wenner privately, asking, 'What is

     this story you've got on me?" [LLOYD, C., ONLINE]

 

    

******************************

    
"Of the three leading papers," wrote Charles Silberman in 1985, "only the Washington Post has a non-Jew ... as an editorial chief; but there is no shortage of Jews in top ranks of the Post." [SILBERMAN, p. 153] (Washington Post Jewish newcomers in top editorial posts for the 1990s included Meg Greenfield and Stephen Rosenfeld). Jews had become "equally influential" in the management of TV news and many Jewish network correspondents were "household names," including CBS's Mike Wallace [Myron Wallach], whose son, Chris Wallace, became the White House correspondent for NBC News), Morley Safar, Bernard Goldberg, Daniel Schorr [Early in his career in 1955, "Schorr arrived in Moscow soon after NBC had placed its own [Jewish] correspondent, Irving R. Levine, there."] [SLATER, R., 1988, p. 181], Leslie Stahl, and Morton Dean of CBS; Marvin Kalb (whose broadcasting brother Bernard eventually became President Ronald Reagan's press secretary; Marvin is currently the executive director of Harvard's Shorenstein Media Center) and Irving R. Levine of NBC; and Herbert Kaplow, Barbara Walters, and Ted Koppel of ABC (Koppels' daughter, Andrea, is CNN's State Department correspondent).

 

Matt Lauer is co-host of the Today Show on NBC. Famed Internet independent journalist Matt Drudge is also Jewish. [JEWHOO, 2000] Giselle Fernandez, anchor of NBC's Sunday night news, has a Jewish mother. Bill Maher, of Politically Incorrect? "His father was Irish Catholic, but he identifies more with his mother's Jewish heritage. ('My mother and I really get along because she's like me. It's hard to explain, but my father and my sister acted more Irish. You just have to know what that means.')" [RUSOFF, J., 2001] Charlie Rose has his own program on PBS. He also co-hosts 60 Minutes II. He is a former Executive Producer of the Bill Moyers Journal and anchorman at CBS News programs Face the Nation, CBS Morning News, and other programs. Other prominent Jewish newscasters have included Jeff Greenfield and Martin Agronsky. Agronsky's career spanned all three commercial networks and PBS. "When Agronsky retired in 1987, 'Agronsky and Company' was still television's highest rated political talk show ... Agronsky's interest in Israel sustained itself throughout his life; even in his retirement, Agronsky gave many lectures on Middle East affairs, donating his fees to the United Jewish Appeal." [WALLACE-WELLS, B., 1999, p. 6] (Prominent Jewish executives at PBS for the late 1990s have included the Director of Corporate Communications, Stu Kantor. And, earlier, Jewish mogul Walter Annenberg's philanthropy of $150 million to public TV we may safely presume to have been influential in policy: "He that pays the piper calls the tune." Director of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and its Norman Lear Center? Also Jewish, like the two philanthropists, is Marty Kaplan).

 

Joan Lunden was a regular on ABC's Good Morning America. Famous (Jewish) news anchorwoman Jessica Savitch died in a 1983 car accident with Martin Fischbein, a vice president at the New York Post. Wolf Blitzer is CNN's White House correspondent; he formerly edited a journal published by the formal Israeli lobbying arm in Washington, AIPAC, moving then to the Jewish Chronicle and Jerusalem Post. Likewise, Charles Fenyvesi practiced his journalism skills at AIPAC's Near East Report before moving on to the Washington Post. [KENEN, I., p. 112] Reporter Bob Simon of the 60 Minutes II show has a residence in Israel. [WALZ, 1-5-98] John Donovan, ABC Nightline correspondent and occasional anchor, is married to Israeli Ranit Mishori.

 

"Objective" news? Take the case of behind-the-scenes world of famous Jewish newswoman/interviewer Barbara Walters. Her father Louis was a "nightclub entrepreneur and original owner of the Latin Quarter") [BLACKWELL, E., 1973, p. 509] Carli Laklan (in a book written for adolescents about famously successful career women) notes that the Walters family once lived "on an offshore island in what was practically a castle and staffed with servants. [Barbara's father] showered the family with luxuries. After the years of near poverty it was all quite overwhelming. Barbara was enrolled in a private school. Every day the chauffeur drove her to the club where she kissed her parents good morning." [LAKLIN, C., 1983, p. 155] Walters' husband also merits some attention here, particularly the influence of her husband, Merv Adelson. He has headed Hollywood powerhouse Lorimar-Pictures Telepictures Corporation, which has a long line of television hits (Eight is Enough, Dallas, The Waltons, Knott's Landing, Falcon Crest, among others). More intriguingly, notes Dan Moldea, Adelson was a "longtime business associate and friend of [Jewish mobster] Moe Dalitz and other underworld figures." [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 413] He was also once co-owner with Dalitz and others of the La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California, described by some as "the playground for the mob." [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 413] An activist in Israeli and other Jewish causes (he co-chaired, for example, Israel's fiftieth anniversary celebration aired on CBS), Adelson also has long been involved in Las Vegas circles as well, including co-ownership with Irwin Molasky in the Colonial House casino.

 

News anchor Peter Jennings had a Jewish wife, Kati Marton (Chairwoman of the Committee to Protect Journalists), and CBS anchorwoman Connie Chung's husband (talk-show host Maury Povich) is also Jewish. Newswoman Diane Sawyer's husband is Jewish film director Mike Nichols. NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, also Jewish, is married to Alan Greenspan, one of the most powerful men in the country; he's the (Jewish) Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. When (Catholic-raised) Cokie Roberts (today a prominent ABC news commentator) married Steve Roberts, (today a CNN/Late Edition panelist) it was "an enormous problem" for his Jewish family who preferred a Jewish spouse for him. [MCELWAINE, 1/2-98]  CNN foreign news correspondent Christianne Amanpour is married to State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.

 

Earlier pioneer Jewish television personalities have included the influential likes of David Susskind, Laurence Spivak (host of seminal news show Meet the Press), Irving Kupcinet, Stuart Schulberg, Edwin Newman, and many others.

 

 "The greatest concentration of Jews, however," says Charles Silberman,

 

      "is at the producer level -- and it is the producers who decide which

       stories will go on the air, and how long, and in what order, they will run.

       In 1982, before a shift in assignments, the executive producers of all

       three evening newscasts were Jewish, as were the executive producers

       of CBS's 60 Minutes and ABC's 20/20. And Jews are almost equally

       prominent at the 'senior producer' and 'broadcast producer' levels as

       well as in senior management. When Reuven Frank stepped down as

       President of NBC News in 1984, for example, he was replaced by

       Laurence Grossman, who left the Presidency of PBS to take the

       position." [SILBERMAN, p. 154]

 

Frank's term noted above as head of NBC News was his second: his first term at the helm was from 1968-73. The Jewish string of news chiefs at rival CBS was also long -- Jews headed the news division for the first thirty years of the company.  Sig Mickelson was the president of CBS News from the position's inception, from 1949 to 1961. Richard Salant then followed from 1961-1964. Then came Fred Friendly, (born Ferdinand Wachenheimer), also Jewish. [SCHOENBURN, p. 58] (Friendly "never graduated from college but ended up a professor at Columbia University.") [JARVICK, 1997, p. xvi] Salant returned to the CBS News presidential position in 1966, serving to 1979. [HAMMMOND, p. 36, 100] In a book about television documentaries from 1965-1975, at least 11 -- possibly 13 -- of 21 prominent network producers/directors highlighted in photographs are Jewish: NBC's Fred Freed, Reuven Frank, CBS's Don Hewitt, Richard Salant, John Sarnik, Irv Drasnin, Perry Wolff, Morley Safar, Stephen Fleischman; ABC's Avram Westin; and Martin Carr who worked at various times for all three major networks). [HAMMOND, 1981]

 

Israeli Ze'ev Chafets notes that:

 

      "In his famous study of television news in 1973, Daniel Jay Epstein

       interviewed thirty-six network news producers and editors -- twenty-one

       of whom turned out to be Jews." [CHAFETS, 1985, p. 277]

 

(As Epstein stated it, "A majority [of the 36] came from middle or upper class families, in which a father usually was a businessman. Twenty-one were of Jewish descent; none were black or came from lower-class backgrounds." [EPSTEIN, EJ, 1973, p. 223])

 

Likewise, when the head of the entire company of ABC, Leonard Goldenson stepped down in the 1980s, Fred Silverman took his place.  In the same era, as further example, at one point both CBS Morning News' "managers of news planning," Jon Katz and Steve Isaacs, were both Jewish. And who negotiated their salaries? A Jewish talent agent, Richard Liebner, who represented over 100 CBS News employees from anchor stars to field producers. [BOYER, p. 45, 217]

 

In 1989, a media watch group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), meticulously examined 865 of ABC News' influential Nightline programs, finding that "working, middle-class and poor people and their representatives are provided no opportunity to speak out." 89% of the U.S. guests on the program were found to be men, and 92% white. (No mention was made of what percentage of those "white" guests were Jewish, although of the top four people to have most repeatedly visited Nightline, two government officials -- Henry Kissinger and Elliott Abrams -- were Jewish).  And not only was Ted Koppel, the on-air host of Nightline, and its Executive Producer, Daniel Kaplan, Jewish, but so was the director of FAIR, the investigating organization: Jeff Cohen. [LEE/SOLOMON, 1990, p. 26-30]

 

In 1987, Steve Friedman, "the man often credited with making the 'Today' show No. 1 in the morning ratings" left the program.  [BELKIN, L. 6-6-87] He was both Jewish and the show's Executive Producer. In the 1990s, Jewish television producer dominance has endured.  In 1999, Friedman became the Executive Producer of This Morning at CBS. Don Hewitt continued to be the Executive Producer of CBS's 60 Minutes (its core team of [Jewish] reporters has long been Morley Safar, Leslie Stahl, and Mike Wallace; its "chief investigative producer" was Lowell Bergman), [HOROWITZ, D., 1999, p. 192] In the 1990s, Victor Neufeld held the Executive Producer position at ABC's 20-20, Jeff Zucker was the new Executive Producer at NBC's Today show, Jeff Gralnick headed the NBC Nightly News, Neal Shapiro was top man at NBC's Dateline and Bob Reichbloom was in charge at Good Morning America. (By 2000, this show's Executive Producer was Shelley Ross). Susan Zirinsky has been the executive producer of CBS's 48 Hours since 1996. The president of NBC News was Andrew Lack (replaced by Neal Shapiro in 2001), the president of CBS News was Eric Ober, and the president of ABC News was David Westin. The head of the CNN news division is Rick Kaplan.

 

And a common Jewish perspective of their roles throughout the field of American journalism? This from a Jewish scholar, Charles Silberman:

 

      "As Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post puts it, 'Jews are

       foreign correspondents in their own country.'" [SILBERMAN, p. 154]

 

Ze'ev Chafets was born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan, but emigrated to Israel and became an official at the government mass media office there. "During my years at the Press Office," he notes,

 

     "I made it a rule not to raise the question of the religious or ethnic

     identity of visiting journalists [from other countries] but often Jewish

     correspondents did so themselves. Sometimes it was done in a

     transparent attempt to get trust and cooperation, sometimes in an

     off-hand way in which an American reporter of Italian ancestry might

     mention his grandparents' origins to a government official in Rome;

     but usually it signaled that the journalist felt personally connected to

     the country." [CHAFETS, p.282]

 

"Journalists such as Anthony Lewis and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times [Friedman worked as a summer intern for the CIA in 1975 after college graduation] [TWERSKY, p. 80], and Mike Wallace of CBS,” says J. J. Goldberg, "make little secret of the fact that they feel an attachment to Israel, and that this attachment might make them focus more closely on Israel, warts and all ...  [GOLDBERG, JJ, p. 282] ...   Columnists most often figured as defenders of Israel and Jewish interests [include]: William Safire and A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Frank Rich of the New York Times, and New Republic editor Martin Peretz and literary editor, Leon Wieseltier." [GOLDBERG, JJ,] As longtime 60 Minutes reporter Mike Wallace once wrote, "In a variety of private ways, I had contributed my efforts to raising money and support for Israeli causes." [WALLACE/GATES, 1984, p. 298-299]

 

As Ze'ev Chafets noted in 1985:

 

       "There are a large number of Jews among America's most

       prominent syndicated columnists, including Anthony Lewis,

       Flora Lewis, and William Safire of the New York Times; Meg

       Greenfield, Steven Rosenfeld, and Richard Cohen of the Washington

       Post; Joseph Kraft, Ben Wattenberg, and Roger Simon. The list

       of [Jewish] journalists who have covered the Middle East in recent

       years includes Ned Temko of the Christian Science Monitor,

       Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Abdullah (Mark)

       Schleifer of NBC, Robert Simon and Bruno Wassertheil of CBS,

       Jay Bushinsky and Jane Friedman of CNN, Brooke Kroeger and Mel

       Laytner of UPI, Marcus Eliason and Art Max of AP, Jonathan Broder

       of the Chicago Tribune, and Charlie Weiss and Ron Pernstein of Voice

       of America." [CHAFETS, 1985, p. 277]

How does one get to such prominence? Perhaps Anthony Lewis is an example. His father was a co-partner in Crown Fabrics, one of New York's "leading firms in the garment center." As Roy Cohn notes:

     "[Jewish Supreme Court Justice] Felix Frankfurter got Arthur Hays Sulzberger
      [also Jewish], publisher of The New York Times, to hire Tony from the
     Washington News and assign him to cover the Supreme Court." [ZION, S., 1988,
      p. 31]
     

Moving along in the media ownership world, the Village Voice, New York's "alternative voice" to the mainstream media, was bought by Leonard Stern in 1985 (editor: Richard Goldstein; publisher: David Schneiderman). Stern's Hartz Mountain Pet Company settled two anti-trust suits in 1979 for $100 million and he "was forced to pay $640,000 in back pay to workers as part of a settlement of a 1974 union-organizing fight." [BRENNER, p. 347]   Mr. Stern personally pledged $5 million to the United Jewish Appeal in 1974, part of a campaign that year that "unabashedly raised money in staggering amounts to send to Israel." [ISAACS, p. 266]

 

The Voice's weekly counterpart in Los Angeles, the LA Weekly, is also Jewish-owned and edited. Its creator and first editor was Jay Levin. He and three others, including Joie Davidow, were co-founders of the paper; Davidow later founded LA Style and "the Latino-culture magazine - Si." Stuart Goldman was the first music editor and Susan Mogul the photography editor, later replaced by Howard Rosenberg. Michael Sigman was the general manager, later publisher.  A later Executive Editor was Harold Meyerson. In 1995, the aforementioned Leonard Stern's Stern Publishing company bought the LA Weekly. [BURK, G., 11-28-98, p. 10] Stern eventually sold his newspaper holdings in 2000 to the president and publisher of the Village Voice, David Schneiderman, who headed an investment group. This new conglomerate, Village Voice Media (CEO: Schneiderman; president: Arthur Howe), now had collected a growing stable of "alternative" newspapers across the country including the Village Voice and LA Weekly, the Nashville Scene, the Cleveland Free Times, City Pages (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Ace Magazine (Lexington, Kentucky), and the Long Island Voice. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1-6-2000, p. C4; BERGER, K., 1-13-2000]

In Chicago, Jane Levine is the publisher of the Chicago Reader, yet another ideologically "alternative" paper. Levine's investors' "also own Washington City Paper and half of the East Bay Express in Berkeley, California). [COLFORD, P., 6-11-98, p. E4] Stephen Mindich, also Jewish, owns the Phoenix Media communications Group which includes the "alternative" weeklies the Boston Phoenix (the largest weekly newspaper in New England), the Worcester [Mass.] Phoenix, the Providence [Rhode Island] Phoenix, and another in Portland, Maine. He also owns Boston radio station WFNX and Phoenix Ventures (publishers of the offical yearbook for local professional sports teams, etc.). [yahoodi.com and Phoenix Media Communications Group web site] Even in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the free weekly Santa Fe Reporter is edited by Julia Goldberg.
    
Another alternative weekly newspaper chain, in several cities, is New Times. The executive editor for them all is Michael Lacey (2001). Its Dallas paper, the Dallas Observer, is edited by Julie Lyons. (2001) Diane Straus Tucker (whose father Peter Straus married Monica Lewinsky's mom recently) became publisher of Manhattan Media's weeklies Our Town, West Side Spirit, the Westsider, and the Chelsea Clinton News.

 

Rolling Stone, the influential music industry journal, was founded, and has since been controlled and edited, by Jann Wenner. He is also Jewish. By 1989 Rolling Stone was worth $250 million. Once considered the "voice of the counterculture," Associate Publisher Les Zeifman referred to it as "the Wall Street Journal of rock and roll." [DRAPER, p. 15] In 1986 an advertising newsletter called Marketing Through Magazines was instituted by Rolling Stone to forge tobacco, beer, and other corporate sponsors of musical acts and the appropriation of famous songs for commercials. The driving force behind the "counter-culture" Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, eventually developed an "ostentatious lifestyle of private jets, country villas, and choice social connections." [DRAPER, p. 21] Robert Draper notes that in the early years of the paper Wenner 

 

      "cut a multitude of ethical corners: stealing initial subscription lists from

       another magazine, awarding himself shares of company stock so as to

       secure minority control, lying to advertisers about Rolling Stone's

       readership, and pocketing the magazines subscription dues while the rest

       of the staff worked for little or nothing ... From the outset, Wenner

       proved his finest talent to be exploiting the talents of others."

       [DRAPER, p. 9]

 

Wenner also became chief editor of Look magazine in 1979, not long before it folded, and attained a controlling interest in US magazine. Another Wenner-initiated periodical was Men's World in 1992. When Rolling Stone moved to New York in 1977, the paper's new focus seemed to be that "famous New York writers ... wrote about famous New Yorkers." [DRAPER, p. 15] (From England, Maurice Kinn, also Jewish, who died in 2000, "published the New Musical Express, one of the world's foremost music newspapers.") [KIRSCHNER, S., 9-14-2000]

 

The New Yorker, the American Mercury, and Esquire were also founded by Jews. (The current editor of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, Gene Lichtenstein, is the former fiction editor at Esquire). Ms magazine was largely founded by Jewish feminists. Its most famous personage is Gloria Steinhem, born of partial Jewish background, who has asserted a Jewish identity. She was also the co-founder of New York magazine. The original managing editor of Ms. was Suzanne Levine. An early prominent financial supporter was the Washington Post's Katherine Graham. By 1977 Warner Communications owned a quarter of Ms. and the media giant's Jewish director of its publishing division, William Sarnoff, was the only male on the Ms. board of directors. (Even Al Feldstein's zany Mad magazine was part of the Warner stable. Feldstein of course is also Jewish).

 

Joseph Pulitzer (of "Pulitzer Prize" fame) was a Jewish immigrant from Hungary; he bought the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 1878. In 1887 he launched the New York World, one of the pioneers of what’s known today as "yellow journalism," focusing on crime, disasters, and other kinds of sensationalism.  In 1996 the Pulitzer family purchased control of 16 daily and 30 non-daily publications. They also have two radio stations, nine TV stations, and are part owner of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. By 1989, the Pulitzer Prize Board of Directors included 6 Jews, 7 WASPs, 2 Blacks, and a Polish-American. [CHRISTOPHER, p. 151]  The (Jewish) administrator of the Pulitzer prizes from 1953 to 1975 was Paul Hohenberg. [KIRSCHNER, S., 9-14-00, p. 11] Elsewhere, based in St. Louis, Barry Baker (originally Barry Bakelman) is the CEO of River City Broadcasting with television stations in St. Louis, San Antonio, Indianapolis, and Des Moines.

 

From San Francisco, the Hellman and Freedman investment company (18 offices in the United States, England, China, and Brazil) owns Advanstar Communications (chairman and CEO: Robert Krakoff; Vice Chairman: Ira Siegel) among other holdings. Advanstar publishes over 100 "specialty magazines" (the likes of Video Store News, Managed Healthcare, Physician's Management, Travel Agent, et al) and produces 100 trade shows and exhibitions a year, including "the largest apparel trade shows in the nation and abroad." [ABRAMS, S. p. 12]

 

 Ian Levine and Herman Bruggnik are co-chairmen of Reed Elsevier PLC. This company "publishes more than 1,200 scientific journals, as well as business, consumer, and professional magazines primarily in the US and Europe, including Variety and Publishers' Weekly. (Variety was founded in 1905 by Sime Silverman). Reed Elsevier also owns Lexis Nexis, "the world's largest provider of full-text information." [HOOVER, p. 148]  A division of Reed Elsevier is Cahners, founded in 1946 by Saul Goldweitz and Norman Cahners. Norman Goldweitz was the company's CEO until he retired in 1989. "During his 40-year career," notes the Boston Herald, ""Mr. Goldweitz succeeded in expanding a single-publication business into one of the largest business-to-business publishing and trade exposition companies in the world." [BOSTON HERALD, p. 69]

 

(In 1995, Elsevier, publisher of the scholarly journal Human Behavior and Evolution Society, sought to censor the comments of contributor John Hartung, who frankly addressed Jewish religious racism in a book review. Hartung was accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism, and Elsevier refused to publish in the journal Hartung's response to this accusation. The editor of the periodical, Michael McGuire, a neuroscientist at the University of California, notes that "[Elsevier] wouldn't let me talk to the decision-maker." "Elsevier," added Science magazine reporter Constance Holden, "kept shifting ground, at different times offering different rationales for the action, says McGuire ... Elsevier staff did not respond to phone calls from Science.") [HOLDEN, C., 7-96, p. 177]

 

As Hartung wrote in his censored piece: "As to the charge of anti-Semitism that has been leveled against me, if anti-Semitism is defined as prejudice against people who are Jewish, I am not anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination. One can have respect for people of a religious persuasion while questioning the persuasions of their religion. However, if one's definition of anti-Semitism applies to those who make critical inquiry into the fundamental tenets of Judaism, I could be labeled anti-Semitic." [HARTUNG, 1995?, Online]

 

Another Jewish entrepreneur, Moses Koenigsberg, founded the omnipresent King Features Syndicate.  Michael and Roger King founded King World Productions, "one of the most powerful firms in television syndication ... Today the company boasts annual revenues of $584 million through hits such as 'Jeopardy,' 'Wheel of Fortune,' 'Inside Edition,' 'Hollywood Squares,' and 'The Ophrah Winfrey Show.' Although CBS bought the company for $2.5 billion in 1999, the Kings still run it. [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01] In another large media chain, Daniel Gold became the president/CEO of the TV station group of the Knight-Ridder Broadcasting Company. He had formerly been the CEO/president of Comcast Cable Corporation and eventually became the CEO of ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, which licenses musical compositions to the tune of nearly $400 million per year). [ELKINS, D., p. 10X] (1996 CEO of ASCAP? Marilyn Bergman).

