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Humor in U.S. is Getting 'Yiddishized,' Professor Says.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. June 5, 1998
"While assimilation is a big concern in the Jewish community, [professor Arthur Asa] Berger contends that, conversely, Jewish culture has 'Yiddishized' American humor. 'When the Jews disappear,' he joked, 'the Jewish humor will be written by non-Jews because they've been Yiddishized and they'll be able to carry it on.'"

Thinking Yiddish, Writing British. (Jewish) Forward. May 25, 2001
"What could be prompting the increased visibility of so many Jewish figures in the modern British literary scene? The rise of Margaret Thatcher may have something to do with it, she represented a heavily Jewish constituency in Parliament and counted many Jewish politicians in her cabinet and among her advisers."

How the Holocaust Captured America.
The Jerusalem Report. [May 31, 2001/September 27, 1999]
"Has the tragedy that befell European Jewry come to occupy a disturbingly central place in U.S., and U.S. Jewish, consciousness?"

From Neil Diamond to Carole King, Saluting the Brill Building Beat.
[Jewish] Forward, January 19, 2001
"From the late 1950s through the early 1960s, the Brill Building (and its lesser-known cousin across the street at 1650) housed publishing companies that employed the era's best-known songwriters. Almost all of those songwriters were Jewish, including such pop legends as Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Neil Diamond, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. (That's not even including prominent producers and music-biz figures of the time, such as Don Kirshner and Phil Spector)."

Alleged Jewish 'Control' of the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. Debunking the Lie. ADL [Anti-Defamation League, the foremost Jewish "defense" organization: a branch of B'nai B'rith.]
"In an essay headed 'Who Says Jews Control Hollywood?' published in the February/March 1995 issue of Midstream magazine, Steven G. Kellman, a professor at the University of Texas in San Antonio, wrote: 'Boosters and antisemites agree: Jews have been prominent and predominant in all phases of the [motion picture] business: production, distribution and exhibition.' He noted that, at the time, 'Of the 100 most powerful people in the industry according to a recent survey by Premiere, most, including the top 12, are Jewish,' but observed, 'Though individual Jews control Hollywood, Jewishness does not.' In fact, Hollywood studios are publicly owned corporations and motion pictures are made by the efforts of individual men and women, some of whom are Jewish, many of whom are not. While statistics and studies on the subject are not readily available, the Anti-Defamation League believes that the recitation of numbers and percentages is not the answer to the false charges of Jewish 'control' of the motion picture industry, or, indeed, of similar accusations involving the media, banking, finance and other businesses. Reliance on statistics alone plays into the hands of anti-Semites."

Jews in Bush's Cabinet? Don't Hold Your Breath, by Philip Weiss.
New York Observer, January 22, 2001
"At least when it comes to blacks in sports, you can talk about it; you can say that blacks changed sports. But no one is allowed to speak up about something we all quietly know: Jews changed America. There is hardly an area of public life on which Jews have not had a profound impact in the last generation, as discrimination against them ended and as they gained power. The civil rights movement reflects Jewish values of justice. Feminism is a reflection of liberal Jewish matriarchal values (note the Jewish groups that are talking about Roe v. Wade in opposing John Ashcroft for Attorney General). Ever-more-powerful Jews in the media have ushered in the information age. Psychologically attuned Jews and Hollywood Jews changed the language of popular culture—Seinfeld, Weinstein ... Altogether they represent the force of Jewish values coming into public life. In a recent study, Jews and the American Public Square, the Center for Jewish Community Studies argues that Jews have fostered an important legal trend in the last half century, the separation of church and state. I’d go further and argue that the greatly diminished influence of church on public mores wouldn’t have happened without secularized Jews gaining cultural power. And no one ever talks about it. The most important change in establishment culture in the last 25 years, and it goes unspoken ... Yes, there were Italian-Americans, Asians, but the sea change that was upon us was that middle-class Jews were taking up an important place in the establishment ... The Jewish silence comes out of a profound fear among Jews that this powerful moment will pass, that Jewish prominence in America is like Jewish prominence in Vienna in 1920, teetering on the brink. The more power, the less anyone wants to talk about it ... If you talk about Jewish influence, you’re risking a Holocaust. So there’s no public acknowledgment of something almost everyone understands: Jews are major players in the establishment ... There are so many Jews in the media that the cone of silence falls over the territory where you might expect wider discussion ... So long as Jews continue to see themselves as powerless, they fail to recognize the effect they have had on society and, worse, fail to move outside a privileged position of wounded self-regard and come to terms with their real spot: big winners in the new order."

Projecting Culture: Jewish Art Historians and the History of Art History. Judaism (American Jewish Congress); [at findarticles.com], Summer 2000
"Jewish emigres in flight from the Nazi genocide and Jews of earlier emigrations, such as Meyer Schapiro and Clement Greenberg, for example, had a definitive and formative influence on art and art history in America and England and by today in the English-speaking world as a whole. The impact of these Jewish art historians, critics, and artists in the interpretation and exhibition of art in America and elsewhere was central for art history."

I am Being Villified for Telling the Truth about Palestinians, by Robert Fisk [Middle Eastern correspondent for London's The Independent] Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Jan/Feb 2001
"Ignorance of the Middle East is now so firmly adhered to in the United States that only a few tiny newspapers report anything other than Israel's point of view ... The attempt to force the media to obey Israel's rules is now international."

Jewish Voters Still in the Swing of Things. [Jewish] Forward, April 6, 2001
"The available evidence on Jewish voting patterns, when examined closely, shows that the Jewish community is in fact an extremely potent political force in the United States and will likely be so for years to come ... Jews are strategically located in the places that make the most difference on Election Day ... Jews are concentrated and communally active in [the so-called swing states], especially Florida, Pennsylvania and California ... While most Jews will not base their votes on the issue of Israel alone, if at all, a large portion apparently will switch parties when a candidate seems threatening to the Jewish state ... Jewish communal identity remains politically potent. If the strident pro-Israel stances taken in the most recent presidential election are any indication, the politicians -- if not the rabbis -- have already figured this out."

Literary Jewish Girls. Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 6-21-01
"It’s time to make room for a newer generation of American Jewish writers, many of whom are young women who have not even hit 30. Their debut novels on Jewish themes are earning large advances, garnering stellar reviews and reaching best-seller lists .... The interest in Jewish themes may be part of the wave of multiculturalism — from African American to Asian American — that has captured public imagination, says Gail Hochman, an agent with Brandt and Brandt Literary