 

In the midwest, Jeff Smulyan's mini-media empire -- Emmis Broadcasting -- today employs 1,000 people Emmis owns eight radio stations and many city/state magazines -- Indianapolis Monthly, Los Angeles Magazine, Texas Monthly, Cincinnati Monthly, and Atlanta.  In Greenwich, Connecticut, Marty Edelston's Boardroom Inc. is a yearly $100 million business, publishing newsletters and books. From Michigan, David Hermelin (noted as one of Detroit's top 400 "movers and shakers") is a partner since 1986 in WMCA-AM in New York, "one of that city's top talk show stations ... His wife, Doreen, is heavily into Jewish causes." [KISKA, T., p. 99] In Miami, Ed Ansin's Sunbeam Television owns TV station WSUN, "one of the largest independent owned Fox stations in the country." Ansin, a "strong supporter of the Anti-Defamation League," added Boston's WHDH TV station to his stable in 1992. [KIMMEL, D., 2-17-2000, p. 15] From San Diego, the Dan Devlin Design group, "known throughout the television industry for state-of-the-art news sets," in the late 1990s joined forces with the Israeli company Orad to build computer-generated "virtual reality" environments for newscasters. [GREEN, F., 11-14-97] Philip Levine, one of the major individual philanthropists to the Democratic Party, heads Onboard Media which provides "customized media programs for luxury cruise lines, leading hotels, and other businesses." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]

 

Elsewhere, "info-mogul" Michael Bloomberg (elected in 2001 as the Mayor of New York City) heads a computer-database-media company worth $2 billion. The Baltimore Jewish Times notes that

 

     "Today millions of people hear and see the Bloomberg name through a

      multi-tentacled news organization that includes a 56-bureau international

      wire service; a nationwide syndicate of radio stations; commercial and

      public television station; a glossy monthly magazine; and a personal

      finance journal inserted into 21 major newspapers that reach 7 million

      homes each week. If you visit New York, you'll be hard-pressed to miss

      Mr. Bloomberg's billboards." [CONN, p. 48]

 

Bloomberg Business News also employs 350 reporters in 61 bureaus throughout the globe. Bloomberg Information Radio appears on 57 American stations. It's business and news reports also air on 500 National Public Radio stations, as well as on Voice of America and Armed Services Radio. [CONN, p. 48]  In 1999, Bloomberg and his sister gave $1 million to a scholarship fund sponsored by Hadassah, the international women's Zionist organization, in honor of their mother who had been a lifelong member of that organiation. [KAHN, E., 3-23-01]

Another business news network, Business Wire, is owned by San Francisco-based Lorry Lokey, also Jewish. Business Wire claims to be "the leading source of news on major U.S. corporations," and was the first to use PhotoWire, an Internet transmission of news photographs. [BUSINESS WIRE, 11-9-99]

 

Elsewhere, in 1995, Steve Greenberg and Brian Bedol founded the Classic Sports Network, a cable TV enterprise. [See earlier chapter addressing Jews in sports journalism]. Earlier, Mitchell Rubinstein and Laurie Silvers founded the Sci Fi Channel, as well as Big Entertainment, Inc. Another of their media ventures, Big Entertainment, signed a deal with former basketball star Magic Johnson in 1997 for "Magic Johnson books and textbooks." The company's Tekno Books division is headed by Martin Greenberg.

 

Advance Publications, little recognized by the general public, was by the mid-1980s "one of the largest, most prosperous, most intensely private companies in America" and ranked as the fifth largest media company in the country, only behind ABC, CBS, Time Inc., and RCA. It was founded by a Eastern European Jewish immigrant, S. I. Newhouse, "a merciless union buster," and is currently owned by his descendants. The Newhouse patriarch "was one the most nepotistic of American employers; at one point, some 64 Newhouse sons, brothers, cousins, and in-laws were on the Newhouse payroll." [BIRMINGHAM, p. xi] By 1996 the Newhouse family was worth about 9 billion dollars. Advance, through its subsidiary, Conde Nast Publications, by 1988 owned, among other holdings, the New Yorker, House and Garden (HG), Mademoiselle (the Jewish publisher of this magazine, Julie Lewit-Nirenberg, also founded Savvy, New York Woman, and Mirabella), Glamour, Bride's, Vanity Fair, Gentlemen's Quarterly (GQ), Self, Conde Nast Traveler, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Allure, Architectural Digest, Wired, and Details. Vogue magazine was bought by Newhouse as a gift for his wife, Mitzi.  Versions of some of these magazines appear in French, Italian, Australian, German, British, Mexican and Brazilian editions. In England Conde Nast also owns Tatler and World of Interiors. Advance also owns a Sunday newspaper supplement, Parade, which by the 1980s was appearing in 314 newspapers with an audience of 64.8 million people. (A former editor of Parade, Lloyd Shearer, was a strident activist in the Anti-Defamation League and the notorious Jewish Defense League.) [LILENTHAL, p. 220]

 

Advance also owns twenty-nine newspapers, including Newsday (originally founded by Harry Guggenheim), the Newark Star Ledger, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It also owns a stable of major New York publishing houses, including Random House, Alfred A. Knopf, Pantheon, (New York) Times Books, Ballantine, Fawcett, Schocken, Bonanza, and Villard. In 1988 the fifth largest publishing conglomerate, Crown Publishing Group, was absorbed by Random House. [Random House was sold for $1.2 billion in 1998. Why? To open up possibilities, said Si Newhouse, for more "acquisitions, certainly." [KELLY, p. 68] Other possessions have included television and radio stations and the country's largest cable TV system. [MAHON, p. 231] It also controls the Discovery Channel which reaches 63 million homes and another 80 million in 65 countries across the world, as well as Lifetime and The Learning Channel. [MOMENT, p. 36] 

 

Newhouse cousin, Robert Miron, became chairman of the National Cable Television Association in 1990. [MAIER, p. 353] And in April 1999 the president of Advance, Donald Newhouse, was "reelected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Associated Press." [INTL HERALD TRIB, 4-28-99, p. 3] In 1994 the S.I. Newhouse Foundation donated nearly one million dollars to the United Jewish Appeal, and other large sums to a synagogue in New York City and the Anti-Defamation League. [MOMENT, p. 36] In 1996 the Anti-Defamation League created the "Norman H. Newhouse Human Relations Award" in honor of a family member who had been an ADL national commissioner. In 1995 a Newhouse publication, US West, became partners in a cable TV deal with Time-Warner Entertainment. [BRUCK, p. 56]

 

In an entire volume about the secretive Newhouse media empire, Thomas Maier reported in 1994 that

 

       "Some Newhouse publications rank among the most celebrated in the

       world; others boast virtual monopolies of the daily press in several

       American cities ... With few remaining independent voices  -- and an

       oligarchy of media power held by a handful of conglomerates like

       Newhouses's -- it is hard not to come under his sway ... Most

       Americans know little about Si Newhouse -- the most influential media

       baron of our time ... The full extent of the Newhouse family's ethical

       lapses in handling so important a public institution as a major daily

       newspaper, however, remains virtually unknown even among today's

       media cognoscenti. There are repeated examples of Newhouse's

       papers' union busting, political malleability, and their willingness to

       allow advertisers to influence improperly their editorial judgment."

       [MAIER, p. 2, 6]

 

In the magazine end of the business, noted Maier, "Si Newhouse.... celebrated the acquisitiveness of the eighties ... [Vanity Fair, for instance] seemed to capture the trappings of every nuance of the decade's greed, avarice, and power ... [MEIR, p. 8] ... By the early 1990s, with a nationwide recession and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, Newhouse's critics saw a more sinister motive in this redefinition of the media. To many the Conde Nast stylization of celebrity and gossip over the previous decade became a permanent part of the American cultural diet."  [MAIER, p. 11]

 

Commenting on a 1994 Vanity Fair article about the new Hollywood mogul clique, William Cash noted that "there is something very obvious ... that does bind most of the leading members of the so-called 'New Establishment'  -- or the Titans of Tripe, as Auberon Waugh recently called them -- only no magazine in America (especially a Conde Nast publication owned by Si Newhouse) would point it out: they are predominantly Jewish." [CASH, p. 15]

 

Over the years, the Newhouses have been involved in essentially "hostile takeovers" of a number of firms, including the New Yorker and Random House. A news story appearing on the cover of the Cleveland Plain Dealer about a local Teamster union boss, rewritten under pressure from the Newhouses to accommodate Mafia influence, created outrage among editors, reporters and other staffers at the paper, resulting in the amazing spectacle of about fifty Plain Dealer employees picketing their own offices.

 

(Among Si Newhouse's close friends, since childhood, was Roy Cohn -- the prominent Jewish prosecutor for senator Joe McCarthy during the 1950s witch hunt investigations for "unAmerican activities."  In later trials for bribery, conspiracy, and other charges against Cohn, it was revealed that the old McCarthyite's associates have included Jewish gangsters Moe Dalitz and Meyer Lansky, as well as Mafiosos like Vito Genovese and Tony (Fats) Salerno. Cohn's role for the Newhouses, says Thomas Maier, was "as a go-between with the mob and Newhouse officials." [MAIER, p. 118] A Cohn law firm partner, Stanley Friedman, who was also head of the Bronx Democratic Party, was imprisoned for corruption; another business partner, Sam Garfield, was a "stock swindler." Comedian Joey Bishop, a performer at many of Cohn's parties, noted that "my opening line -- this is a typical Roy Cohn dinner -- [was] 'If you're indicted you're invited.'" [VON HOFFMAN, p. 272] Cohn's connections were diverse; he also had a "long lasting friendship" with Jewish media personality Barbara Walters, as well as with Walter Winchell. [MAIER, p. 89, 98, 103]  He claimed to have come close to marrying Walters in his younger years. [VON HOFFMAN, p. 23])

 

Thomas Maier noted the disturbing implications of the Cleveland Plain Dealer Mafia-influenced episode:

 

      "What happened to the Plain Dealer was a ... powerful warning to

      Americans concerned about the integrity of their news media and

      how it can be improperly tainted and professionally compromised.

      In an era in which many of America's major cities are increasingly

      serviced by only one daily newspaper -- acting in each city like private

      utilities with almost complete control on the printed word -- the lessons

      were indeed profound. The actions in Cleveland would forever mark Si

      Newhouse and his company as unworthy stewards of a public trust, a

      flawed vessel for so important a task as the free flow of information in

      a democratic society. And with so much at stake, it raises the question

      of what an informed public would do about it if only they knew

      the full extent of the story." [MAIER, p. 118-119]

 

In their expanding empire, the Newhouses have come close to establishing virtual news monopolies in at least five American cities -- St. Louis, Portland (Oregon), Birmingham, Syracuse, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania -- "where Newhouse owned not only the [only] daily newspaper but also a television and radio station or a cable-television franchise, as well." [MAIER, p. 26] As early as 1960 Oregon Congressman Wayne Morse, responding to the situation in Portland (where the Newhouses purchased the two competing newspapers and merged them together) declared on the Senate floor that "The American people need to be warned before it is too late about the threat which is arising as a result of the monopolistic practices of the Newhouse interests." [MAIER, p. 25] The Newhouse family was also involved in one of the most famous tax court cases in history when the IRS decided the value of Advance Publications, in its earlier years, to be worth $2.1 billion. The family claimed its holdings were worth $182 million. "By claiming that every business decision had been made by the family as a group," says Moment magazine, "not solely by their father, the Newhouses won the case -- a victory that gladdened the hearts of tycoons everywhere and is now common practice." [MOMENT, p. 36]

 

Sam Newhouse also was involved in helping a Jewish friend in founding a publishing empire in the distribution field. " A near monopoly [by the 1980s]," noted Alfred Lilienthal, "in the news distribution field in New York lies in the hands of Henry Garfinkel's corporation, National Services, which owns the Union News Company." [LILIENTHAL, p. 220] "Let's face it," Garfinkel once said about Sam Newhouse, "we were best friends. Anything I could do to help the man, I'd do." [MAIER, p. 96] McCarthyite lawyer Roy Cohn eventually worked for Garfinkel and helped engineer the takeover of the American News Company. Renamed AnCorp National Services, Garfinkel "gained a near stranglehold on the distribution of newspapers and magazines in the Northeast." [MAIER, p. 96] At one point in time, Garfinkel's companies controlled 50% of the newsstands in America. [MAIER, p. 96] In the 1960s the Wall Street Journal turned up links between Garfinkel's business and the criminal underworld; in 1971 the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against AnCorp for "improper payments" involving the New York Times and New York Daily News. [MAIER, p. 97]

 

By 2000, another media conglomerate, the New York-based Primedia, owned 250 magazines, 232 business and consumer information forums, it owned 47 trade shows, and had sales of $1.7 billion. Jewish mogul Henry Kravis controlled over 80% of the company through his Kohlberg Kravis Roberts investment monster [described earlier]. [FOLIO, FIRST DAY, 9-23-99] Kravis and Jewish KKR partners George Roberts and Michael Tokarz sit on Primedia's Board of Directors. Meyer Feldberg is another Jew on the Board. (The chairman of company, Tom Rogers, and Vice-Chairman, Beverly Chell, may both be Jewish too, Rogers and Chell are sometimes Jewish surnames). Primedia owns magazines and journals across the spectrum of America, including American Baby, Chicago, New York, Modern Bride, Soap Opera Digest, Tiger Beat, 16 Magazine, Canoe and Kayak, Surfing, Off Road, Truckin', Crafts Magazine, Arabian Horse World, American History, Civil War Times, Fly Fisherman, Dog World, Quiltmaker, Pro Football Weekly, and on and on. Divisions include HPC Publishing (113 publications in 38 states) and Internec. "Primedia publishes the largest number of magazine ad pages of any media company in the country ... eighty-four percent of the company's products are ranked #1 or #2 in their respective markets." [PRIMEDIA ONLINE HOME PAGE; and intertec.com.about.news; 9-27-99, ONLINE]

 

By the 1980s another Jewish family, the Annenbergs, owned Triangle Publications, which owned the largest read periodical in America: TV Guide, as well as Seventeen, (once edited by Enid [Annenberg] Haupt), the Philadelphia Daily News (and, for a time its rival, the Philadelphia Inquirer), the Miami Tribune, and the Daily Racing form, among other media holdings, including six television and nine radio stations, plus 27 cable TV franchises. [BIRMINGHAM, p. xii]  (President Ronald Reagan was often a vacation guest at Walter Annenberg's resort home in Palm Springs). Walter's wife Lenore is "a niece of the Hollywood mogul Harry Cohn and a former wife of [Jewish millionaire ] distiller Lewis S. Rosentiel). [MEYER, K., 1979, p. 121] The Annenbergs also are major shareholders in the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Campbell Soup Company. [MOMENT, p. 39]  They have also owned a range of movie fan magazines, including True, Screen Guide, and Detective. The founder of all this, Moses Annenberg, was convicted of income tax evasion, fined eight million dollars, and spent three years in prison. [BIRMINGHAM, p. xii]  His "national monopoly on the dissemination of horse race results back in the 1920s was allegedly facilitated by underworld figures." [CHRISTOPHER, p. 103] "It has been said," notes Robert Rockaway, "that Moe [Annenberg] was to the bookie of America what Arnold Rothstein was to the bootleggers and narcotics peddlers. He put the racket on a business-like basis." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 200] The Chicago district attorney once called Annenberg "a murderer and a thief." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 201]

 

The Annenburg Foundation has given 15 million dollars to the United Jewish Appeal for the resettlement of Soviet refugees in Israel, another million a year to the UJA, as well as a million to Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Donations to non-Jewish organizations include 150 million dollars to PBS. Walter Annenberg also founded the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications.

 

In 1962 Walter Annenberg personally censored an ABC program about friend Richard Nixon that was scheduled to appear on the ABC-affiliates he owns, including WFIL-TV in Philadelphia and WNHC-TV in New Haven. As John Cooney notes, "Annenberg believed himself the judge of what was good for the public, and ... his media complex enabled him to arbitrarily censor a news program on television and then explain in print [his Philadelphia newspaper] why he had done so." [COONEY, p. 280] (Annenberg was appointed by Nixon to be the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain in 1969).

 

Real estate investor Mortimer Zuckerman  (who became an American citizen in 1977) by 1995 owned the U.S. News and World Report, (where he had earlier installed himself as editor-in-chief of America's third largest news weekly magazine), the Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News.  He is also the founder of an organization called the Zionist Forum, and in 2001 became the head of the President's Conference of Major Jewish Organizations. "Zuckerman has used the Atlantic Monthly," says J. J. Goldberg, "to publish ... occasional pieces that manage, ever so slightly, to shift debate toward what might be called a Jewish way of seeing the world." [GOLDBERG, p.299] On one occasion, Zuckerman (a former boyfriend of Jewish feminist Gloria Steinem) addressed an American Friends of the Israeli Museum of the Diaspora fundraising dinner with a "35 minute jeremiad on the continuing dangers of anti-Jewish hostility all over the world and in America. He cited Arab threats to Israel, anti-Semites among American Blacks, and an anti-Israeli bias in the American news media." [GOLDBERG, p. 70] Zuckerman, notes the (Jewish) Forward, has fore grounded his "advocacy of Israel in discussions with Secretary [of State] Albright ... His column in U.S. News and World Report [is] evidence of his pro-Israeli tilt. He penned a dissent in defense of Israel in a Council on Foreign Relations report on the Middle East and has helped to rejuvenate the America-Israeli Friendship League, of which he is president." [FORWARD, 11-14-97, p. 14]  Zuckerman, the real estate developer ("one of the largest owners and developers of office buildings in the country") [MATUSOW, p. 55], even sought to ruin a major icon of American intellectual and naturalist history -- Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau's famous woodsy refuge site of personal contemplation and reflection against the noise of rat race barons like Zuckerman. "[Zuckerman] gave new meaning to the term 'rapacious developer,'" noted Regardie's Magazine, "by sticking to his plan to put up an office park next to Thoreau's Walden Pond."  [REGARDIE'S, p. 64]

 

Regarding Zuckerman's avid Zionism, Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation in Boston, notes that:

 

        "Each step that an owner of a news organization takes deeper into

        partisan activities of any kind makes a difference. It raises fundamental

        questions about the purpose for which that person chooses to own

        news outlets." [MATUSOW, p. 55]

 

Even when his billionaire chum Michael Milken was making news for his various financial scandals, Zuckerman instructed his Atlantic Monthly staff not to use the popular "junk-bond king' label to describe him, but, rather, "besieged financial genius." [MATUSOW, p. 55]  Conversely, when the New York Times ran a critical story called "Mortimer Zuckerman: a Developer Who Thrives on High-Stakes Dealing," the Jewish executive editor at the Times, A. M. Rosenthal, responded by calling underling editors into his office. Chummy with Zuckerman, only two days earlier Rosenthal had dined with him and his then-girlfriend, Gloria Steinem. As Joseph Goulden notes, Rosenthal assailed the editors and condemned the Zuckerman piece in an in-house memo for allegedly

 

    "opinionated phrases and unattributed characterizations. The article

    established a tone that cast its subject in an unfavorable light. Describing

    Mr. Zuckerman's real estate acquisitions, the article uses the phrase

    'more than five years of plotting.' It said he had befriended people 'in

    an effort to win a place in their world.' His latest major purchase...

    'does not sate him.’.... [etc.] " [GOULDEN, p. 288]

 

(Gordon Thomas, British author of a 1999 volume about Israel's Mossad, fingers Rosenthal an Israeli sayan, an undercover American "helper" of the foreign spy network). [HOWE, R., 6-99, p. 47]

 

The Jewish Ziff family (worth $3 billion), until it started selling off many of its media holdings in the mid-1990s, owned half a dozen TV stations and over 35 periodicals including Popular Photography, Popular Electronics, Car and Driver, Stereo Review, PC (Personal Computer) Magazine, and PC Week.  Before modern Israel was founded, patriarch William Ziff wrote a book called The Rape of Palestine, notes Lenni Brenner, "which favored a Zionist alliance with Mussolini." [BRENNER, p. 78]

 

 The Pritzker family (worth $6 billion) has owned the 140 Hyatt hotels, Royal Caribbean cruise ships, Braniff and Continental Airlines, McCall's magazine, Ticketmaster (the ticket outlet that some rock and roll groups have assailed for its high prices and monopolistic practices -- in 1998 Jewish mogul Barry Diller's USA Networks acquired it; its CEO and president remains Frederic Rosen), and Coast-to-Coast Savings and Loan. They also own the Marmon Group, which controls companies making everything from gloves to missile parts.

 

Sumner Redstone (formerly Murray Rothstein, worth $3.4 billion) began as a liquor wholesaler, and graduated from a 12-chain theatre operation to 855 of them. He is currently the chairman of National Amusements, Inc. In 1987 he acquired the media giant Viacom, Inc.  Redstone's other subsidiaries include the Blockbuster Video chain; the Simon and Schuster, Charles Scribners Sons, Twayne, MacMillan, Pocket Books, Fireside Books, the Free Press, Jossey-Bass, and Prentice-Hall publishing houses; Spelling Television (Aaron Spelling: chairman of the board); and Paramount studios. Paramount in turn owns the New York Knicks basketball team and the New York Rangers Hockey team. Viacom also owns the MTV and Nickelodeon cable TV companies, as well as Showtime. It also shares ownership of the USA and SciFi channels. "Redstone's donations to Jewish charities have won him honors from the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the B'nai B'rith and Jewish philanthropies of Greater Boston." [MOMENT]

The former president of National Amusements and publisher of The Jewish Advocate (as well as the ex-husband of Redstone's daughter) is Ira Korff, a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov -- the founder of Hasidism in the 18th century. Korff eventually decided to accept the Hasidic hereditary mantle of the Hasidic "Grand Rabbi." As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes:

     "Korff says that the worst purveyeor of violence and profantiy on TV is Music
     Television (MTV), which is owned by Viacom. But, he adds, 'I have no interest
     in attacking Viacom, and MTV is an ethically run business.' After all, much of
     his own wealth was made while serving as president and later consultant to
     National Amusements Inc., a large movie-theatre chain which olds the majority
     of shares in Viacom, the world's second-largest media company (to AOL
     Time Warner Inc.) Furthermore, his first wife, Shari Restone, is the daughter
     of Sumner Redstone, chairman and CEO of Viacom, and Korff's three children
     from that marriage will likely profit from their grandfather's fortune. Forbes
     recently estimated Restone's personal worth at $14 billion." [HAUSMAN, T,
     6-22-01]

(Viacom's Paramount TV network, United Paramount Network (UPN), is actually a joint venture with BHC Communications, which is a subsidiary of Chris-Craft Industries. Jewish entrepreneur Herbert Siegel has controlled Chris-Craft since the late 1960s. UPN reaches over 91% of American homes through 150 television affiliates. [HOOVER, p. 225])

"At mighty Paramount," noted Jewish screenwriter Ben Stein in 1996, "the controlling stockholder is Sumner Redstone. Head of the Studio is Jon Dolgren. [Dolgren, formerly president of Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures, was awarded the Wiesenthal Center's 1997 "Humanitarian Award."] Head of Production is Sherry Lansing -- all members of my tribe ... At newly energized ICM  [International Creative Management], the top dogs are Jeff Berg and Jim Wiatt. At still overwhelming CAA [Creative Artist Management], Jack Rapke and other members of my faith predominate. At William Morris John Burnham and other Jews are, by and large, in the power positions [1997 president: Jerry Katzman]. This has always been true in Hollywood." [STEIN, E! LINE]

 

Stein here refers to the three major Hollywood "talent agencies," all predominantly Jewish. These firms are so influential in Hollywood that for years in the 1990s, Michael Ovitz, the Jewish head of CAA, was rated by Premiere magazine as the most powerful person in Hollywood. As early as 1986, the Wall Street Journal wrote that "it seemed that Michael Ovitz really was Hollywood's most powerful power broker." [SLATER, p. 176] In 1989 Time noted that "nearly everyone agrees that Ovitz, 42, president of Creative Artists Agency, is possibly the most powerful figure in Hollywood." [SLATER, p. 200-201] Ovitz even personally arranged for his martial arts instructor, Steven Seagal, to become a movie star. [SLATER, p. 181]

 

Ovitz formed CAA in 1975 with fellow William Morris defectors Michael Rosenfeld, Ron Meyer, Bill Haber, and Rowland Perkins. Martin Baum joined as a sixth partner later. When CAA was formed, one of the first things the five founders did was to each buy a Jaguar automobile, to create a proper "image." [SLATER, p. 69-70] The first two hirees at CAA were Amy Grossman and Laurie Perlman, both later elevated to agent status.

 

In 1995 the San Francisco Chronicle called the CEO of ICM, Jeff Berg, "the second most powerful man in Hollywood." [GUTHRIE, SECOND, p. C13] In 1993 ICM joined with Artmedia, Europe's largest talent agency, to form ICM France in Paris. In 1995 the Hollywood Reporter fired one of its staff writers for suing ICM. "The incident promises to renew troubling questions," noted the Los Angeles Times, "about the relationship between the entertainment industry and the publications that cover it." [COLLINS, Hollywood, D6]

 

Major agents at William Morris included the legendary Abe Lastfogel, as well as Phil Weltman, Sam Weisbrod, Lew Weiss, Barry Diller, Robert Shapiro, and many others. Until he died of AIDS, Stan Kamen was "the most prominent talent agent of the day [1980s]." [SLATER, p. 93]  Another prominent agent/lawyer was Mickey Rudin. His sister, Elizabeth Greenson, noted that she "watched Mickey create an atmosphere of demand for Frank [Sinatra], that he was desirable." [KELLEY, K., p. 305]  Freddie Fields, "the chairman of [Creative Management Associates], was the most powerful motion-picture agent in the business ... He was married to actress Polly Bergen, and [with] his partner, David Begelman, oversaw the most envied client list of Hollywood's stars, including Henry Fonda, [Judy Garland], Natalie Wood, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Barbara Streisand." [KING, T., 2000, p. 127]

Irving "Swifty" Lazar was also for decades one of Hollywood's most powerful agents; an invitation to his post-Academy Awards party was a measure of high Hollywood status.  Sandy Gallin, "by the time he was thirty ... was the mastermind of an elite coven of entertainment superstars that included Dolly Parton, Cher, and Michael Jackson." He was also a member a group of Jewish homosexual moguls known in the elite party world as the "Velvet Mafia"; it included clothes designer Calvin Klein, movie/TV mogul Barry Diller, record mogul David Geffen, and Steve Rubell, among others. [GAINES/ CHURCHER, p. 206, 209-210] Steve Rubell headed New York's Studio 54 nightclub, "the greatest nightclub of all time." Steven Gaines and Sharon Churcher note that Studio 54's reputation was that of "a destructive, malevolent place, a septic tank that glorified drug use and promiscuity." [GAINES/CHURCHER, p. 206, 209-210]

Before the prominence of that nightclub, notes Anthony Haden-Guest, "Arthur Weinstein's Hurrah had been the fabulous people's boite of choice before Studio." [HADEN-GUEST, 1997, p. 96] "In New York," says Jewish novelist Judith Krantz,

     "through Jack La Vien [a common form of Levine], a friend of [Krantz's
     husband Steven, also Jewish] we became members of an exclusive club that
     dominated the chic New York disco scene. It was called Le Club, and
     everyone wanted to get all done up in pretty clothes, go there, and dance. This was
     a decade before the Studio 54 scene and pretty clothes were still desirable.
     Jack was one of those socially gifted men who seemed to know absolutely
     everybody in London and New York." [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 221]

 

In her autobiography, Jewish comedian Joan Rivers notes the many agents and managers she had (which of them, one wonders, is not Jewish?) who "had once carried my hopes" in her long, torturous road to media stardom:

 

     "Irwin Arthur, Freddie Weintraub, Jack Segal, Marty Erlichman,

     Charlie Joffe, Bob Shanks, Jack Rollins, Paul Keyes, Roy Silver,

     Tony Rivers. [And] every agent or secretary or manager, large

     and small, that I had ever phoned or waved to or used their ladies'

     room. Julius Monk, Irving Haber, Lenny Jacobson. This is your

     life, Joan Rivers." [RIVERS, p. 337]

 

Earlier Rivers agents also included Hamilton Katz. Another she ran across, Ira Ring, was one of the clique of agents who controlled bookings at hotels in New York's Catskill mountain resorts. "Most of them," notes Rivers, "were sleazy and liars." [RIVERS, p. 170] Another Jewish agent, Bernie Sohn, helped her get a position in Chicago's Second City improvisation comedy team. Second City's producer was also Jewish, Bernie Sahlin. The director was Paul Sills, later replaced by Alan Meyerson. [RIVERS, p. 263-264, 278]  Rivers later worked for a miserable time at Candid Camera as a writer for Allen Funt (also Jewish).  Much-hated by employees, Rivers describes Funt as the "Hitler" [RIVERS, p. 363] of the popular program.

 

 ICM's most powerful agent in the 70's and 80's was probably "Holocaust survivor" Sue Mengers. "Mengers," notes Rachel Abramowitz, "ruled Hollywood as the outrageous, mouthy, impudent, muumuu-swaddled agent to the stars." Fellow Jewish agent Martin Baum, Mengers says, taught her "total aggression." Clients included Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman, Candice Bergman, Barbara Streisand and many other prominent movie stars. "When Mengers finally became rich, she used to luxuriate in breakfast in bed, served by a Portugese maid." [ABRAMOWITZ, R., 2000, p. 39, 41] (In April 1998, ICM chairman Marvin Josephson and Merv Adelson, the former CEO and chairman of Lorimar, co-chaired the "jubilee committee" that ran the "Hollywood extravaganza" program on CBS that commemorated Israel's 50th anniversary, "Israel at 50." Both men, noted the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, "were appointed to serve as international co-chairmen of the 50th celebration at the behest of Israel's prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu."  Josephson has even served as treasurer for a pro-Israel lobbying group, the National Political Action Committee.)

 

In earlier years, Jules Stein's and Lew Wasserman's MCA (Music Corporation of America) was so prominent in the talent agency business that it was known as "the Octopus." [BROWNSTEIN, p. 182]   "By 1936 [MCA] controlled every band of any consequence in America." [MCDOUGAL, p. 43] Ever expanding, "through the 1950s MCA became the dominant force in television production." [BROWNSTEIN, p. 183]

 

By 1960, notes Michael Pye, Jules Stein

 

      "was the ultimate power in more than half of American show business,

      agents to the stars in theatre, cinema, television, and he kept it bland.

      He became the power that dominated the schedules of NBC ... Almost a

      third of prime television in the 1950s came from the corporate machine

      he fashioned. When finally the Justice Department put his business in a

      courtroom and challenged its scale and power, he had already decided to

      abandon his agency ...  [PYE, p. 18-19] ... It is hard to overestimate the

      power and ambition of the empire Jules Stein built. It dominated the

      agency business, with perhaps 60 per cent of the star business worth

      having in music, movies, and television. It dominated prime-time

      television ... Lew Wasserman, as the operating head of the agency, was

      regarded by consensus as the most powerful man in Hollywood." [PYE,

      p. 60]

 

MCA has long been alleged to have been built with ties to organized crime. An advisor to President Lyndon Johnson, notes the Washington Post, "recalls that the White House only considered Wasserman but never offered the job [of Secretary of Commerce] to him because of worries that confirmation hearings would turn up embarrassing details about his ties to Hollywood's shadowy side." [FARHI, p. G1]

 

Another MCA mogul, Sonny Werbler, head of MCA-TV and later president and CEO of the New York Jets professional football team, was described by a Variety reporter in 1965:

 

     "In more than three decades, Werblin wielded more influence, made

     made more money, made and broke more careers, than any other

     show biz impresario in New York." [MOLDEA, p. 237]

 

Jews are of course predominant in the literary agency world (which blends into the entertainment milieu) as well.  Albert Zuckerman, for example, is "one of New York's most successful millionaire literary agents," with a stable of writers including Ken Follett and Zuckerman's own wife, Ellen Goudge. [LORA, p. 15] Dallas-based Evan Fogelman is "the prince of the romance novel ... He has built the Fogelman Literary Agency into a force in the industry, one that includes among its authors some of the biggest names in romance: Kathleen Sutcliffe, Julie Beard, Anne Eames, and Peggy Webb, among others." [BIEDERMAN, C., 10-23-97] At agent Joan Daves' death in 1997 she "was regarded as one of the world's foremost agents for serious and intellectual fiction and nonfiction."  Her clients included six Nobel Prize winners. [GEIDER, L., 6-27-97]

 

An early CAA merger deal with the Adams, Ray, and Rosenberg Literary Agency fell through, but CAA head Michael Ovitz eventually worked out cooperative, mutual development deals with another agency, headed by Mort Jankow. (There was "no literary agent more important than Mort Jankow," notes Robert Slater. [SLATER, p. 66]) Jankow's literary clients still include best-selling authors Judith Krantz, Danielle Steel, Jackie Collins, and Sidney Sheldon. (Janklow's wife, Linda, was the granddaughter of Harry Warner, one of the founders of Warner Brothers). [KRANTZ, J., 2000, p. 209] Later Ovitz lured literary agent Steve Roth away from the Ziegler-Roth literary agency. When, under increasing media scrutiny, Ovitz hired a public relations company in 1988 to deal with the media for CAA, it was Howard J. Rubenstein Associates. [SLATER, p. 200]

 

Dennis McDougal notes the case of MCA in the literary world:

 

     "MCA began buying up New York literary agencies, including the Jay

     Sanford Agency and the Liebling-Wood Agency, which gave MCA

     control of the nation's three best-known playwrights: Tennessee Williams,

     William Inge, and Arthur Miller." [MCDOUGAL, p. 151]

 

Another example of the talent agency network system is the case of Jane Sindell, described in 1997 by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the top literary agents in the business," a veteran of all three of the most powerful talent agencies -- CAA, ICM, and the William Morris Agency. Married to TV writer David Hurwitz, her mother worked for prominent Hollywood screenwriter Herman Mankiewcz. Her uncle (Sam Jaffe) founded his own talent agency, as did her father (the Sindell Agency), her uncle (the Gersh Agency), and her brother Richard. [ELLER, Top, p. D9] Uncle Sam Jaffe was "the pre-eminent Hollywood agent for the 1930s through the 1950s [who] managed the careers of stars, notably Humphrey Bogart, Richard Burton, and David Niven." [KIRSCHNER, S., 4-27-00, p. 13] Nat Letfowitz was another top agent at the William Morris Agency. His cousin Ted Ashley headed the Ashley Famous agency (which represented the likes of John Wayne, William Holden, and Tennessee Williams). [KING, T., 2000, p. 88]

 

Prominent author Scott Berg's family includes a father who was an MGM screenwriter, a brother who heads powerhouse Hollywood talent agency ICM, another who is a record producer at (Jewish-owned) Geffen Records, and a third who is a literary agent. [SCHLEIER, 1-29-99, p. 31] Until his death in 2000, Arthur Pine (born Pincus) owned "one of the most dynamic literary agencies." He started out in the entertainment agency business, representing "Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, George Burns, Sammy Cahn, Phil Silvers, and the rest of Tinseltown's Jewish mafia." [NOLAN, F., 11-1-00, p. 6]

 

From her experience managing her famous sister Roseanne, Geraldine Barr (also Jewish) notes the way that Hollywood networking (agents, and other wheelers and dealers) works for those who hope to rise as "stars" there: "The power situation is one where you are buying access to the system that is Hollywood. In the early stages of your career, there is no free lunch. A rising star will ultimately pay as much as 75 percent of earnings just to enter the world where real fame and fortune can be achieved. If the star were a box of cereal, she would be buying shelf space in supermarkets and advertising in newspapers. In Hollywood, you buy the people who can put you in the position you need for success." [BARR, p. 159-160]

 

Jews are of course also predominant in radio. Norman Pattiz, for instance, has been for years the chairman of Westwood One, which "is America's largest producer and distributor of radio programming" and the parent company of Mutual Broadcasting System, the NBC Radio Network, CBS News Radio, Fox News Radio, CNN Radio, the Source, NBC Talknet, and the Westwood One Radio Network." Its programs are featured on over 7,500 radio stations around the world.  By 1988, it was even producing 200 rock and roll concerts a year. The "single biggest stockholder of Westwood One, the nation's largest radio network" is also Jewish: David Saperstein. [PR NEWSWIRE; MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]

 

In 1991 Bruce Kanter was named Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Westwood One company. Another Jewish executive, Martin Rubenstein, was the CEO of Mutual Broadcasting until 1984; in 1986 he became the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Among the many Jewish reporters in commercial radio is Ellen Ratner, "White House correspondent and bureau chief for Talk Radio News Service." She was formerly the co-host of the widely syndicated Good Day USA. [SPEVACK, V., 5-5-2000, p. 48]

In the government realm, Marc Nathanson was appointed twice by President Bill Clinton to be "chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other federal broadcasting services ... Nathanson founded Falcon Communications. In 1999, he sold the company to Charter Communications for $3.5 million, creating the nation's fourth-largest cable operator. Nathanson remains one of the largest individual stockholders and vice chairman of Charter's board. He is also a director of the Digital Entertainment Network and the National Cable Television Association ... He recently ventured into online entertainment, making an undisclosed investment in iFilm." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01] 

During Jewish executive Frank Mankiewcz's tenure as the president of National Public Radio in the 1980s, "many credit him with popularizing the pubic radio network and raising the number of listeners." [DE WITT, p. 13] He (son of a famous Hollywood screenwriter) later became vice-chairman of Hill and Knowlton Worldwide Publishers. His vice president for programming at NPR (later Washington bureau chief for CBS) was Barbara Cohen. Since 1971 at NPR, Jewish reporter Susan Stamberg has been the on-air "first lady of radio," for the first fourteen years the host of prominent morning program All Things Considered and later Weekend Edition. [STAMBERG, jacket blurb] The Executive Producer of All Things Considered is Ellen Weiss. Her husband is Rabbi David Saperstein. [OSTROFF, H., 7-23-91, p. 1] (In 1994, Weiss named a controversial African-American on death row, innocent hero for some, Mumia Abu-Jamal, as a "regular commentator" on NPR. [ABU-JAMAL, M., 2000, p. 27] Abu-Jamal's literary agent was also Jewish, Frances Goldin).

 

 NPR's White House correspondent? Also Jewish: Mara Liasson. NPR reporter Lina Gradstein is an Orthodox Jew. (Can we remotely imagine a comparable Christian fundamentalist as a reporter at the liberal public radio network?) In 2000, yet another Jew, Jeffrey Dvorkin, was named to the new post as National Public Radio's ombudsman. He formerly worked as the Vice President for News at NPR; before that, he was in the same position at the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Why not a Jewish ombudsman? As the Cleveland Jewish News notes,

 

     "[Dvorkin] notes that Jewish listeners comprise more than 20 percent

     of NPR's audience. A significant number of Jews, like himself, also

     work at the radio network." [KARFIELD, M., 6-23-2000, p. 27]

 

 Other prominent Jewish NPR figures include Ira Glass (host and producer of This American Life, Robert Siegel (co-host of All Things Considered), and David Isay and his Associate Producer Stacy Abramson -- contributors to All Things Considered). Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a "regular commentator" to the same program. [PROVIDENCE JOURNAL-BULLETIN, 5-1-99] Senior editor for the All Things Considered weekend edition is Jonathan Broder, also a writer for Israel's Jerusalem Report. Scott Simon (whose father was Jewish), now hosts Weekend Edition and has "one of the most familiar voices on radio." (In 1997 Catholic groups protested Weekend Edition's satirical song of Catholic ritual called 'The Vatican Rag.'  "NPR is taking great delight in offending Catholics," objected William Donahue, of a Catholic defense organization, "They would not be disparaging of blacks, Jews, and gays. This rank hypocrisy and double standard is what gets our ire up.") [MCCORD, J., 6-12-97, p. 57]

 

Ketzel Lavine is the "funny gardener" on the Weekend program. Charles Mayer is "one of the new members of NPR, a young producer." [JULIAN, S., 6-6-2000] Michael Feldman hosts Whad'ya Know? Terry Gross is host of NPR's Fresh Air (co-producer: Naomi Person). Even Ray Suarez, of Puerto Rican heritage, has a Jewish mother. For six and a half years he hosted NPR's Talk of the Town program until he recently moved to PBS television as a "senior correspondent" for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. [DIAZ, K., 10-28-99] (The director of the Lehrer news hour is David Deutch.) Likewise, David Brancaccio, host of NPR's Marketplace, is of Jewish/Italian descent.

 

For many years too, the head of the most important NPR radio station in the second largest American radio market (Los Angeles), has been Ruth (Hirshman) Seymour. Seymour, notes the Los Angeles Times, "shaped the public radio station KCRW in her own image ... Hawkish on behalf of Israel, Seymour and KCRW often seem to fixate on the Middle East and Europe and, until recently, hardly seemed to acknowledge the existence of Los Angeles." [RUSSELL, p. A1] Among her pet projects was a 13-week 32-story collaboration between KCRW and the National Yiddish Book Center [which opened its new Amherst, Massachusetts $8 million building in 1997] to air Eastern European Jewish short stories to a nationwide audience. [MARGOLICK, p. 3] (Another nationally "acclaimed National Public Radio series" was Great Jewish Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond). [BIGA, L., 4-14-2000, p. 34]

 

Meanwhile, in the commercial radio world, Mel Karmazin, was described by the New York Daily News in 1997 as "one of the most powerful and richest men in the media business." His personal fortune is estimated at over $200 million. He headed "the CBS broadcasting giant’s most precious properties: it's string of 14 TV stations and 77 radio stations and is poised to take over the entire network." [FURMAN, p. 31]  The CBS radio group was by 1998 America's largest radio company in terms of revenues, at $1.5 billion. In 1998 Karmazin became the chairman and CEO of the resurrected Infinity Broadcasting division, which he had sold to CBS two years earlier for $3.9 billion. CBS has also acquired the then fifth largest radio company -- American Radio Systems -- during Karmazin's tenure. Among other accomplishments, Karmazin resurrected the career of decadent Jewish radio talk show host Howard Stern when he was fired by WNBC in 1985. "At the time," notes the Daily News, "Stern was under siege. Parents and religious groups regularly protested his provocative broadcasts and boycotted his advertisers ... No matter what Stein did on the air, whether it was lesbian dial-a-date or celebrating his own flatulence, Karmazin stuck with him," eventually even paying a "$1.7 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission to settle indecency charges against Stern."  [FURMAN, p. 31]  "During is career in radio," noted the Washington Post, "Mr. Karmazin championed the notion of favoring good ratings over just about everything else, including taste." [SCHWARTZ, p. 13]

 

Karmazin, head of the CBS Station Group (radio and television) in May 1997 became Chief Operating Officer of the CBS corporation. By January 1998, notes the New York Times, "he muscled aside the CBS Chief Executive Officer, Michael Jordan ... for the top job," finally reigning over all of the firm. [ELLIOT, S., p. 16] Following the pattern of more and more centralized media monopolies, in September 1999 CBS merged into the aforementioned Viacom, headed by another Jewish mogul, Sumner Redstone. Karmazin was now the president and Chief Operating Officer of the new Viacom, number 2 man behind Redstone, but all divisions reported to him. "Mr. Redstone," noted the New York Times, "predicted that when his position finally became vacant, Mr. Karmazin would get the job." [ELLIOT, p. 16] Viacom now ruled CBS, MTV, the Nashville Network, Nickelodeon, Paramount, Simon and Schuster, VH1, the Blockbuster video chain, and on and on. And who is chairman of CBS Television? Leslie Moonves, is also Jewish [ELKIN, M., 7-13-2000], and reputed to be a distant relative of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. Only a month after the World Trade Center terrorist attack, he was under fire by some for his consideration of a new sitcom show based on the atrocity. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10-20-01, p. F4]

 

 In 1996 President Bill Clinton responded to lobbying pressures from the entertainment media and signed a bill deregulating American radio; companies had formerly been limited to the ownership of two radio stations in any given geographical market and 40 stations (20 on AM, 20 on FM) overall. The new law allowed the ownership of up to eight stations in a given area, and the total number that a company could own was now unlimited. In the next two and a half years, 4,000 of America's 11,000 radio stations changed ownership [FINANCIAL TIMES, 6-10-98, p. 24] as the richest companies rushed to expand into giant media conglomerates, increasingly monopolizing and homogenizing the airwaves, and creating what one professor called the "McDonaldization" of radio.  "More and more regulators, academics, and advertisers," noted the Dallas Morning News, "worry that radio's merger-mania concentrates too much power in too few hands." [DWORKIN, p. 1H]

 

Quickly, two radio companies stood out as especially active in bloating themselves immediately after Clinton's deregulation bill to gigantic status: Chancellor Media, and Jacor Communications.    

 

After a series of massive buyouts of other companies, in late 1998 the Chancellor Media corporation became America's largest radio broadcast company with over 456 stations in 105 markets across America (it also owns or manages 12 TV stations). Its AMFM Radio Network was also created to provide program syndication. It even owns the Primedia Broadcast Group in Puerto Rico and 50% of Latin America's largest Latin American radio company (in Mexico). Chancellor also owns 37,000 outdoor advertising display boards in 37 states.

 

In 1998, the president and CEO of Chancellor, Scott Ginsburg, resigned and took with him a "severance" package worth $59 million. He was replaced by another Jewish executive, Jeffery Marcus, the founder of Marcus Cable, "the largest closely held U.S. cable TV company." [LA TIMES, p 4-30-98, p. 7]  In 1997 another Jewish chief, David Kanter, left the presidency of Disney's ABC Radio Network to run Chancellor's AMFM Radio Network. He was also named senior vice president of Chancellor.

 

The parent company (Hicks Muse Tate and Furst) that owns Chancellor Media is not Jewish-owned, but in 1998 it joined forces with the America's largest private equity company, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (which is Jewish) to create the largest chain of movie theatres in America -- Regal Cinema. Plans were to own 20% of the total cinema screens in the nation by 1999. [LEWIS, W, p. 2]

 

The Jacor Communications rise to gigantic status is even more dramatic, zooming from obscurity to become the third largest American radio broadcasting corporation (after CBS and Chancellor). Starting in early 1996 with 20 radio stations, by late 1998 it owned 205 in 56 cities. In 1997 alone Jacor paid $1.2 billion for 77 new stations. "Jacor," noted the Associated Press," has gone on a coast-to-coast buying spree that has raised eyebrows even in an era when loosened controls on the broadcast industry have led us to widespread purchase and consolidation of radio groups."  [NOLAN] The company was particularly interested in "clustering,” i.e., buying the maximum number (eight) of radio stations in a given market including Denver, San Diego, and Cincinnati. By 1997, Jacor had eighteen such clusters throughout America. Aside from flirting with local information monopolies (it is not impossible that the eight most dominant radio stations in any given area could be owned by the same controller), the economic effect of this is significant. Early in Jacor's buying spree, for example, its Cincinnati stations cornered 44.3 percent of the radio advertising dollar in that area.

 

Among Jacor's other buys was also EFM Media Entertainment, the syndication company that holds the rights to the number one rated radio talk show in America -- that of conservative political news commentator Rush Limbaugh. The next year Jacor bought the rights to (Jewish) Laura Schlessinger's number two rated talk show for $71.5 million. Jacor even bought a Christian radio station in St. Louis, WCBW-FM. 

 

For Limbaugh's part, Susan Rosenbluth, editor of the Jewish Voice and Opinion, noted that "as one who knows Limbaugh and has personally followed his career for many years, I can assert categorically that his philo-Semitism and pro-Israel stances are sincere and heartfelt." [ROSENBLUTH, S., 10-9-94]  In 1995, the New York Times featured an article on Limbaugh's "legman" Joel Rosenberg, director of research for Limbaugh's Limbaugh Newsletter. Posted in Washington DC, says the Times, Rosenberg

 

      "is the eyes and ears -- and, on occasion, the muscle -- of Mr. Limbaugh

      in the capital ... Mr. Rosenberg considers himself something of an expert

      on Israel, where he has travelled extensively and spent a year as a student

      at Tel Aviv University. The summer before his graduation from

      Syracuse, he worked at the State Department, helping produce a

      videotape that introduces Israel to Foreign Service Officers newly

      stationed in Tel Aviv ... [Rosenberg] describes himself to acquaintances

      as an evangelical Christian ... [He regards] himself as a rather committed

      Zionist." [BERKE, p. 1]

 

The economic piston behind the Jacor feeding frenzy was Sam Zell, a Jewish billionaire who is also the chairman and major stockholder in the company. Zell was listed in the mid-1990s as the 96th wealthiest American by Forbes magazine. The president of Jacor is also Jewish, Steve Lehman, as is the CEO, Randy Michaels (real name: Benjamin Homel). (Sheila Rosenberg was Chairperson and Robert Lawrence the co-CEO in 1996).

 

Michaels has long cultivated a distinct reputation in the radio business. In the early 1990s at a Radio & Records convention he ripped the shirt off a woman he planted in the audience during his talk about the "importance of being outrageous." [STARK, p. 63] Michaels, wrote the Dallas Morning News, also "has earned publicity for promoting his stations with billboards that featured naked women and disgraced celebrities." [DWORKIN, p. 1H]  In 1992 ABC's 20/20 TV program featured a story about a sexual harassment suit by a former talk show host. Broadcasting magazine noted that

 

    "In the report, 20/20 quoted [former Jacor employees] who said that

    'Jacor's emphasis on sexually oriented programming continues off the air,

    creating a raunchy workplace atmosphere that [was] ... intolerable for

    some female employees’.... The report detailed incidents in which

    Michaels, then vice president of programming and an on-air personality at

    WFLA, allegedly accosted women with a flexible rubber penis and twice

    mooned a female employee." [VILES, p. 33]

 

In 1996, as a recorded radio stunt, local employees at a Jacor affiliate in Denver went to a mosque and "played the national anthem on a bugle and taunted worshippers." The Denver Post responded by condemning the station attitude created by Jacor's top executives:

 

      "The management of radio station KPI would have us believe that

       the buck stops with disc jockeys, in the outrageous invasion of Muslim

       mosque in Denver. Wrong. The buck should stop at Jacor, the

       corporate owner of the station ... Jacor has demonstrated it has the

       financial clout and the influence to dominate the Denver radio market

       with eight stations. But this latest incident proves that Jacor is a lousy,

       money-grubbing corporate citizen. It obviously couldn't care less about

       the irresponsible, bigoted trash it's spewing out over the public airwaves.

       [AMOLE, p. F5A]

 

In 1998 Jacor made Denver's news again when a citizens' group -- Citizens Opposing the Stadium Cost -- charged that Jacor's eight local stations were "openly engaged in a campaign to shape public opinion and influence an election that would result in substantial profits for itself as well as its political and business allies." [LOWE, p. A10]

 

(Ever in flux, in 1999, with continuing corporate mergers and reshufflings, Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications [non-Jewish (?) CEO Lowry Mays] to become the second largest radio group in America in terms of stations (458). Randy Michaels was named president of Clear Channel).

 

In the cable world, based in Philadelphia, the Comcast Corporation is America's third largest cable company (only behind Time-Warner and TCI). Comcast was founded by three Jewish entrepreneurs in the 1960s -- Ralph Roberts, Daniel Aaron, and Julian Brodsky. By the 1990s the company's chairman, Roberts, was worth $400 million and owned 78% of the company's voting stock. In 1997 he ceded voting control to his son, Brian, who had been earlier named, at age 30, as the Comcast president. By 1996, Brian was also Chairman of the National Cable Television Association and on the Boards of Turner Broadasting System, QVC, Inc., and Viewer's Choice. [ALMANAC, 4-23-96]

In 1991, another Jewish executive, Ann Wexler, was named as Director of the Comcast company (she had once served as a public liaison assistant to President Jimmy Carter. Wexler's husband is the president of American University in Washington DC).  In 1998 Howard Fischer & Associates took credit for bringing Steve Burke (formerly president of Disney's ABC Broadcasting) to the presidency of Comcast as Brian Roberts moved upwards. Comcast has been active in Jewish and Israeli causes, including a film about the Holocaust that was introduced to local school systems. In 1993 the company even defrayed expenses for a Jewish National Fund "gala" featuring the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell. "Having someone of Colin Powell's stature gives us the edge," said JNF president David Neving, "and means we'll sell more tickets to raise money for Israel." [FEILER, p. 17]

(Brian Roberts won silver medals in squash in 1981, 1985, and 1997 at Israel's Maccabiah Games. "The Maccabi," once noted Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion about the Games, "is without a doubt one of the most important offshoots of the Zionist movement." [http://www.maccabicanada.com/about/history/history.html] According to the organization's web site, the Maccabiah Games' "Goals and Objectives" are "1. To re-inforce Jewish Zionist Education, both for the youth and adults to enable the Jews to receive and explore their roots. 2. To fight Assimilation 3. To get the Jewish youth of the Diaspora more acquainted with the Jewish heritage and tradition. 4.To foster the relationship between the Jewish communities inter-globally and with Israel.")
[http://www.maccabiworld.org/aboutus.html]

In 2001, Comcast took over AT&T's cable busines to become the "giant of the industry ... with 22.3 million cable subscribers in 41 states. The company will have more than 30 percent of the cable market ... The Roberts [family] will have only a l percent equity stake in the combined company. But they will control one-third of the voting stock, far more than any other single block of voting shareholders." [DABNEY, M., 12-20-01]

In 2002, Comcast was making sour news in Michigan:

  "[Detroit] city officials say that Comcast -- self-proclaimed as the most profitable cable company anywhere and poised to become the nation's largest-ever cable purveyor -- provides horrendous customer service and antiquated technology in Detroit, while arrogantly rebuffing attempts to improve the situation. Comcast vehemently denies the claims. The cable giant enjoys a monopoly in Detroit, thanks to a city ordinance that requires any cable provder to service the entire 130-plus square miles of the city. This stipulation, designed to ensure service to poorer neighborhoods, has quashed competition and, critics contend, ensures poor service to all." [COLLINS, L., JAN 9-15, 2002]

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, not far from Detroit, issues of Comcast's invasion of computer privacy came to the fore:

  "Internet provider denies it tracks users' movements, gathers personal information. Six days after Comcast began the switch of 70,000 customers in southeastern Michigan from the former MediaOne's computers to its own, complaints continued to mount from frustrated Internet users experiencing slow or stalled service. But several local computer experts are more alarmed by what they say is an invasive Comcast technology, which some believe can generate detailed profiles of subscribers. The cable company's new high-speed Internet network and software that goes with it enable Comcast to compile a variety of information about customers, inlcuding which Web sites they visit, experts said. And unlike the increasingly common 'cookies' technology, which can track your movements within a specific Web site, Comcast is capturing information about other parts of your computer ... [It can] compile information about users' computer configurations, such as the type of computer used, the software that operates on it, the Internet browser and the amount of available computer memory, several local technicians said." [ANDERSON, S., 1-4-02, p. A1, A10]

 

Further along in the mega-mogul category, the Bronfman family (worth $2.7 billion) acquired a fortune by supplying United States bootleggers with alcohol from Canada during the prohibition years. Deals were made with Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky for the illegal distribution of Bronfman's liquor into the United States. The Bronfman's own Seagram's, and market Chivas Regal scotch, Absolut vodka, Mumm champagne, Martell cognac, and Tropicana fruit juices.  At the age of 16 a young heir, Edgar Bronfman, Jr. (whose father is the Chairman of the World Jewish Congress) spent $500,000 on making his first movie. Later, he bought 15% of the shares of Time Warner (the parent firm of Warner Brothers, HBO, and Time magazine.) In 1995 Edgar gained 80% of MCA, Inc. the parent company of Universal pictures, Universal City and other theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando, Florida, and Geffen Records. MOMENT, p.  (By the early 1980s MCA -- run by Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg -- had evolved from a talent agency to a television production and music firm.) The Bronfman dynasty, as noted earlier, also owns the PolyGram media empire. (Ever changing, Seagram recently merged with the French Vivendi media conglomerate. In 2001, Jewish Hollywood mogul Barry Diller took the helm of Vivendi Universal, "one of Hollywood's hottest studios.") [VERRIER/BROWN, 12-16-01]

 

Some apologists have argued that, with large investments in Hollywood by powerful Japanese corporations in recent years, that Jewish power there is being diluted. Not so says Michael Medved:

 

          "It's ... foolish to use foreign ownership of leading entertainment

          conglomerates as a rebuttal to those who blame Jews for what they

          dislike about Hollywood. Sure, companies like Sony [and] Mitsushita

          [are] not recognizable Jewish name[s]. Nevertheless, these offshore

          enterprises have functioned in Hollywood like absentee landlords,

          employing long-time industry insiders in all the most powerful

          positions rather than importing their own personnel from Tokyo or

          Sidney. When Mitsushita took over MCA-Universal, for instance, the

          home company did nothing to undermine the unquestioned authority

          of Universal's legendary -- and all Jewish -- management triad of Lew

         Wasserman, Sid Scheinberg, and Tom Pollack. Now, of course, the

         Japanese conglomerate has abandoned its high-flying Hollywood

         adventure and turned over its entertainment division to Seagram

         -- a business that's owned by one of the most visible and active Jewish

         families on the globe, the Bronfmans, whose patriarch heads the World

         Jewish Congress. Young Edgar Bronfman Jr. has now arrived in

         California to take personal control of the operation and has installed

         Ron Meyer (former associate of Mike Ovitz at the Creative Artists

        Agency) as his second-in command." [Medved, p. 37]

 

Before Edgar Bronfman (chairman of the World Jewish Congress) and his family's Seagrams corporation took over MCA-Universal, there was a lingering "Jewish problem" to Mitsushita ownership. "A sensitive matter that remains unresolved from the Matsushita-MCA deal," noted the Los Angeles Times in 1991, "is Matsushita's relationship with Israel. Matsushita was listed late last year among the companies that comply with an Arab-led business boycott of Israel. The disclosure did not threaten the deal but did express all sides, because Wasserman is a leading supporter of Israel." [CITRON, Matsushita, p. D1]

(Chairman of Universal in 2002? Jewish dominance endures. Stacey Snider is also Jewish.) [DRUDGE, M., 3-8-02]

For Ovitz's part, when Sony bought Columbia Pictures in 1988, he bagged an $8 million "consultant" fee. When Matsushita bought out MCA, Ovitz's consultancy brought him $40 million. [SLATER, p. 219, 227] In 1994 an unnamed Sony executive in Tokyo told the Japanese business weekly Keizaikai, "The United States film business is almost completely controlled by Jews. This is true of what we are doing as well and our job is to use them in an efficient manner."  The magazine then noted, "What this person is saying is that you cannot ignore the Jews if you do business in the United States." [MAGIDA, British, p. 42]  (These conditions were apparently noted by Berry Gordy, founder and head of the African-American Motown musical recording label. A Jewish employee, Rob Cohen, was installed as a prominent official in the company's film division). [TARABORRELLI, p. 299]

The Japanese-owned media giant Sony has maintained a prominent Jewish executive presence in its American operations. In 1994, Michael Raskin, the 33-year old chief American counsel for the Sony Corporation, fell and died on Mt. Fuji. In a 1997 job purge because of weak profits, Sony Corporation of America chief Michael Schulhoff and Sony movie president Fred Bernstein lost their positions. (Alan Levine, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, had been fired the year before). Schulhoff had earlier hired Jeff Sagansky in 1994 as his second in command. By 1998 Sagansky was -- of all things -- the CEO of Paxson Communications, a "conservative Christian" station. Illustrating the necessity even here for a negotiating Jewish presence in order to reasonably function in the Jewish entertainment and broadcast industry, the network under his command would not be solely slanted from a Christian point of view. As Sagansky told the Hollywood Reporter, "I'm Jewish so if that were true [the owner of this station] certainly wouldn't have gotten me to do this job.)" [DAVIES, J.] In 1999, still head of Paxson, Sagansky was honored with the Jewish Television Network's "Vision Award." Sagansky was also a member of JTN's Board of Directors. [PR NEWSWIRE, 9-9-99]

 

By 1996 Marvin Schick complained that

 

       "There may be someone adept in cyberspace who can roam across

       the Internet and ascertain how often Michael Schulhoff and Mel Iberman

       have been enshrined as outstanding Jews.  They're the top American

       officials of Sony, the company that has just released Michael Jackson's

       album which contains words so vile and anti-Semitic that it is impossible

       to figure out what was on anyone's mind." [SCHICK, p. 5]

 

*************************************************

 

Jewish mass media influence, internationally, in a variety of countries, is also profound. Jews, for instance, have been prominent in defining the world  throughout Latin America from the media helms. In Brazil, Jewish media mogul Silvio Santos (original name: Senor Abranavel) controls 98% of the group shares of that country's second largest TV network -- Sistema Brasileiro de Televisao (SBT), a conglomerate of 33 companies employing 15,000 people. Santos long ago installed himself as an on-air entertainer, and is a well-known TV personality. The (London) Daily Telegraph notes that Santos is "best known as the beaming millionaire host of Brazil's most popular television variety show ... [which features] half-naked Samba dancing girls, celebrity guests, and [a] Treasure Chest of Happiness lottery [that is] part of very working-class Brazilian's traditional Sunday." [HARGREAVES, p. 21]

 

By 1991, Santos was also the on-air host of the popular "They'll Do Anything for Money" show. The Associated Press described the show:

 

      "'How about it, Christianne?' Santos coaxed. 'I'll give you 10,000

      cruzeiros (about $10) if you let me mash this egg on your head.'

      Maciel, 18, an unemployed maid, refused. 'How about 20,000?' said

      Santos. 'No? How about 40,000!' She studied the audience, then

      nodded, embarrassed ... The program, which pays audience members

      money to be the butt of pranks, has touched off a ratings battle that has

      all Brazilian networks thinking up new ways to ridicule contestants. The

      new crop of shows has also sparked a debate over what's funny and

      what's simply cruel." [LEWAN, AP, INTERNET]

 

Another SBT show was "Get It Right or Get Splattered, in which contestants who give wrong answers to trivia questions get a pie in the face. Now, other networks have joined in the trend." [LEWAN, AP]  In 1989, Santos even sought to run for the presidency of Brazil. It was no joke; as the (London) Daily Telegraph noted in a headline: "Game-show Host Could Win Brazil's Presidency."  [HARGREAVES, p. 21]

 

Also in Brazil, the New York Times noted in 1982 that Jewish mogul Adolpho Bloch "has built one of Latin America's largest communication empires," [HOGE, W., p. A1] including Manchete and Fatose Fotos, "two of Brazil's largest magazines." [GREENBERG, M., p. 53]  Bloch, noted Judith Elkin in 1998, also owns a total of "25 magazines, 6 radio stations, and a television network." [ELKIN, 1998, p. 96]

 

In Peru, preeminent media mogul Baruch Ivcher is an immigrant from Israel and owns the country's largest television station. In 1997, during political troubles with the government for a series of television exposes, Ivcher lived in Miami and Israel. His minority partners in the station, also Jewish, ran the company in his stead. [FORWARD, 11-7-1997, p. 3]  In Panama, the largest newspaper, La Prensa, is owned by Jewish mogul Robert Eisenmann. Even in Jamaica, that country's most prominent newspaper -- the Gleaner -- is most publicly associated with the Ashenheim family. [HOLZBERG, p. 146]  In Bolivia, a country that had less than 500 Jews in the whole country in 1987, "publisher and book dealer Werner Guttentag [is] a major presence on the national cultural scene." [ELKIN, 1998, p. 127] 

 

In Mexico, the principal news anchorman for Televista (which in recent years has held a monopolistic 95 per cent of the television audience) was Jacobo Zabludovsky. [OPPENHEIMER, A., p. 128, 131] He retired in 1998 after 27 years. Zabludovsky is often referred to as the "Walter Cronkite of Mexico." He was "the nation's most influential journalist who was also director of the network's news division for many years." [BUCKLEY, T.]  Zabludovsky's son, Abraham, is also a prominent reporter at the TV network.

In 2001 Jewish author Elissa Rashkin wrote a book entitled Women Filmmakers in Mexico. Of the five filmmakers she features, at least two are Jewish (despite the fact that there are merely 86,000 Jews in all of Mexico). Such filmmakers reflect typical Jewish themes. For Guita Schyfter,

      "with government backing, she was able to make a film which directly addressed
      her own experience of outsiderness and exclusion, as well as the history of Mexican
      Jews as a whole. That Schyfter's reexamination of mexicanidad through Jewish eyes
      came to the screen in the 1990s has everything to do with larger changes taking place
      during this period: the collapse of myths of national unity in the wake of successive
      economic and political crises and the emergence of contestatory discourses such
      as feminism, gay activism, and campesino and indigenous resistance to centralized
      state power ... Schyfter was refused permission by the president of the Ashkenazi
      community to film at the old synagogue and the Jewish cemetery, on the grounds
      that the film included an intermarriage." [RASHIN, E., 2001, p. 143, 153]

For Dana Rotberg's film Angel de fuego, "Rotberg has commented extensively on the influence of her Jewish upbringing on the film." [RASHKIN, E., 2001, p. 199] Jewish male Mexican filmmakers and film critics alluded to in Rashkin's discussion of female Mexican filmmakers include Arturo Ripstein, Gabriel Retes, Ramirez Berg, and Mauricio Wallerstein.

Then there was Jacques and Natasha Gelman, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, who settled in Mexico. They were

      "major players in the glamorous Mexico City film scene of the 1940s ... Aristocratically
     educated in St. Petersburg, Russia, Jacques Gelman had been sent packing
     to Europe by his land-owning parents following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution,
     his pockets stuffed with several Faberge eggs he luckily was never forced to sell.
     Much of his fortune ... came from discovering and producing the films of
     Mexican comedian Cantiflas." [VANESIAN, K., 6-7-2001]

 

Elsewhere in Latin America, Jaime Yankelevich "pioneered both radio and television and broadcasting in Argentina, becoming a nationally known figure in the country's culture and politics ...[ELKIN, 1998, p. 157]  ... Max Glucksman (1875-1946) was producing, distributing, and exhibiting films in the early years of this century. Albeto Soifer ... wrote tangos and other music for more than eighty movies. Leon Klimovsky ... directed movies, and Luis Saslavsky wrote screenplays for Argentine and foreign films. Numerous Jewish actors and actresses, such as the Singerman sisters and Iza Kremer, gained fame." [ELKIN, 1998, p. 101]

 

"Many Jewish immigrants [to Argentina]," notes Judith Elkin,

 

      "turned to journalism as a profession, and a considerable number

      of them founded their own journals of opinion. The total number

      of periodicals emanating from identifiably Jewish sources that have

      circulated in Buenos Aires at one time or another probably comes

      to as many as 250. With the acculturation of the second generation

      and attrition of the communal press, journalists who are Jewish

      emerged into the wider, multimedia, Spanish-and-Portugese world.

      Bernardo Verbitsky of El Mundo, Antonio Portnoy of La Gaceta

      and others introduced a substantial presence of journalists into the

      Argentine press ... The current president of Argentine PEN is a Jew,

      and so is the first Latin American to be elected president of the

      Federation of International Association of Journalists ... Jews were

      among the pioneers of Argentine films ... and a host of other entertainers

      achieved fame on the Argentine radio and stage despite their 'exotic'

      origins ... Actors occupy several pages in recent books about Jewish

      Argentina and Mexico." [ELKIN, 1998, p. 276]

 

The most famous Jewish Argentinean media figure in the West was probably Jacobo Timerman, founder of Primera Plana ("a kind of Argentina Time"), [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 305] and founder, publisher and editor of the newspaper La Opinion. [SIMPSON/BENNETT, 1985, p. 245] "Broadly speaking, La Opinion supported [in the 1970s] much of the military government's disastrous economic policy," note John Simpson and Jana Bennett, "and it rarely spoke in unambiguous terms about the government's total disregard of human rights, or the continuing practice of torture and murder. What it did was to highlight some of the cases that came to light, and that was itself dangerous enough." [SIMPSON/BENNETT, p. 247] In 1977 Timerman was arrested, initially during an investigation into Timerman's partner at La Opinion (a 45% shareholder in the paper), banker David Gravier. Gravier had recently died in a plane crash, and soon thereafter his banking interests in Belgium, Switzerland and the United States crashed, causing a scandal. It was also discovered that Gravier, also Jewish, "had been handling $17 million, mainly raised through robberies and ransom demands by the Montonero guerillas." [SIMPSON/BENNETT, p. 252] As for Timerman, note Simpson and Bennett, "[he] had a reputation as a king-maker and wheeler-dealer which made the human rights side of his case [in Argentina] more difficult to get across." [SIMPSON/BENNETT, p. 259]

 

Timerman was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured by interrogators of the ruling military junta, not uncommon in an era when over 11,000 people in Argentina "disappeared," presumed murdered by the oppressive dictatorship.

 

Timerman, in his best-selling book, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, recalls an early interrogation he was forced to undergo with his captors:

 

     "Question: Are you Jewish?

       Answer: Yes.

       Question: Are you a Zionist?

       Answer: Yes.

       Question: Is La Opinion Zionist?

       Answer: La Opinion supports Zionism since it is the liberation

                    movement of the Jewish people. It considers Zionism

                    to be a movement of high positive values, the study of

                    which can shed light on many problems related to building

                    national Argentine unity.

       Question: Then it is a Zionist newspaper?

       Answer: If you wish to put it in those terms, yes.

       Question: Do you travel to Israel often?

       Answer: Yes.

       Question: Do you know the Israeli ambassador?

       Answer: Yes."

       [TIMERMAN, J., 1981, p. 30]

 

Timmerman survived a two and a half-year imprisonment and, due to international pressure upon the Argentine government in his behalf, was released. He was expelled from Argentina and subsequently emigrated to Israel.

 

Also in Argentina, Alef, "the world's first Jewish TV channel outside of Israel," was initiated in 1995. Vice president Horacio Lutzky, said Television Business International "will have a Jewish perspective, but is looking for a universal audience." Transmitting 24 hours a day, the network was founded and funded by "15 Argentine investors and local and Israeli media professionals." Two-thirds of the programming was to come from Israel. "Also under way are negotiations with cable operators in other Latin American countries." [TEL. BUS.  INT'L, p. 16]

 

Along the same lines, in Great Britain, the (London) Independent wrote in 1998 that:

 

       "Britain's Jews are being urged to seize the unique opportunity presented

       by the digital revolution to create their own television channel. The call

       came yesterday from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), a

       leading international think-tank, and is being backed by prominent Jews

       who hold some of the most powerful posts in British broadcasting,

       including David Elstein, chief executive of Channel 5, Michael Green,

       chairman of Carleton Communications, and Sir Jeremy Isaacs,

       founding chief executive of Channel 4. His successor Michael Grade

       was also Jewish. Indeed, until he quit television last year, all of Britain's

       five terrestrial channels had Jews in prominent positions."  [BROWN, p.

       11]

 

One of the forces behind the new Jewish channel, professor Roger Silverstone, said that "it is high time that Jews participate in electronic media space to recover their heritage, to redefine their identity, and their social and cultural contribution, and to make their presence felt in the wider public sphere." [BROWN, p. 11]  "Professor Silverstone," noted the Independent, "acknowledged the risk of creating an 'electronic ghetto' through such a narrow casting initiative. But he envisaged that the proposed channel would avoid the danger by appealing from day one to non-Jews." [BROWN, p.11]

 

Also in England, in the 1980s, the head of Channel 4 in London, Jeremy Isaacs, was Jewish. [LILENTHAL, p. 143]  A former chairman of the BBC, Stuart Young, was also chair of the Institute for Jewish Affairs. By the late 1970s, another British Jew, Sir James Goldsmith, owned the weekly French newspaper L'Express as well as a significant interest in London's Daily Express. [MCCLINTICK, p. 303]   David Montagu was director of London Weekend Television for 21 years, as well as the chairman and CEO of Orion Bank. Sidney Samuelson has been "head of the British Film Commission since 1991." [SINGER/SELDIN, 1997, p. 267] "At least three British television stations and a radio station are headed by [Jews]," noted (London) Independent journalist Mark Lawson in 1994, "as, in the past, were three of the great ITV companies: ATV, Granada, and the Thames."  [LAWSON, p. 16]  Alex Bernstein, for example, is the former chairman of Granada Television till he retired in 1979; his father, Sidney, founded the company by first building a chain of cinemas, opening one a week in 1935. "Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home," noted the Associated Press, "Bernstein was not particularly religious. But he was a lifelong supporter of many Israeli charities." [AP, 2-6-93] Another Jewish mogul, David Goldman, is the former chairman of Britain's Sage computer software group.

 

In the mid-1990s, the Internet website of European-based Radio Islam (considered to be extremely anti-Semitic by Jewish organizations) documented over 250 names of prominent Jews on staff in England's mass media system, ranging from Alan Yentob (Director of BBC programming) to Judee Goffee (Director of the Independent Television Commission) to David Elstein (the CEO of Channel 5) to Duncan Lewis (the CEO of the Granada Media Group) to Julian Aston (the Managing Director of Channel 1), and on and on and on.

 

In 1999, Granada Media announced an agreement with the New York Times to "jointly produce international television programming. Granada, one of Europe's largest commercial television production companies, and a unit of London based Granada Group PLC, said it will have access to the New York Times' newsroom and other departments, in order to create documentary programming, including science, history, and current affairs shows." [WALL STREET JOURNAL, p. 3]

 

In 1998, Scotland's The Scotsman wondered:

 

     "Vanni who? TV-land was desperately seeking the answer to that question

      this week after it was announced that Vanni Treves ["of Jewish stock"], a

      57-year old lawyer, had been named as the new chairman of Channel 4

      television."  [DIDCOCK, p. 31]

 

In 1991, the (London) Sunday Telegraph noted the path to power of Jewish media mogul Michael Green:

 

     "In his own quest to own a television franchise, Green has immersed

     himself in the industry, becoming close friends with men such as [Jewish

     media moguls] Michael Grade of Channel 4 and Alan Yentob of BBC2

      ... The jewel of the ITV [television network was] added to his crown...

     Green attended Great Portland Street synagogue where he met Isaac (later

     Lord) Wolfson, the founder of Great Universal Stores and one of the

     most influential businessmen of his generation.... Helped mainly by

     [Jewish] city advisor Michael Sorkin of Hambros Bank, Green built [his]

     company ... into a near $2 billion communications giant ... [Green] is

     great friends with [Jewish moguls] Lord Rothschild, Charles Saatchi,

     Gerald Ratner, and media bigwigs Grade and Yentob ... Green cherishes

     a collection of cars including a 14-year old Rolls-Royce convertible, a

     Bentley Turbo, and an Austin Martin Virage."  [SUNDAY TELEGRAPH,

     p. 23]

 

In 1995, seven of the ten most popular television drama shows in Great Britain were produced by Green's Carleton UK Television.  [LAING, p. 15]  The Daily Telegraph called him "the most powerful figure in British commercial television." [VALLELY, p. 21]  (In 1998 the Carlton Communications division was fined $3.2 million by a British TV commission "for faking an award-winning documentary about Colombian drug smuggling." [USA TODAY, 12-22-98]) In 1998, British Jewish media mogul Stephen Grabiner (whose brother Mike runs Energis, a telecommunications company) was "the front man for the biggest media launch this country has ever seen" [LYNN, INTERNET]  -- British Digital Broadcasting (BDB), a joint venture between Michael Green's Carlton company and Granada. These two corporations, note the Wall Street Journal, "are the two largest players in ITV, "which is Britain's leading commercial terrestrial [i.e., non-digital/satellite] channel." [PYLAS, p. 14] Grabiner also headed the newspaper and magazine division of United News and Media.  By 1998 too, BBC's studios were, quite literally, rented out to a Jewish bar mitzvah ceremony. "More normally home to A Question of Sport and the Mrs. Merton Show," noted the London Independent, "Studio A will now be made kosher so that food can be served to a party of several hundred." [MCCANN, p. 10]

 

By the late 1990s, more and more British observers were expressing concern about the increased decadence on British broadcasting airwaves. "The tidal wave of sex and nudity," complained journalist Leo McKinsty, "demonstrates that the BBC and other broadcasters have lost all sense of morality ... A friend of mine was recently trying to make a programme for the supposedly religious Everyman slot on BBC 1 about Edith Stein, the Jew who converted to Christianity, died in a concentration camp and has recently been canonized. He was told the subject was 'not sexy enough.'" [MCKINSTY, L., 11-23-98] Government Culture Secretary Chris Smith even told the House of Commons that "We have noted in recent days a very considerable concern about some of the content on television, particularly in relation to Channel 5." [LEVY, G., 6-22-2000, p. 19]

 

Channel 5 is of course headed by Jewish mogul David Elstein, and he increasingly has come under attack for the station's fare. "Can this really be the same man," wondered the Daily Mail,

 

     "who today runs a channel that seeps tat into our living rooms with

     offerings such as Stark Naked, a naturism programme screened at

     8:30 PM; Pleasure Zone, the theme of which is sex, debauched films

     masquerading as drama; The Naughty, Naughty Hypno Show, in which

     members of the audience are hypnotised to engage in lewd acts such as

     simulating oral sex and wearing a rubber phallus; and, of course, the

     gruesome show Naked Jungle in which all the contestants appear in

     the nude." [BROWN, A., 11-2-97]

 

"Much of this [television decadence]," noted the London Daily Mail in another article the next year, "can be traced back to the zeal with which [Jewish media mogul] Michael 'Pornographer-in-Chief' Grade introduced a whole new approach when in charge of Channel 4, filling its outposts with sex-oriented programs." [MCKINSTY, L., 11-23-98] Other Jewish moguls include David and Ralph Gold,

     "[who are] most famous for owning the Ann Summers chain of sex shops, run
     run by David's daughter Jacqueline. The Gold brothers have interests in
     top shelf publishing as well as owning independent magazine distributor
     Portman. The brothers also jointly own Sport Newspapers and Birmingham
     City football club with David Sullivan." [TMF NEWS]

 

Elsewhere in Britain, the avidly pro-Israel Hollinger Group ("described by one author in 1997 as "the world's fastest growing press empire"  [NESIVSKY, p. 1]) is the owner of London's Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and is the owner -- or has an interest in  -- nearly 500 newspapers throughout the world. It controls half of all the daily newspapers in Canada and even owns 24% of Australia's second-largest newspaper chain, Fairfax Holdings. The man who runs all this from England, Conrad Black, is not Jewish, but, noted the (London) Sunday Times, "he thought nothing of turning the whole traditional editorial policy of the Jerusalem Post on its head once he acquired it, transforming it from a dovish into a hawkish [militantly pro-Israel, anti-Arab] paper overnight."  [HOWARD, INTERNET]

 

 The Jerusalem Post itself noted that:

 

     "For the record, Black has long had Jews on his company boards,

     including such figures as Chaim Herzog [a former president of Israel],

     Henry Kissinger, the Canadian real-estate tycoon Paul Reichmann, former

     Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Allan Gottleib, U.S. security advisor

     Richard Perle, Peter Bronfman, Sir Zelman Cowen, and others. Black's

     current wife, the one-time Sunday Times of London columnist Barbara

     Amiel, is Jewish, and Black's longtime Jewish partner David Radler

     became the Post's chairman."  [NESIVSKY, p. 22]

 

The (London) Sunday Times noted that Black's "wife, chief operating officer, and other key members of staff, including the Fairfax chairman [in Australia], are Jewish." [BERNOTH]  Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, is also a director of the Spectator, the Jerusalem Post, and Sunday Night Magazines.  For years she has been the senior political columnist for the Sunday Times (London).  "Those of us who care about Israel," wrote Amiel in 1999, "can't come up with any pragmatic reason for our unrequited love ... I'd support Israel even if I were not a Jew, simply because any country that is subject to such malevolent distortion fits my notion of a worthy underdog." [AMIEL, 1999, p. 17] In 1995, Conrad Black and his wife were guests of honor at the Jerusalem Foundation of Canada.  "Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, a columnist for MacLean's and the Daily Telegraph," observed MacLean's itself in 1997, "are known for their hawkish positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." [NOLEN, p. 36]

 

Black's Jewish partner, David Radler, is also the CEO of Hollinger (Blacks' Canadian holding company) and he is the chairman of the Chicago Sun-Times. He is also on the board of the UK Telegraph newspaper and Southam (Canada's biggest newspaper chain). [SIMON, p. 16]  Radler was described by the Financial Times (London) as "Black's closest business confidant, his chief deal maker, and when necessary, his hatchet man." [SIMON, p. 16] [Also note earlier references to Jewish domination of the nineteenth century British newspaper world]

In 2001, Black announced plans to within the year launch a new daily newspaper called the New York Sun. Jewish hedge-fund mogul Michael Steinhardt was a major co-investor. The chief editors at the new paper were announced as Seth Lipsky, former editor of the Jewish ethnic weekly newspaper, Forward, and his 'protege,' Ira Stoll. [New York Observer, 11-29-01]

 

Earlier, in 1991, at the death of corrupt [see earlier] British tycoon Robert Maxwell (born Ludvik Hoch), his media empire included Britain's Mirror Group of newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror. Other media holdings included People, Syndication International, the Scottish Daily Record, the New York Daily News, 50% of Germany's Berliner Zeitung, 50.1% of Hungary's Maygar Hirlap, 45% of the Kenya News, the European newspaper, percentages of Canadian media companies, Metromode cable TV, MacMillan, MacMillan-McGraw Hill Educational Books, Pergamon, Que (computer books), Collier, Panini, Berlitz, the Official Airlines Guide, and Europe's biggest printing company.   Maxwell also owned a major share of Ma’ariv, one of Israel's two major newspapers. The Jewish Advocate noted that Maxwell "has been called the 'crook of the century' following revelations that he looted $900 million from his workers' pension funds and his complicated web of companies. Hour by hour, new and lurid details surface of Maxwell's chicanery, deceit, and international intrigue." Yet, said the Advocate, in its article entitled Robert Maxwell: An Appreciation, "Maxwell was an ardent Zionist devoted to Israel and the Jewish people ... Despite all the National Equirer glamour and clamor, beneath the swashbuckling image of 'Cap'n Bob,' beat the heart of a real mensch, a decent, sensitive man, a Holocaust survivor." [PORTER, p. 9]

 

In 1986 Ari Ben-Menashe, a controversial figure who asserted an identity as an Israeli undercover agent and arms dealer, claimed that he had dealt directly with Maxwell as a "sayan" (Jewish "assistant" for the Mossad) in soliciting his help for an Israeli coverup, to impugn actual photographs taken inside Israel's nuclear weapons plant by defector Mordechai Vanunu as fraudulent. As Seymour Hersh tells it:

 

         "Maxwell made it clear at the brief session, Ben-Menashe recalled,

         that he understood what had to be done about the Vanunu story. 'I

         know what has to happen,' Maxwell told Ben-Menashe. 'I have

         already spoken to your bosses.'" [HERSH, p. 312]

 

Whether this interchange was true or not (some have challenged Ben-Menashe's credibility), Maxwell's Daily Mirror printed Vanunu's true story as "a hoax or something even more sinister -- a plot to discredit Israel." [BOWER, p. 462]  Maxwell, a British citizen, notes Seymour Hersh, "was well known for his closeness to Israel's top leadership," and even ordered that the Vanunu photographs be delivered to the Israeli embassy. [HERSH, p. 312] Maxwell's funeral in Jerusalem was attended by the most powerful Israeli government officials, including prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, and cabinet ministers Ariel Sharon, Moshe Arens, Ehud Olmert, and Shimon Peres.  President Chaim Herzog was among Maxwell's eulogizers, noting his rise as a media mogul, thus "influencing a large sector of mankind in many countries." [LYNFIELD, p. 7] "Regaled at his graveside by the Israeli government as a hero," notes Tom Bower, "he was condemned in London as a fraud." [BOWER, p. xiv]  Maxwell's lawyer in Israel, Yaacov Ne'eman, eventually became the Israeli Finance Minister under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. [MACHLIS, p. 30] In 1995 Maxwell's widow was selected by the American Zionist Youth Federation to be the Grand Marshall for New York's Salute to Israel parade.

 

Maxwell's intrigues were diverse. Nicholas Davies, the former Foreign Editor at Maxwell's Daily Mirror, notes that "for decades Maxwell had been involved with the KGB, not, as far as is known, as an active agent or in spying activities, but according to KGB sources in Moscow, he acted as a conduit, a banker, 'laundering' the KGB's money outside the Soviet Union." [DAVIES, N., p. 7]

 

Another Jewish entertainment/media mogul in Britain over the last few decades has been Lew Grade (born Louis Winogradsky). Grade founded the Associated Television Corporation (ATV) and was the Managing Director of ACC (Associated Communications Corporation), which owned ATV. Grade built the largest chain of theatres in the world. His brother, Bernard Delfont (born Boris Winogradsky), became the CEO of EMI's entertainment division and a nephew, Michael Grade, became Director of Programming for the BBC as well as the CEO of Channel 4 and the director of First Leisure.  By the 1960s, notes Michael Pye, "the Grades were the most powerful force in British show business, the three brothers [Lew, Leslie, and Bernard Delfont at their company called the Grade Organization] had television in the Midlands, a string of London theatres, and a vast agency business." [PYE, p. 234] In 1980, music critic David Harker noted the omnipresence of the powerful Winogradsky brothers in British music, media, and entertainment worlds:

 

        "The Royal Variety show takes place in a theatre owned by

         Associated Television (ATV), which is run by Lew Grade -- who,

         just happens, to be Bernard Delfont's brother. The proceeds from the

         shows go to a charity -- presided over by Bernard Delfont. Delfont is

         also a director of EMI, the largest record manufacturer in the world.

         Recently, EMI absorbed one of England's two big cinema circuits --

         Associated British Pictures -- of which Delfont is also a director.

         Bernard Delfont is also deputy chairman and joint managing director of

         the Grade Organization, which is owned by EMI (of which Mr.

         Delfont is a director). Bernard Delfont thus owns himself -- twice. So,

         if you read the TV Times, buy Pye, Marble Arch, Regal,

         Columbia, Parlophone, HMV, Pathe, Music for Pleasure, or

         Odeon Records; if you watch ATV or Thames Televisions, go to

         the Talk of the Town, the London Palladium, Victoria Palace,

         Hippodrome, Her Majesty's Globe, Lyric, Apollo, or Prince of

         Wales Theatres; if you go to one of ABC's 270 cinemas or twelve

         bowling alleys or one of Ambassador's ten bowling alleys, then

         Bernard Delfont has an interest in what you're doing."

         [WICKE, p. 120]

 

Delfont and London music publisher Cyril Share were particularly active in support of Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. [COLEMAN, p. 345] 

 

Jewish commentator Barnet Litvinoff once observed

 

          "that Jewish power expressed unconsciously is Jewish power

          nevertheless. Few films emanating from Hollywood have put a Jew in

          an unfavourable light, possibly because of the special character the

          industry assumed through the Jewish pioneers who controlled it for

          so long. Britain may well be undergoing a similar experience through

          the ubiquity of the organization headed by Lew Grade and his brothers

          (the erstwhile Winogradskys of Whitechapel). It is impregnable in

          entertainment for its hold upon the theatre, the variety scene,

          commercial television, a significantly large cinema circuit, and its

          contractual ties with many leading actors, writers, and popular

          musicians." [LITVINOFF, B., p. 168]

 

Lew Grade, note Peter Brown and Steven Gaines,

 

     "owned the huge Associated Television Corporation, Britain's

      largest independent producer of TV programs. Lew Grade also

      personally produced the United Kingdom's most popular TV

      variety show, 'Sunday Night at the Palladium,' on which an appearance

      was crucial for an act to gain national attention. Brother Leslie Grade

      headed the largest show business agency in the country ... The third

      brother, Bernard, owned several prestigious theatres, was a major

      force behind the West End Theatre business, and by appointment to

      the Queen booked the most prestigious of all live shows, the Royal

      Command Performance." [BROWN/GAINES, 1983, p. 98]

(Among Grade's many Jewish partners in various reams was Leo Greenfield, "nearly legendary in the field of motion picture distribution," who co-founded with the British mogul the film distribution firm Associated Film Distribution.) [BROUWER/WRIGHT, 1990, p. 508-509]

 

Another British Jewish entertainment mogul, Louis Benjamin, was the managing director of the Moss Empire, a theatre chain later running the Pye and Golden Guinea record labels. Benjamin "pioneered cut-price records..., signed many of the musical giants of the day, and was credited with the introduction of Rhythm and Blues to the [British] public." [DAILY TELEGRAPH, p. 21] Arnold Goodman, who died in 1999, was chairman of British Lion Films and the London Observer newspaper. [FINANCIAL TIMES, 10-16-99, p. 4] Jack Shulman "started one of London's early silent movie picture houses despite being a staunch member of the communist party." [BEVAN, J., 10-2-94, p. 24]

 

Echoing the situation in America, many of Great Britain's popular comics have been Jewish. These include Peter Sellers, Marty Feldman, Bennett Aron, David Baddiel, Jerry Sadowtiz, Paul Kaye, David Schneider, Sid James, Ivor Dembina, Arnold Brown, Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, Peter Rosengard, Maureen Lipman, and Mark Maier. Television writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Green are recent history's "Kings of British Sitcom." [WINNER, D., p. 45] Then there is Esther Rantzen, also Jewish. As London's Independent reported in 1991:

      "Her colleagues and the Press delight in castigating her. She has been called vulgar,
       mawkish, exploitative, smug and self- serving; ruthless, spiteful, ambitious,
      aggressive, power-mad. In the Eighties she was frequently likened to Mrs.
      Thatcher, a comparison she claimed she was proud to accept, adding however
      that Mrs T identified with success and she with victims. After winning this week's
      libel case against a newspaper that claimed she had protected a known paedophile
      because he provided inside information for her programme, she said her critics
      had the right to call her old, ugly and untalented, 'but if you tell me that I put
      children in danger, then I have to go to court.' Few would dispute that Esther
      Rantzen is the most powerful woman on television. That alone explains why
      her survival and the 18-year reign of her programme, That's Life, should arouse
      strong passions. How did she reach and maintain that eminence?" [INDEPENDENT,
      12-21-91, p. 14]

There is also Ruby Wax. As London's Jewish Chronicle notes:

  "Ruby Wax has always irritated me beyond measure. I find her TV shows on the bed/in the bath/shopping at Harvey Nicks with Hollywood stars impossible to watch. It's not that I don't think her hugely clever, witty, and funny. I do. The woman possesses brilliance and comic talent in spades. But she also possesses and Ego the size of Edgeware. There's the whole, hey-world-look-at-me thing, the infuriating, childlike emotional neediness. Then there's the simmering rage ... Of course, the world has always known why she is the way she is. She's never made any secret of her miserable childhood with two nutty Jewish immigrant parents who make the Osbournes look functional ... [After "fame" and a "nervous breakdown,"] she found a brilliant psychotherapist and has never looked back."
[ Margolis, S., 11-1, 2002, p. 38]

How about London's Richard Woolfe:

  "Richard Woolfe feels he has got the best job in television. And given that the goal of the Living TV boss is to attract females between 16 and 44, it is not difficult to understand. The aforementioned group is the target audience for the increasingly popular satellite and cable channel, for which Mr. Woolfe is responsible for devising new programmes and importing American ratings winners ... Although his parents are from Dublin, the 40-year-old was raised within the Brighton Orthodox community ... Following his A-levels, he spent a year in Israel on a youth leadership programme at the Hebrew University, which he found 'unbelievably brilliant' ... His breakthrough [to getting a job in the TV business] was landing a researcher's role on [Jewish] Esther Rantzen's 'That's Life.' Having applied for a job as a BBC radio journalist trainee, Mr. Woolfe was told he hadn't got the job -- as a ploy to see what his reaction would be. He responded by demanding to be hired. Suitably impressed, the BBC offered him his choice of programme to work on. Mr. Woolfe's award-winning investigations for 'That's Life' included one focusing on four British POWs in Auschwitz who sheltered a Jewish girl in the death camp." [JACOBUS, H., 12-6-02, p. 8]

How about Emily Maitlis?:

  "Emily Maitlis is the face of London BBC News --- and a very attractive one at that ... Familiar to viewers in the capital as the anchor of the regional programme which follows the early BBC national news, she joined the corporation last year after a three-year stint with Sky News ... 'We had what I would call a very spiritual Jewish upbringing. I woud not say we were particularly religious -- like so many Jews, the rules get made to fit a little bit," [she said]." [KOHEN, J., 11-29-02, p. 10]

In France, notes Howard Sachar, "by the mid-1950s ... as in other Western nations, Jews were prominent in theatre and cinema." [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 99] The CEO (1996) of Lagardere Groupe is Raymond Levy. Its Hachette Filipacchi division publishes over 100 newspapers and magazines (including Women's Day, Family Life, Video, and Car and Driver) in 15 languages throughout the world. In 1995, Lagarde bought Premiere magazine, in association with Jewish American mogul Ronald Perelman. Its Matra division even produces missile parts, satellite technology, and builds cars with Renault. [HOOVER, p. 110] Also in France, Europe's largest pay-TV organization is Canal Plus; its CEO is Marc Andre Feffer. Also, in the 1980s and 90s, for thirteen years, Ann Sinclair, the Jewish wife of French Finance and Industry Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, "hosted France's most popular political chit-chat show on prime television, being voted 'television's personality of the year.'" [ECONOMIST, 9-13-97] 

 

Going to France's Cannes Film Festival? It is monopolized by yet another Jewish entrepreneur, Gilles Jacob. Newsweek noted him in 1999 as a "career maker," a "former film critic who has been running the Festival for the past 21 years. Not only does Jacob choose and schedule all the films, he also picks the jury president and its members." [THAMES, D., p. 56]  Want to speak freely about the Jewish influence in radio and television in France? In 2000, a French publisher, Editions Fayard, called back its volume "Journal," by Renard Camus, for fear of public backlash for Camus' negative comments about Jews in the French mass media. The book criticized the "large presence of Jews in a radio and television program, France Culture." Camus wrote that Jews were "over represented as an ethnic and religious group" and there was too much emphasis on "Jewish culture, Jewish religion, Jewish writers, the state of Israel and its policy, the life of Jews in France, and in the world today or through the centuries." Among those threatening to sue both the author and publisher was the Jewish director of the France Culture program, Laure Adler. [XINHUA GENERAL NEWS SERVICES, 4-20-2000]

 

In southern Europe, Jewish mogul Carlo De Beneditti is "one of the richest men in Italy," and is "ranked third among Italy's economic barons." He built to power Olivetti, "one of Europe's premier computer and telecommunications companies." A De Benedetti holding company, CIR, owns La Repubblica, "one of the country's top newspapers," and the Editrice Periodici Culturali magazine group, which includes L'Espresso, a well-known weekly magazine. In 1992, De Benedetti was sentenced to six years for fraud in a bank scandal. He was also arrested for spending $6 million in a kickback scheme with government officials. [MONTALBANO, p. A13; VULLIAMY, p. 9] Also in Italy, Ever Haggiag, is "a leading Italian motion picture producer and distributor." [PERRY, V., 6-10-99] In 1996, Fiamma Nirenstein, a "well-known journalist and former director of the Italian Culture Center in Israel," won Italy's Premiolini Journalism Award. [SINGER/SELDIN, 1997, p. 328]  In 1999, "Clemente J. Mimun, director of TV news at the state-run RAI-2 channel, received the Golden Quill award honoring outstanding personalities in the field of 'Culture in Journalism.'" [GRUBER, R., 1999, p. 333]

In 2000, Gad Lerner, also Jewish, resigned his position as director of news on Italian state television RAI 1. "He resigned," noted the Irish Times,

      "because he had been caught up in a major political row prompted by the fact
      that his channel (as well as RAI's channel 3) had last week broadcast disturbing
      images of paedophile pornography. The controversial images had been broadcast
      within the ambit of a report on an investigation by state prosecutors in Torre
      Annunziata, near Naples, which uncovered an Italo-Russian racket that produced
      and sold child pornography on the Internet. The images in question were deeply
      disturbing since, among other things, they showed the apparent rape of a young
      boy by an adult man. Clearly, this was hardly family viewing for the main evening
      news bulletin on the nation's longest-established television service, a bulletin that
      last Wednesday night was watched by seven million people. Within minutes, the
      RAI switchboard was receiving hundreds of protest calls ... Given Mr Lerner's
      swashbuckling, campaigning style of journalism on previous news and current
      affairs programmes, it was hardly surprising to discover that he had made enemies.
      Nor did it help his popularity on the right that he is a former member of the extreme
      left-wing group, Lotta Continua." [AGNEW, P., 10-4-00, p. 14]

The Associated Press noted that "Aldo Grasso, one of Italy's most respected television critics, said the RAI broadcasts were 'symptomatic of what has been happening in Italian TV, both state and private, over the last couple of years.' 'Editors are driven not by quality or responsibility toward viewers but only the ratings,' he told the Associated Press. 'Disturbing and violent images intrude in all kinds of programs, throughout the day.' The UNICEF head in Italy, Giovanni Micali, also complained bitterly about rising violence. 'It was an extreme case, but not the first and not the only one,' he said of the RAI newscasts." [HUGHES, C., 9-28-00]

 

 In 1994, in Germany, the head of CCC Film Studio, Arthur Brauner, won the German Federal Cross of Merit. [SINGER/SELDIN, 1995, p. 323] Leo Katcher noted in 1968 that

 

     "The German motion-picture industry, which Hitler and Goebbels

     had converted into a propaganda machine was a shambles when

     the war ended ... For a short time there was no industry at all and

     then Arthur Brauner emerged as the new titan in the field." [KATCHER,

     L., 1968, p. 176]

 

Brauner, who is from Poland, rose to power in post-war West Germany, where Jews were one-twentieth of one percent of the total population. And as he once noted:

 

     "I made up my mind that some day I would tell the world what it

     was like to be a Jew. It was then that I decided that I would make

     motion pictures ... I wanted revenge against the Germans. I wanted

     to show that they had not destroyed all Jews [KATCHER, L. 1968,

     p. 177] ... No Jews can be Germans. If we have a home, it is Israel.

     That is where out duty lies. That is where our love must go. It is

     our obligation to defend and aid Israel." [KATCHER, p. 175]

In 1997, Brauner premiered his eighteenth film about the Holocaust (From Hell to Hell) at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The film's depiction of Poles and Poland garnered protests from the Polish-American community. A month later Brauner's German studios burned down in what police called an arson attack. [TUGEND, T., 2-7-97]

 

In 1995, another Jewish mogul, Ron Sommer, took over as CEO of Deutsche Telekom, formerly a massive state bureaucracy. Subdivisions of this firm include T-Online, "Europe's largest internet service company." [BENOIT, B., 9-22-2000, p. 32] Sommer was born in Haifa, Israel.    

 

In Sweden, notes Rochelle Wright, "Between 1989 and 1993 ... there were five Swedish feature films and one co-production- -- a significant number, given the relatively small annual output of the Swedish film industry -- that focused on the Jewish experience. Beginning in 1997, several television dramas of varying lengths also incorporated a discussion of Jewish identity or of Swedish anti-Semitism." [WRIGHT, R., p. 8]

 

What about the mass media situation in Canada (aside from the already mentioned Hollinger dynasty)?  "Jews," notes Morton Weinfeld, "have been statistically over represented in both the financial and the creative aspects of the entertainment business. It is a short step from that observation to the vicious canard that the Jews, in some collective, conspiratorial sense, control Hollywood. One could also possibly construct a similar argument for the Canadian scene. People such as Izzy Asper, Garth Drabinsky, Harold Greenberg, Robert Lantos, Ed Mirvish, and Moses Znaimer are just a few of the Canadian Jews who have played innovative roles in the popular entertainment industry in Canada." [WEINFELD, p. 10]

 

In that country, Israel "Izzy" Asper controls CanWest Global. He is the chief officer of the company that by the mid-1990s was "already the largest private sector television broadcaster in the country."  [CHISHOLM, p. 36]  CanWest is also the country's "most profitable broadcaster" and has media outlets in every Canadian major markets except Montreal and Alberta.  [TELEVISION BUS. INT'L] Asper also controls TV 3 in New Zealand (68% of its stock) and founded TV 4, as well as FM radio network MORE, in the same country. In Australia, CanWest has a 76% stake in Network Ten, the second-most profitable TV station in that country. In Ireland, Asper is the largest investor in TV3, and his firms also have a financial stake in Ulster TV. [SCOTLAND, Business, p. 4]

 

A TV colleague calls Asper "the most aggressive businessman I know. The guy is a Machiavellian genius." [CHISHOLM, p. 36]   MacLean's notes that:

 

      "Asper's lock on [CanWorld's] multiple voting shares -- he holds all 26

       million  -- has also made him one of the country's richest corporate

       players.... By the time he is through, he wants to carve a global

       broadcasting force. He does not say that he will build a dynasty, but

       his three offspring [including Leonard, CanWorld's vice president for

       corporate development; David, the vice president for programming; and

       Gail, another executive] have taken on key corporate roles, and they will

       accede to ownership, so there is that too."  [WELLS, p. 40]

Asper blatantly uses his ownership powers to melodramatically propagandize on behalf of the state of Israel, as he did in the National Post (a newspaper he controls) in 2001:

    "Israel, after 53 years of statehood, remains the only isolated island of democracy,
     human rights and rule of law -- a lonely outpost of Western civilization and its
     values in a sea of terrorism, corruption, dictatorship and human enslavement.
     Countries like Canada should therefore be in the vanguard of its support,
     for mutual economic, military and ethical reasons ... It is therefore a dismaying
     sight for knowledgeable Canadians to watch our Foreign Affairs minister, John
     Manley, either a prisoner of naievete, or political opportunism, embracing this
     war criminal, [Yassar] Arafat, on Mr. Manley's recent visit to the Middle East."
     [ASPER, I. H., 6-19-01] [See chapter on Israel for the details of Israel's
     "democracy."]

 

Other important Jewish executives at CanWorld have recently included president Steve Gross, and David Mintz, the head of programming.

 

Also in Canada, the wealthy Greenberg family began moving into the mass media in the 1990s, controlling Astral, Canada's largest pay-per-view and specialty TV company. The chairman of Astral, Andre Bureau, is also the former chairman of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. Astral Home Entertainment is the largest wholesaler of video cassettes in Canada. Harold Greenberg's original co-partners in his ventures were Phyllis Switzer, Ed Cowan, and Jerry Grafstein. Barbara Frum host Canada's prominent TV news program, The Journal.

 

In Montreal, another Jewish mogul, Moses Znaimer, is president and executive producer of CITY-TV, Much Music, Musique Plus, and the Bravo Network. His sister, Libby, is CITY-TV's news program money specialist. [HUSTAK, GAZETTE, p. C7]  Much Music's (an MTV clone) video host is also Jewish -- Erica Ehm. Znaimer started out in the media business by putting soft pornography on public TV -- fellow Jewish media mogul Robert Lantos sold him the rights to some films from the New York Erotic Film Festival early in both their careers, "start[ing] Robert Lantos in business.'" [ZNAIMER, 9-21-98] A London newspaper headlined Znaimer as "the King of Me-TV, Znaimer's Influence on Canadian Culture -- and on Television Worldwide -- Is Difficult to Overstate ... Znaimer Has Shaped An Entire Generation's Self-Perception." [FRASER, p. F3] Toronto Life described him as "shirt-buttoned to the collar [with] large, tinted glasses that evoked a 1970s porn-magnate." [FRASER, M.]

 

In 1998 a Canadian magazine called Robert Lantos, head of Alliance Communications, and later Serendipity Point Films, "one of the original architects of what we have now [in the Canadian mass media]." [GROSS, P., 9-21-98]   The Toronto Star noted Lantos and Garth Drabinsky (eventually caught in a financing scandal) as "Canadian's two most emblematic, brash, creative and -- according to some -- egocentric entertainment figures." [ADILMAN, 8-29-98, p. M4] Drabinsky founded (with Myron Gottleib) Livent, America's largest theatre production company, and Cineplex Odeon, by the 1980s one of North America's largest movie theatre chains. Until recent scandals, Livent owned the $43 million Ford Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, the Pantages Theatre in Chicago, and the Center for Performing Arts in Chicago, among other holdings.

In his autobiography, Drabinsky notes the influence upon him of Canadian Jewish mogul Nat Taylor:

     "He was big, the biggest, a legend in the movie business in Canada, the
     nearest thing Canada had to a Hollywood mogul. He had been an exhibitor,
     a distributor, a producer, and a TV-station shareholder. He was partners
     with Famous Players, the dominant exhibition chain in Canada. He owned
     the coutnry's largest movie-production studio, Toronto International
     Studios, in Kleinberg, Ontario. He was the man who opened the first
     Canadian movie-house for foreign and art films. He was the guy who came
     up with the idea of multiple theatres." [DRABINSKY, G., 1995, p. 56]

Taylor also owned the influential trade journal, Canadian Film Digest, and hired Drabinsky -- in his early years -- to edit it. [DRABINSKY, G., 1995, p. 58]

Another noteworthy Jewish cinema/theatre mogul in the early years was Nathan Nathanson who "built the Panteges [theatre] in 1920 ... Even more significantly, Nathanson started not only the Famous Players theatre circuit in Canada but also Canadian Odeon ... He was single-handedly responsible for the two chains that formed the duopoly that dominated Canadian exhbition for so long." [DRABINSKY, G. 1995, p. 64] Then there is Allen Karp, "chairman and chief executive of the Toronto-based Cineplex Odeon Corporation, Canada's largest film exhibitor." [KIRSHNER, S., 1-7-99]

    

Also in Canada, Jewish mogul Paul Godfrey is the 1990s chairman of the Toronto Sun Publishing Company/ Sun Media Group and was the 1998 winner of the B'nai B'rith Award of Merit. Five families own TorStar, the parent company of the Toronto Star, the largest newspaper in Canada. One of the familiess is Jewish : the Thalls. "Their original name was Rosenthal. [Burnett] Thall says he lopped off the first two syllables to overcome the anti-Semitism of 1940s Toronto and improve his job prospects." [REGULY, E., 10-26-01] In 1992, a baptized Jew, Peter Herrnsdorf, became the CEO and chairman of TV Ontario, replacing Bernard Ostry. (For a decade Herrnsdorf had been the publisher of Toronto Life magazine. "Among those who championed Herrnsdorf's installation at TVO," notes Toronto Life, "was Howard Bernstein, a senior producer who had worked for Herrnsdorf at CBC," where Herrnsdorf had also been an executive). [CANADIAN BUSINESS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS, JULY 1996, p. 56-6; DINOFF, D., 7-26-99, p. 4]

 

Yet another Jewish media head, Jacques Bensimon, member of the "self-help Sephardic Network," stepped down in 2000 as the Managing Director of TFO, the French language division of TV Ontario. "He is widely considered," notes the Canadian Jewish News, "to be the father of TFO ... By Bensimon's estimation, his Jewish sensibility helped enormously, sensitizing him to the perspectives and needs of his French minority audience." Bensimon left TFO to become an executive at the Banff Television Festival. Bensimon had earlier served as a director at the Film Board of Canada. [KIRSCHNER, S., 7-13-2000]

 

Sandra Kolber, also Jewish, became a member of the board of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1991. [SINGER/SELDIN, 1992, p. 34] The very powerful president and CEO of CBC at the turn of the millennium is Richard Rabinovitch. (He "spent more than a decade as chief operating officer of Claridge Inc., [Jewish alcohol and media mogul] Charles Bronfman's private holding company in Montreal, and was chairman of the executive committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress's Quebec region). [GORDON, S., 11-30-01]

Also in Canada, Garry Schwartz heads Phoenix Pictures and Phyllis Yaffe is the president and CEO of Showcase Television. Both, too, are Jewish. (The chairman of the Canadian Television Fund, a private/public partnership that helped fund 330 TV programs and 17 feature films in 1997-98 alone is Richard Stursberg and Tim Kotchoff was sequentially vice-president of news programming for both CBC and CTV television networks. Are these two men Jewish as well?) At the lower media tiers, a panel discussion at a Canadian Jewish Congress luncheon in 1999 included CBC TV "senior reporter" Joe Schlesinger, "broadcaster" Evan Solomon, "editorial writer for the National Post" Ezra Levant, and "associate editor of Now magazine" Susan Cole. [ROSE, B., 12-9-99, p. 3, 5] Himie Koshevoy died in 2000. He had been the "managing editor of the Vancouver Sun and subsequently the Toronto Star." [KIRSCHNER, S., 9-14-2000, p. 11]

"Humble Howard" Glassman is a prominent radio show radio host in Toronto, as is Marsha Lederman. As one Jewish ethnic paper noted about the usual Jewish subtext in their commentaries:

     "Glassman has been under fire from Christian groups for a few years now, culminating
     in last month's 26-page complaint to the Canadian Radio-Television and
     and Telecommunications Commission by the Catholic Civil Rights League and
     the Canadian Family Action Coalition. (They sent copies to the B'nai B'rith
     and the Toronto Police Hate Crimes Squad). Particularly at issue was a series
     of bits done by Glassman and sidekick Fred Patterson regarding Jesus
     (including the song 'Jesus Was a Fetus') and Easter (a giveaway of chocolate
     Jesus candles, promising to mail their producer to a cross and holding a
     Jesus-lookalike contest ... While [Lederman] has sufficient respect for her
     background to not try to subvert Judaism, she is constantly at odds with how
     much her perspective is shaped by religion. She's been accused of being
     anti-Catholic after addressing issues, which she finds odd, since she
     currently cohabitates with a Catholic." [WEISBLOT, M., 9-2001]

In 1997, the Alberta Report reported about those who oversee moral issues for the Canadian television audience (the article was subtitled "Naked Lesbian Kissing Is Deemed Acceptable for Suppertime TV"):

    "A recent decision by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council suggests that
      if Ellen [the American lesbian-oriented TV series] were produced here, the only
      controversy would be whether she would be shown naked in bed with her lesbian
      lover ... Nudity is not yet common on Canadian sitcoms, but the diaphanously-clad
      models featured on such haute couture 'news' programs as CBC Newsworld's
      Fashion File and the syndicated Fashion Television often resemble Salome
      stripped to her last veil ... Two weeks ago the industry-funded CBSC (which had
      earlier dismissed two previous claims against Fashion Television) dismissed this
      complaint as well. The CBSC cited a response from series producer CITY-TV--
      owned by [Jewish mogul] Moses Znaimer, who also co-owns Alberta's ACCESS-TV
      --'We do not equate nudity with pornography. Fashion and photography to our mind
      are art' ... The unnamed complainant had argued in a January 1995 letter, 'These are
      prime time family viewing hours and it is highly inappropriate for such sexually explicit
      material to be shown on television.' Ron Cohen, CBSC national chairman, rejects
      this argument as irrelevant, contending that the specialized nature of the program appeals
      to adults only ... Jay Levine, Fashion Television's producer, adds that nudity is to
      be expected from a show covering an industry where 'being sexy is to be provocative.'
      He adds, 'We're doing something that obviously a lot of people don't have a problem
      with ... a few years ago it would have been inconceivable that producer-writer Ken
      Finkleman could utter 'the f-word' on his hit CBC sitcom The Newsroom.'"
     [SILLARS, L., 4-28-97]

In Australia, the pattern continues. Jewish mogul Theodore Fink (1855-1942) "owned the Herald newspapers, the largest chain in Australia and the largest publishing enterprise south of the equator." [GREENBERG, M., p. 53] "Since the war, there have been a number of Jewish celebrities in the media and show business [in Australia]," says Hilary Rubinstein, "They include journalist-broadcaster Sam Sipski and the late Eric Baums, television personality Dita Cobb, impressario Peter Faiman and Harry M. Miller, film-makers Yoram Gross (also a talented cartoonist) and Bob Weiss, actors John Bluthal and Herzi Szeps, popular musician Tommy Tycho, and the successful stage and recording artist Renee Geyer. Many musicians rose to prominence during the interwar period -- people such as Isadore Goodman and the Spivakovsky brothers. George Dreyfus, Larry Sitsky and Felix Werden are renowned musical composers whose works havre been widely acclaimed." [RUBINSTEIN, H., 1987, p. 217]

In South Africa, Jonathan Wacks returned to his homeland as a major Jewish movie figure after 20 years in the United States. There, he was a film director, vice-president of production at the Samuel Goldwyn Company, president of Michael Nesmith's Pacific Arts Pictures, and head of the Moving Image Arts Department at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. [MORRIS, M., 10-23-2001]

 

From America, the Lauder family fortune, worth $4.2 billion, is rooted in perhaps the richest woman in the United States, Estee Lauder, the "queen of cosmetics." An heir, Ronald Lauder, gained a footing in Europe in the mid-1980s while a Reagan-appointed ambassador to Austria, which was "largely in return for his work as finance chairman for the New York Republican Party." Lauder, noted the Jewish Week, has been "active in a wide variety of causes which aid Israel and world Jewry. [He] is closely associated with the Israel Bond program ... [Lauder] made a significant contribution to Vienna's Jewish community by dedicating and opening up for Jewish immigrants the [Orthodox] Chabad center." [JW, 2-26-88]  He also heads the Jewish National Fund of America.

 

With the collapse of the Soviet-controlled Eastern European bloc, Lauder was well-positioned to embark upon investing in a business empire in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in television and telecommunications. A former executive (Itzik Fisher) at Israel's national telephone company, Bezeq, was installed as head of Lauder's RSL Communications. Mr. Lauder (also current Chairman of the Board of the Museum of Modern Art) was not alone among those most prominently searching for profit, control, and cultural influence in the collapsed communist area. A 1990 New York Times article highlighted five American investors in Hungary; at least four of them were Jewish, including Lauder. Another, Albert Reichmann, one of three brothers controlling a company that Business Week calls "the richest and most powerful real estate developer in the world,' told the magazine: "The Jewish population is the reason I'm interested in Hungary and the Soviet Union." [NYT, 1-26-90]

 

In 1990 Lauder gained principal ownership of the Hungarian Credit Bank Ltd, and in 1992 he had 50% share in an eastern German engineering firm. By 1997 a Lauder-controlled company -- Central European Media Enterprises -- held television stations in seven European countries, including Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, and operated eleven TV stations in Poland alone, ironically called "Independent Polish Television." [BRZEZINSKI, p. A41]  CME became the largest private television broadcasting organization in Europe. [MCELVOGUE]  The publisher/editor-in-chief of the English-language general information newspaper in Poland, the Warsaw Voice is also Jewish -- Andrzej Jonas. One of the paper's crusades has been against a cluster of Christian crosses near Auschwitz. [See, for example, 6-6-99] He also publishes the English-language Okecie Airport magazine, the other newspaper visiting Americans are likely to read in English in Poland. The publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza, one of Poland's most widely circulated newspapers, is Adam Michnik. He is also Jewish.

 

By 1989, Poland's first cable TV system, Polska Telewizja Kablowa, was 70% controlled by Jewish entrepreneur David Chase's Chase Enterprises). [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 12-8-89, p. D4] In 1996, with the continued de-monopolization of Poland's communist-era RP Telekom telecommunications company, the Jerusalem Post noted the "position" of Israeli Shmuel Dankner in the Eastern European country's telecommunications field:

 

     "Dankner is well positioned to become a key player in the country's

     transition to market economics. Yet he doesn't appear intent to do that.

     In fact, it seems as if Dankner is careful to keep his own and his

     partner's foreign profiles low." [ASA-EL, A., 7-17-96, p. 6]

 

Dankner partners include fellow Israelis Meir Srebernik and Sharon Waizer "who runs an R.P. Telekom joint venture with Motorola." "If anything," Waizer said about Poland, "my stay here so far has made of me a prouder Zionist." [ASA-El, A, 7-17-96, p. 6] By 1997, Dankner's Dankner Investments, its subsidiary Matar, and General Electric held "majority shares" in RP Telekom. [MIDDLE EAST NEWS, 3-24-97] By 1998, a telecommunications firm called Netia had "emerged as the largest provider of local fixed line telephone services in Poland ... It holds the concessions for five of the ten biggest cities ... and has licensing covering a third of the population [of Poland]." Owned by a consortium of companies (Telia from Switzerland, Dankner Investments, Shamrock Holdings, Trefoil Capital Investments, and Goldman Sachs Capital), the CEO was Israeli Meir Srebernik. [FINANCIAL TIMES, 3-25-98, p. 8]

 

In 1999, Ronald Lauder's CME merged with the Swedish-based SBS Broadcasting. The new company (retaining the SBS name) now owned 18 TV and 12 radio companies in 13 countries (TV stations included those in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Ukraine, Switzerland, and Poland). Ronald Lauder now shared the Co-Chairmanship of the new firm with Harry Evans Sloan. Sloan is also from America  -- originally a lawyer in Hollywood. Sloan once headed New World Entertainment and built his early media empire with Lawrence Kuppin via junk bond financing.

 

Another Jewish businessman, Michael Finkelstein, formerly the Vice-Chairman of SBS, became Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of the new entity. "CME stations [in Central and Eastern Europe]," noted the Central European Business Weekly, "are ranked number one in both audience and revenues in all markets except Hungary where the SBS station, TV 2, is number one." [ANTHONY, M., p. 1]

 

In 1997, in the Czech Republic, one of Ronald Lauder's stations, TV Nova  -- one that reaches 70% of the Czech broadcasting audience and was originally founded by five Czech intellectuals in Prague, was embroiled in controversy. The control of Nova by Lauder, noted the Wall Street Journal, "is raising fears about foreign ownership in broadcasting throughout the region ... [Some Czechs] were worried that the country's liberalized media laws have created a huge foreign force in the market. Czech regulators are investigating Nova for alleged license breaches and have threatened to pull the plug on the station ... Adding to the pressure, one of the founders of the station is suing Nova over control and labeled it 'an American propaganda machine.'"  [FRANK, p. A1] "Newspaper editorials attack the influence of 'Nova sleaze' on Czech culture,” noted the Journal, "Government ministers privately suggest Nova's gory prime-time features are to blame for the recent rise in crime." [FRANK, p. A1]  In Poland in the same year, arsonists set fire to a Warsaw synagogue located next door to the offices of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, an organization attempting to reassert an international organizational Jewish presence in Poland.

 

Maneuvering around Czech ownership and licensing laws that addressed foreign ownership, the control of TV Nova was technically deeded, in association with Lauder, to a Czech national, Vladimir Zelezny. Zelezny, not surprisingly, is also Jewish ("Zelezny and Lauder have much in common, including a passion for collecting art collecting and Jewish philanthropy.") [MORTKOWITZ/ERNSBERGER, 1-17-00] He is also "one of the wealthiest men in the Czech Republic." [MEILS, C., 3-5-01] By the year 2000 the two Jewish moguls had a falling out in a struggle for full control of the station. Lauder eventually sued Zelezny for 140 counts of alleged fraud. Lauder also sued the Czech government. However, noted Newsweek, "Lauder has said he'd drop the case against the Czech government if CME is allowed to purchase Prima [the second largest TV station in the Czech Republic]." [MARTKOWICZ/ERNSBERGER, 1-17-00, p. 46] "It is widely believed, noted Variety, that Zelezny also covertly manages Prima TV, Nova's main commercial rival." [DAWTREY, A., 1-22-01]

 

And what was the effect of this Jewish-controlled TV Nova upon Czech culture? Local professor Jan Culik noted that "educated people have been horrified by what this station has been to doing to Czech society, especially the violence and its effects on kids." The Jewish Week described the station's fare:

 

     "There, on the TV screen each night, on Lauder's flagship European

     station, a buxom, frontally naked weather lady would coyly tell viewers

     how to dress for the next day's weather. The erotic weather forecast,

     as it was called, was part of a newscast that media industry observers

     describe as among the most gory and sensationalist anywhere, with

     graphic depictions of beheadings, burnt bodies and other mayhem.

     Later, after 11 each evening, the station, TV Nova, would follow up

     with soft core pornography. And on another program, 'Taboo,' sexual

     deviants such as molesters, sado-masochists and rapists who would

     frankly discuss their sexual activities." [COHLER-ESSES, L., 1-21-2000,

     p. 16]

Jewish influence in the mass media of Czechoslovakia has a long history. Prior to the rise of the Nazis, in the 1930s "the largest [motion picture] producer was the Elekta Film concern, with its imaginative chairman, Josef Auerbach." [PICK, J., 1968, p. 422] And as Avigdor Dagan notes about the Czech popular press in this era:

     "As in all other countries in Central Europe, so in the Czech lands, Jews played
     an outstanding role in journalism. The editor-in-chief of the Prager Press, the German-
     language organ of the Government, Arne Laurin, was Jewish. Another Jew,
     Paul Eisner, was editor of its Cultural Supplement, and many Jews served on
     the editorial staff. Among the Czech-language papers, there was hardly one
     without Jews on its editorial and literary staff. Jewish journalists could be found
     in papers of all parties from the right to the left ... Even the Catholic organ
     Lidove Listy had a partly Jewish editor in the person of Alfred Fuchs, a Jewish
     convert." [DAGAN, A., 1968, p. 523]
     

In 1997, in the process of expanding his Eastern European media empire into the Ukraine, Ronald Lauder also gained unwelcome publicity when it was revealed that a Jewish Russian partner in the deal, Vadim Rabinovich (who owns "one of the country's most popular television channels"), had ties to the Russian mafia. Rabinovich is also the founder and president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress. It's chairman is Grigory Surkis who also owns a TV station, the country's most popular soccer team, oil-related firms, and a law company. [KRICHEVSKY, Around, p. 6]  One of Rabinovich's partners, Grigory Lautchansky, in another project, owned a Vienna-based trading company that the Director of the CIA had once called "an organization associated with Russian crime activity." Lautchansky (spelled various ways, also Grigori Loutchansky) was noted in the New York Review of Book's review of The Red Mafiya:

     "Along with [Russian Jewish crime boss Semion] Mogilevich, American officials
     put high on their list of suspects two of his lieutenants, Gregori Loutchansky and
     Vadim Rabinovitch. Loutchansky ran a trading company called Nordex, which
     American and European officials say has links to Russian organized crime and
     once acted as a broker in the sale of Scud missiles from North Korea to Iraq.
     Rabinovitch ran the Nordex office in Kiev. In Israel, the Russian mob leaders
     have bought protection from senior government officials, and have poured so
     so much money into political campaigns that they have been able to name
     candidates for local and national office. The admired former Soviet dissident
     Natan Sharansky, who has become active in Israeli politics, has admitted taking
     campaign contributions from Nordex, in spite of pleas from American officials
     to cut his links with Loutchansky. Loutchansky invited a list of prominent Russian
     mobsters to his birthday party in Israel in 1996." [BONNER, 11-16-00]

Vadim Rabinovich himself (Lauder's direct partner) had spent eight years in a Russian prison but the New York Times noted that he claimed that "he had committed no real crime and had been persecuted for being Jewish." The (Jewish) Forward noted in August 1997 that Rabinovich "holds 25% stake in the company that runs Ukraine's only private television station. Cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder owns half the station." [FORWARD, p. 8-29-97, p. 3] Within months a rival Ukrainian TV station -- Perekhid Media Enterprises -- filed a lawsuit charging that Lauder's company and its Ukrainian partners used "criminal connections and corrupt methods" to get a broadcast license. [FRANTZ A4, BRZINSKI A18, FRANKEL A1; MURPHY A6; McElvogue D4; BRZINSKI A41; AUERBACH, S., F4]

 

In August 1997, Rabinovich's All Ukrainian Jewish Congress bought a full page ad in the New York Times to call attention to anti-Semitism, and investment potential, in the Ukraine. "The Jewish issue will never get the attention it deserves without your active help," said the ad, "After all, if American Jews don't care about their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, why should anyone else?" [FORWARD, 8-29-97, p. 3]  A month earlier Rabinovich met for unity talks with Michael Schneider, the vice-president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. "Mr. Rabinovich's ad," noted the (Jewish) Forward, "comes as American-Jewish groups, such as the Jewish Committee and the World Jewish Congress, are increasing their role in Europe." [FORWARD, p 8-29-97, p. 3]

In June 2001, the New York Times noted that Lauder's Central European Enterprises company was

     "under an investigation over allegations that it paid at least $1 million in bribes
     to Ukrainian officials for a valuable television license, according to lawyers
     and [U.S.] Justice Department documents ... In Ukraine, Central European
     Media controls the most popular station through its majority-owned subsidiary
     Studio 1+1 ... The principal owners [of Studio 1+1] were [Jewish moguls] Vadim
      Rabinovich and Boris Fuchsmann, well known around Kiev for their influential wealth.
     Less well known were their ties to Russian organized crime, according to reports   
     by the F.B.I. and European law enforcement agencies ... A 1994 F.B.I report
     on Russian organized crime in the United States described Mr. Fuchsmann
     as a gold smuggler and embezzler, whose company in Germany was part of
     an international crime network. He is barred from entering the United States ...
     Besides Mr. Fuchsmann and Mr. Rabinovich, there were other, silent owners   
     of Studio 1+1. In one internal fax, in April 1996, Ms. Jensen [a CME employee]
     described the Studio 1+1 shareholders as 'extremely powerful' people whom,
     she added, 'I will not mention on this fax.' Central European Media now owns
     at least 60 percent of Studio 1+1, and Mr. Fuchsmann owns at least 30 percent,
     according to public statements." [BONNER, R., 6-12-01]

And what are some of Ronald Lauder's prior track records in television? What are his interests? What perspectives might he bring to Central and Eastern Europe? Aside from creating the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation to revive Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, he has expressed considerable interest in pressing attention upon the Jewish Holocaust. He is founder of a right-wing think tank in Jerusalem, the Shalem Institute. In his 1989 bid to become the mayor of New York City, he attacked his opponent, Rudolph Giulani, in a TV ad, saying: "he handcuffed innocent stockbrokers in front of co-workers and ignored the torment of a Holocaust survivor." [MAY, p. A27] In 1988 he financed a documentary shown on PBS about the 1938 Nazi attack upon Jewish synagogues in Austria and Germany. [SMITH, C, p. 32] And in 1994 his media company in Europe "kicked off the first commercial broadcast in Eastern Europe with the film 'Sophie's Choice' [a Nazi concentration camp story]." [FRANK, R, p. A1]  In the political realm, in 1997 the Jewish Week noted that Jewish American Lauder is "reportedly among Netanyahu's biggest financial backers." [Netanyahu, of course, is the former right-wing prime minister of Israel]. [COHLER-ESSES, Dissensions, p. 1] "With money and campaign contacts," notes the (Jewish) Forward, "Mr. Lauder has helped engineer one of the biggest upsets in the history of Israel's democracy." [FORWARD, 11-14-97, p. 14]

 

In 1999 Ronald Lauder became what the Jewish Week called the "King of the Jews" -- the head of the Presidents' Conference of Major Jewish Organizations. "Some [Jewish] leaders," noted the Week, "are expressing concern about what they see as the continuing lack of democracy [in that organization] ... Several left-wing groups complained that Lauder is perceived as being too close to [right-wing Israeli prime minister Benyamin] Netanyahu, both as a personal friend and a major political contributor." [GREENBERG, 1-15-99, p. 20]

 

With the fall of communism in the Soviet bloc, yet another Jewish media "tycoon," this one in Hungary, rose to power in recent years. This one, Janos Fenyo, was murdered in 1998, apparently by criminal underworld elements. At the time, as founder and head of Vico Distributing and Publishing ("currently the biggest print media-owner in Hungary"), [MARYNIAK, I., 4-1-1998] he controlled Hungarian 13 newspapers (including the fomer trade union journal Nepszava and a women's journal, Nok Lapja) and Nap TV. "Fenyo had excellent contacts to leading Hungarian politicians and he skillfully exploited the confusing legal situation after the collapse of communism to boost his empire." At the time of his death, he also had 30 lawsuits filed against him. [DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR, 5-21-1998]

 

Turning to the nearby new capitalist nation of Russia, in 1997 the Washington Post noted that

 

          "In last year's presidential campaign, two of the most powerful media

           tycoons, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, played a key role

           in reelecting President Boris Yeltsin, demonstrating the might of

           television in the young democracy." [HOFFMAN, p. 12]

 

The Wall Street Journal noted that Gusinsky (also spelled Goussinsky) "is sometimes billed as the richest man in Russia." [WALL ST, 4-13-95]  For his part, Berezovsky was listed by Forbes in 1997 as one of the "ten top" billionaires in the world. Both Gusinsky and Berezovsky (originally Abramovitch) are Jewish. Gusinsky is also the president of the Russian Jewish Congress and his circle of international Jewish connections includes the aforementioned Ronald Lauder and Edgar Bronfman of the World Jewish Congress. A source told the Jewish Week that Gusinsky founded the Russian Jewish Congress so his "physical well-being will no longer be just [his] personal concern; it will be of international [Jewish] interest,” i.e., whatever he does, he can tap into the powerful international Jewish defense mother lode against "anti-Semitism." [COHLER-ESSES, p. 13] The Jerusalem Post notes that in Israel "media reports [were] hinting" that Gusinsky "had ties to the Russian mafia." [COHEN, A.]  Gusinsky built his business empire from his Most Bank; the Chairman of the Board of the Most Bank is Boris Hait who is also one of the vice-presidents of the Russian Jewish Congress. Other vice-presidents of the Jewish organization include Mikhail Friedman, Chairman of the board of the Alpha Bank, and Vitali Malkin, President of the Rossiiiski Kredit Bank.

 

Gusinsky's media empire includes NTV television -- the largest commercial television station in Russia with an audience of 120 million. It also broadcasts to Israel, and "recently [December 1997] unveiled plans to expand its Russian-language broadcasts to Western Europe and other parts of the Middle East." [KRICHEVSKY, p. 10]  (Even in the New York area, the Russian-language Russian Television Network is run by a rabbi, president Mark Golub. Alexander Polovets, the editor and publisher of Panorama, "the most influential Russian-language newspaper in the United States," is also Jewish. [TUGEND, 10-22-99]). Gusinsky also controls the Echo of Moscow radio station; a weekly magazine called Itogi (published in partnership with Newsweek/The Washington Post); the newspaper Segodnya; and NTV-Plus, a pay-per-view satellite network. In 1997, the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Alexei II, charging blasphemy, declared that "God would punish those responsible" for screening Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ on Mr. Gubinsky's television channel. The program had been postponed twice "because of Orthodox Christian fury." [MEEK, p. 1]  With mind-boggling chutzpah, NTV had originally planned to show the film "in April, on Russian Easter." [KRICHEVSKY, Jewish-Owned, p. 9]  Meanwhile, "at Gusinksi's influence," noted the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 1998, "a synagogue and Holocaust museum are now being built at the World War II Memorial site in Moscow." [MILNER]

In 2001, the deputy head of the Russian Jewish Congress, Mikhail Miralashvili was arrested in Russia and charged with kidnapping. "Mr. Mirilashvili," noted London's Independent,

    "who holds joint Israeli and Russian citizenship, was due to leave Russia this
     week with the Israeli President, Moshe Katzav, who is on a state visit. Mr.
     Mirlashvili is a director of the St. Petersburg company Russian Video, which
     was bought by Media-Most, controlled by Mr. Gusinsky, in 1997. Mr.
     Gusinsky was later accused of defrauding the state by buying the company
     for $10 million -- well below its real value." [COCKBURN, P., 1-25-01]

 

In July 1997, the Jewish Week reported that

 

       "the Russian Jewish Congress, a powerful new group headed by one of

       Russia's most prominent and controversial millionaires, has signed a

       landmark agreement with American Jewry's top umbrella organization

       [the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations],

       pledging joint cooperation and consultation ... The National Conference

       on Soviet Jewry, another U.S. umbrella group that encompasses many

       of the same Jewish organizational members as the Presidents

       Conference, was also a signatory.... Some, including a top Russian

       Jewish Congress official, says it marks a milestone in the emergence of

       the Russian group as an influential diaspora player on the international

       stage ... In a separate initiative, the Russian Jewish Congress signed an

       agreement at about the same time with the World Jewish Congress..."

       [COHLER-ESSES, Lawyer, p. 9]

 

(A note about the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations: It represents, notes Jewish journalist Wolf Blitzer, "more than thirty of the most important national Jewish organizations; it has come to be viewed as the authoritative voice of the mainstream Jewish leadership ... Because the Presidents' Conference, like AIPAC [the leading American Jewish Israel lobbying organization], can almost always be found in support of the official Israeli position, U.S. officials in all recent administrations have to view it as a de facto arm of the Israeli government." [BLITZER, p. 141-142])

 

Gusinsky also met with a number of Jewish American Congressmen, including Carl Lewin, Frank Lautenberg, Joseph Lieberman, and Arlen Specter. "The Middle East and 'rising anti-Semitism' were among the topics discussed," noted Don Bonker ("a former Congressman who handles public relations for Goussinsky in Washington"). [COHLER-ESSES, US RUSSIAN, p. 1]  The Jewish Week further noted that "according to a Jewish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Goussinsky's efforts to meet with top State Department officials were rebuffed due to what one State official ; as his 'checkered past.'" [COHLER-ESSES, US-RUSSIAN, p. 1] In 2000, Gusinsky, who, like other Rusisan Jewish media moguls, has dual Russian-Israeli citizenship, fled Russia after accusations of fraud. In October, related to the Gusinsky criminal investigation, Russian police raided the central Moscow synagogue, searching "practically everything," but particularly looking for "in what way was the Jewish community ... laundering money it was receiving from its sponsors." Alexander Osovtsov, Executive Vice President of the Russian Jewish Congress, complained: "What gives special cynicism to it is the fact that the action was undertaken on the single day when the leaders of the Congress and the Jewish community were absent from Moscow because they were on a one-day visit of peace and solidarity to Israel." [INTERFAX RUSSIAN NEWS, 10-20-00]

 

Boris Berezovsky's riches began with Logovaz, a car dealership. He has since rapidly gained control of the Russian Public Television network, known as ORT; the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta; the weekly magazine Ogonyok; Transero, a Russian airline; and 80% of Russia's seventh largest oil company, which merged in 1998 with another Jewish-owned oil firm (together called Yuksi), to create "the world's largest oil company in terms of reserves." [MCMAHON, p. 3] "Berezovsky," says the Wall Street Journal, "has a reputation for labyrinthine political and business intrigues and has in the past exercised influence over Russian companies, including the national airline Aeroflot, without taking over formal ownership." [HIGGINS, p. 2]

 

"Like many of the people in Russia who became rich very fast," notes the New York Times, "Mr. Berezovsky has been the subject of numerous press reports that suggest he relied on organized crime to build his business empire." [STANLEY, p. A3]  Berezovsky, notes the Washington Post, "is part of a tight circle of financiers and business moguls who, by his own estimate, control half of Russia's economy ... [HOFFMAN, Russia]. ... They all attained wealth in the violent, corruption-ridden, high-stakes competition that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union five years ago.... The scramble for wealth and power was carried out with brutal means, often including car bombs and assassinations.... Russian tycoons are not public heroes. Popular resentments run deep over the vast sell-off of state property, which made many of them rich and left millions of Russians in poverty." [HOFFMAN, p. A26]  Berezovsky, notes the (Jewish) Forward, is one of the "robber barons accused of milking Russians dry." [BLUSTAIN, p. 1]

 

In 1999 Berezovsky gained control of Moscow's popular TV-6 television station. That same year he claimed control of "Russia's premiere daily newspaper, Kommersant," and fired its editor, Raf Shakirov, who said that "his ouster [is] an attempt to curb often critical coverage of the tycoon's business and political activities." [HIGGINS, p. 2]

 

In December 1996, Forbes magazine published a scathing article about Berezovsky (making sure such reports will be few and far between, the multi-billionaire responded by punishing the magazine with a suit for libel, as did the other Jewish tycoon giant, Vladmir Gusinsky, against the Wall Street Journal for an unflattering report about him).  [WALL ST JRNL, 4-13-95] The Forbes article, entitled "The Godfather of the Kremlin," was printed with no byline for fear of violent retribution to its authors. "Berezovsky," noted the magazine's editor, James Michaels, "stands tall as one of the most powerful men in Russia. Behind him lies a trail of corpses, uncollected debts and competitors terrified for their lives." [MICHEALS, p. 10]

 

The anonymously written article in Forbes notes that

 

       "Assassination is a tool of business competition. Scores of business

       leaders and media personalities have been killed ... Berezovsky controls

       Russia's biggest national TV network. His control was solidified shortly

       after the first chairman of the network was assassinated gangland style.

       Berezovsky was immediately fingered by the police as a key suspect,

       but the murder remains unsolved two years later ... Such is the Russian

       business environment today that the men at the top have use for the

       shadowy army of killers and thugs who work further down in the scale

       of corruption, running prostitute and protection rackets." [FORBES, p.

       91, 92]

 

 In 1995 Vladislav Listiev, one of Russia's most popular television talk show hosts, was named head of the Russian Public Television network (ORT). One of his major efforts was to rid the station of the corrupt, monopolistic advertising empire of a man named Sergei Lisovsky. The Forbes article suggests that Berezovsky was involved in Listiev's eventual assassination, and when Berezovsky ended up with a controlling interest in ORT (36%), he retained Livosky as the only agent for the company's advertising.

 

Incredibly, in 1996 Berezovsky vast wealth and power afforded him the opportunity to become a member of the Kremlin Security Council, a position that meant access to some of the Russian government's most sensitive national secrets. He was soon embroiled in a scandal over his national allegiance when the liberal newspaper Izvestia publicized the fact that Berezovsky had secured Israeli citizenship in 1994. Berezovsky threatened to sue the newspaper, charging anti-Semitism. [SHALAPENTOKH, p. 19] (Meanwhile, the ruthless baron publicly declares he is a convert to Christianity). [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99]

 

A year later Fortune magazine ran an article entitled "Russia's Robber Barons," profiling ten of the most important Russian business tycoons who have catapulted to economic dominance in Russia with the collapse of communism; these included Gusinsky, Berezovsky, Boris Hait, Mikhail Friedman, Vladimir Vinogradov, Vladimir Potanin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexander Smolensky, and Pyotr Aven.

 

Along with Gusinsky and Berezovsky, not only are Hait and Friedman Jewish, they are, as noted earlier, vice-presidents under Gusinsky in the Russian Jewish Congress. Khodorovsky, the President of Bank Menatep (and, curiously, the former Deputy Secretary of the Moscow Branch of the Communist Party youth branch) is also Jewish. (Khodorovsky's ability to make ideological U-turns on a dime somewhat echoes the latent wheeling and dealing of Leonid Roitman, whose "meteoric rise to power was fueled by the chaos of post-pestroika Russia." In his earlier years, under the communist regime, says the Jerusalem Post, Roitman set up "an organization called Hatehiya, which taught summer camps for Jewish youth. In a brilliant move, he registered Hatehiya as part of Komosol, the Communist Youth movement, and it rapidly became 'one of the largest and strongest organizations in Russia.'" [HECHT, p. 12]]

 

Continuing the Fortune list, Pyotr Aren, of the Alpha financial group, is also Jewish. Smolensky, president of Stolichny Bank and Vinogradov, head of Inkombank, are also -- according to a B'nai B'rith publication -- "believed to be Jews." [BERNSTEIN, RUSSIA'S, p. 12]  (Many Jews in Eastern Europe publicly hide this fact of their identity). Of this group of economic dominators, that leaves only Potanin who is not Jewish (in a country where today less than half of 1% of the Russian population is Jewish [BERNSTEIN, p. 12]), but he has had American Jewish billionaire George Soros as a major backer in some of his deals, including the takeover of Russia's Svyazinvest telecommunications giant. (Soros has "invested around $2.5 billion in Russia, more than anyone or any institution." [BROWNING, p. F2] 

 

"Soros's extraordinary role," noted the (London) Guardian in 1994, "not only as the world's most successful investor but now possibly, fantastically, as the single most powerful foreign influence in the whole of the former Soviet empire, attracts more suspicion than curiosity." [LEWIS, M., p. 14] "I have been a prime target for the current version of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory," notes Soros himself, "If there was ever a man who fit the stereotype of the Judeo-plutocratic Bolshevik Zionist world conspirator, it is me. And that is, in fact, how I am increasingly depicted in Eastern Europe and also to some extent in Western Europe, but not so much in America." [SOROS, p. 239])

 

The above ten Russians, notes the Fortune piece, "dominate the country's trade in arms and precious metals, as well as its production of copper, nickel, and a quarter of its oil. They control the No. 1 and No. 3 television networks, the Visa bankcard network, a big chunk of the pulp and paper industry, and an increasing portion of the food processing industry ... Princeton professor Stephen Cohen, writing in the Nation, dubbed [most of today's Russian business elite] a 'semi-criminalized oligarchy' that has made ordinary Russians 'suffer unduly and unjustly.'" [MELLOW, p. 120]  Berezovsky has publicly bragged that he, Gusinsky, Khodorovsky, Aren, Friedman, Smolensky, and Potanin control half of Russia's wealth. [BERSTEIN, p. 12]

As Jewish scholar Betsy Gidwitz noted in 1999:

     "That Jews control a disproportionately large share of the Russian economy
      and Russian media certainly has some basis in fact. Between 50 and 80 percent
      of the Russian economy is said to be in Jewish hands, with the influence of the
      five Jews among the eight individuals commonly referred to as "oligarchs" particularly
      conspicuous. (An oligarch is understood to be a member of a small group that
      exercises control in a government. The five oligarchs of Jewish descent are Boris
       Berezovsky, Mikhail Friedman, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and
      Alexander Smolensky. The other oligarchs are Vagit Alekperov, Vladimir Potanin,
      and Rem Vyakhirev.) Perhaps the most famous (and simultaneously the most infamous)
      of the oligarchs is Boris Berezovsky. In common with most of the other Jewish
      oligarchs, Berezovsky controls industries in three critical areas: the extraction and
      sale of a major natural resource, such as oil, as a source of great wealth; a large
      bank (useful in influencing industry and transferring assets abroad); and several
      major media outlets (useful for exerting influence and attacking rivals). He also
      controls a significant share of the Aeroflot airline and the Moscow automobile
      industry." [GIDWITZ, B., 9-15-99]

 

A 1999 Wall Street Journal editorial notes that disturbing situation in today's Russia:

 

      "Russia's oligarchs -- many of them apparatchiks from the communist

      days -- have stripped the country's best assets and transferred their

      winnings to off-shore companies they control ... For every dollar

      a Russian has laundered abroad there had to be a counterparty at

      the other end. London, Geneva, and New York are preferred

      destinations, as well as off-shore havens such as Cyprus and

      New Jersey. Estimates of $10 billion capital flight from Russia

      each year are probably conservative." [W S J, 8-30-99, p. 8]

 

By 1998, the foreign minister of Russia was Yevgeni Primakov. His real last name -- Finkelstein -- was dropped when he worked for the KGB. Also that year, Sergio Kiriyenko became the prime minister of Russia. He too is Jewish. [SAFIRE, p. 6]  Primatov later succeeded him as Prime Minister. "Two of the main political leaders in Parliament," adds the Times of London, "Grigori Yavlinsky, the leader of the liberal Yabloko Party, and Vladimir Zhirnovsky, the head of the ultra-nationalist LDPR, also have Jewish parents." [BEESTON]  A Los Angeles Times reporter notes that "at least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the [Russian] economy are Jewish. The reviled architect of Yeltsin's failed reform policies, Antaloy Chubais, [later head of the national electrical power monopoly], is rumored to be Jewish, along with Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, ousted Deputy Minister Boris Nemtsov and Yeltsin's wife, Naina." [REYNOLDS, p. 7A] The Jewish Telegraph Agency noted that "Chubais is not ... open about his Jewish roots." [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99]  Alexander Livshitz also served a spell as Russia's finance minister in the 1990s. [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99]

 

In 1999, the Jewish Exponent noted that

 

       "all but one of the eight leading [Russian] bankers are Jewish," and

       four of them -- Goussinsky, Boris Hait, Mikhail Friedman, and Vitaly

       Malkin -- occupy the top positions at the RJC [Russian Jewish

       Congress] ... In addition to these business titans, often referred to

       here in the [Russian] media and on the street as the 'oligarchs,'

       many of the leading political figures in Russia are also Jewish

       or partly Jewish. These include fomer prime Minster Sergei Kiriyenko

       and top Kremlin aides Yegor Gaidar and Boris Nemtsov. Grigori

       Yavlinsky, the leader of the Yabloko, the largest democratic party in the

       Duma today, has one Jewish parent ... In the new Russia, the most

       important fields ... to which Jews [have] gravitated [are] banking,

       trade, the media, and show business." [RUBY, W., p. 37]

 

In late 1998, Viktor Ilyukin, the head of the Russian Parliament's Security Affairs Committee, said this about the Yeltsin government: "The large-scale genocide [i.e., Russian social and economic collapse] wouldn't have been possible if Yeltsin's inner circle had consisted of the main ethnicity groups, and not exclusively of one group, the Jews." [NEW YORK TIMES, Communist, p. 12]  That same year, Nikolai Kandratenko, the governor of a southern Russian province, called the government of the area's largest city "a Zionist nest" exemplifying a "Judeo-Masonic mafia." [KRICHEVSKY, L., Russian, p. 7]

 

Meanwhile, also in the same year, the Jerusalem Post noted a more commonly enforced stereotypes about the situation of Jews in Russia:

 

      "[A Christian woman in Dallas] heard about some young Jews in the

      former Soviet Union getting help via a soup kitchen. She decided to

      become the adoptive grandmother, sending in a monthly contribution for

      their welfare." [COHEN, A., p. 11]

As Jewish scholar Michael Paul Sacks noted in 1998 about the almost secretive nature of the economic situation of Jews in modern Russia:

     "Published census data on Jews [in Russia] have been very scarce, but this
      [from the 1989 Russian census] and other sources leave no doubt that in
      comparision with other groups Soviet Jews were very distinctive in terms
      of their urban concentration and their educational and professional
      achievement ... With the recent release of new data from the 1989 census,
      a more precise understanding of the opportunities available to Jews in
      'Soviet' Russia is now possible. These data show the number of men and
      women by major ethnic groups (including Jews) in 257 job categories.
      Surprisingly, this new information is not referred to even in the most recent
      Russian scholarship on Jews, and it received no mention in western sources
      ... Jews showed a very early path of upward mobility in the modernizing
     sectors of the labor force ... [SACKS, 1998, p. 247] ... Occupations that
     that were largest for Jews were primarily top-level positions and all were
     white collar: physicians, scientists, chief-managerial personnel, artists
     and producers, literary and press personnel. The [job] categories that
     were largest only for Russians were entirely manual labor and other
     low-skills; tractor drivers, cleaners, weighers, nursemaids, lathe
     operators, tailors and seamstresses, carpenters and dairy work."
     [SACKS, M., 1998, p. 257]

A 1995 study in Russia found that 84% of employed Jews had "professional or managerial positions." Another 4% were "owners of firms or entrepreneurs." [SACKS, M., 1998, p. 265]

 

With the likes of Gusinsky, Berezovsky, and other powerful Jewish business tycoons wielding extraordinary influence and blatantly buying (and allegedly even killing) their broad way into the Russian media, business, and government, (as well as centrally placed Jews in the Russian government like Finance Minister Alexander Livshits and First Deputy Minister in Charge of Economic Reform, Boris Nemtsov), the Christian Science Monitor noted in 1997 that

 

       "A loose coalition of nationalistic communists and out-and-out

       [Russian] nationalists has begun to characterize President Boris

       Yeltsin's regime as 'Jewish.' It is the Jewishness of Mr. Yeltsin's

       regime, its essential foreignness to Russia, that [in this view] explains

       the plummeting economy, the brazen corruption and enrichment of the

       few ... and Russia's subservient position to the West."  

       [SHLAPENTOKH, p. 19; WALL ST, 4-13-95, p. A14; HOFFMAN,

       D., 1-10-97, p. A1; STANLEY, 6-14-97, p. A3]

 

Still another angle on Jewish economic dominance at the upper tiers of capitalist Russia was a 1998 article in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, which noted

 

     "The most successful venture capitalists in the world in 1996 and 1997

     operated out of Moscow and was started by an Israeli. The Hermitage 1

     and Hermitage 2 funds specialize in investments in Russia and other

     countries of the former Soviet Union, although they invest throughout

     the world. They were set up in 1995 by Israeli businessman Benny

     Steinmatz and the Safra brothers [and are] managed by American Bill

     Broder ... Hermitage is considered the most senior player on the

     Moscow Stock Exchange, and it is the second-largest of the fund

     managers active in Russia, with some $600 million to invest." [LIPSON]

Then there is Boris Jordan, also Jewish, from New York's Long Island, eventual head -- after Vladimir Gusinsky fled to Israel to escape criminal prosecution -- of Russian television station NTV,

      "who almost single-handedly established the Russian stock market, who in one
      year earned half the global profits for his employers at Credit Suisse First Boston,
      who walked away from a reported $4 million bonus because it was insultingly small
      and instead founded Russia's first full-service investment bank, which he optimistically
       called Renaissance Capital. Brash, bright and above all ambitious, Jordan more than
      any other individual put Russia on the financial map in the 90's. 'Czar Boris,' as he
      was dubbed by admiring business reporters, held court high atop Moscow's most
      expensive new skyscraper, while Renaissance's 800 pinstriped bankers and brokers
      handled billions of dollars from blue-chip investors like George Soros and the
      Harvard endowment. The darling of Davos, the Swiss summit for the well heeled
      and influential, Jordan was, in his own words, on top of the world." [BRZENSKI,
      M., 7-22-01, p. 40]

 

Yet another Jewish Russian money mogul is Roman Abramovich. The Warsaw Voice (headed by Jewish publisher and editor Andrzej Jonas) noted in 1999 that he is "the CEO of the powerful Sibneft oil group. A popular joke in Moscow says that one must count one's fingers after shaking hands with Abramovich, who has for years been associated with Berezovsky's financial group." [ZYGULSKI, p. 8] Oil magnate Leonid Nevzlin became head of the Russian Jewish Congress in 2001. He and the aforementioned Mihail Khodorkowvsky "formed one of the first successful private banks in Russia in 1989. The two then went into the oil business together, and now run the YUKOS firm -- Khodorkovsky is in charge, and Nevzlin is his deputy." The secular Jewish Nevzlin, like so many, has returned to his Jewish roots. "For all my life," he says, "I have never felt any substantial anti-Semitism, and was rather indifferent to the Jewish community. Then something clicked, and I thought, Well, I'm over 40, I have made a successful career, I have made a fortune. But what will I tell my children when I am 70." [GORODETSKY, L., 5-23-01]

 

Then there is Mikhail Mirilashvili (a.ka., Misha Kutaisskey), who "is one of the biggest shareholders of the local branch of LUK oil. He is also president of Channel 11 and president and deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian chapter of the World Jewish Congress." A brother, Konstantin, is the "co-owner of Gosting Dvor, [St. Petersburg's] major shopping center." [KORALYEV, VLADIMIR, 10-11-2000] Then there is Anatoly Karachinsky, "head of Information Business Systems, Russia's largest IT group." Karachinsky, also Jewish, "is regarded in Russia as the country's answer to Bill Gates -- and who is about to become the country's first high-technology dollar millionaire." Karachinsky "set up NewspaperDirect, a system that allows newspapers from anywhere in the world to be printed on a desktop." [FINANCIAL TIMES, 10-2-00]

Then there is New York-based Stuart Subotnick, also Jewish, who is the CEO and president of Metromedia International Group. (In 1999, Subotnick was ranked by Forbes magazine among the richest 400 Americans). This company's specialty is cable, telephone, and digital media -- largely in Eastern Europe. Holdings include complete -- or major -- shares in Russia's PLD Telekom, Kosmos TV ("one of Russia's largest wireless cable operators"), 50% of Comstar ("a large Moscow digital communications carrier"), Romsat ("one of the largest cable operators in Romania"), 70% of "a leading Bucharest-based ISP (Internet Service Provider) called FX Internet. Metromedia even has holdings in places like Belarus and Kazakhstan. In Russia it also owns "several TV and radio stations in St. Petersburg and Nizhii Novgorod." [CAPITAL MARKET RUSSIA, 5-20-99; AFX EUROPEAN FOCUS, 1-12-01; CABLE EUROPE, 7-4-00; TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES MARKET, 6-26-00]

 

Howard Jacobson rode with a taxi driver in recent years in New York City. The driver was a fellow Jew, a recent immigrant from Russia. "He speaks Yiddish," noted Jacobson in 1993,

 

       "His family kept it alive so that they could talk among themselves and

        not be understood. 'A secret language,' he explains.

       The secret language of the Jews. A light kept burning underground

       all during those years of atheism. I'd be touched if I wasn't alarmed.

       For where people speak a secret language, how can suspicion and

       fear of them not multiply?" [JACOBSON, H., 1993/1995, p. 80-81]

 

"Our people are not blind," proclaimed the head of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, in 1998, "They cannot fail to see that the spread of Zionism in the government is one of the reasons for the current catastrophe in the country, the mass impoverishment and the process of extinction of its people." [ENSEL, M., p. 3]

 

The blustering of an anti-Semitic fanatic? In the same year, a Jewish Russian immigrant in New York of considerable renown, novelist Edward Topol (whose work was once banned in Russia), stirred controversy and deep concern in the world Jewish community because of a published letter he wrote to a Russian weekly newspaper. In it Topol called prominent Jewish Russian bankers "puppeteers" who manipulated Russian politics and its economy. The puppeteers, he concluded, has "a very long Jewish last name -- Berezovsko-Goussinsko-Smolensko-Khodrokovsko, etc. ... How come all or almost all the money in this country ended up in Jewish hands?" Topol also called the economic crisis in Russia today a "Jewish tragedy." "Mr. Topol's main premise," noted the (Jewish) Forward, "is that for the first time in a millennium, Jews have gained real political power and financial control over Russia and can pretty much decide whether to 'cast the country into a chaos of wars and poverty or raise it from the mud.'" [KRICHEVSKY, Emigre's, p. 5; KAZAKINA, p. 5]

 

In 1997 the (Jewish) Forward reported that "with the [Russian] economy in shambles, opposition parties held nationwide strikes at the end of last month. [Even] Jews are grumbling that too many Jews stand close to the reigns of power and too many Jewish names fill the headlines." [BLUSTAIN, R, p. 1]  "All the Jews, I don't understand their motivation, to show they are rich ... [to say] 'I am an owner and you are a slave,'" complained Alexander Lieberman, the Jewish director of the Union Council's Russian-American Bureau of Human Rights. "If I were a single Russian and I saw and heard only Jews in the government ... [I would think] 'we are all without money because the Jews have all the Russian money.'" [BLUSTAIN, p. 1]  "People have quite bitter memories of Jews in the [communist] revolution," noted Michael Chlenov, the president of the Jewish Va'ad of Russia.

 

In this regard, transnationally, in 1996, Boris Berezovsky hosted a party in honor of the earlier mentioned Ronald Lauder (American Jewish owner of a number of TV stations in Europe), attended by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and United States Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Speaking to a reporter, Lauder (already ensnarled in partnership media dealings in the Ukraine with Russian mafia-clouded Vadim Rabinovich) publicly distanced himself from Berezovsky, saying, "The invitations went out in President Yeltsin's name." [FORBES, p. 91]

When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish pre-eminence in America By Jewish Tribal Review Return to Table of Contents         To Next Chapter (24, pt. 3) Return to Home Page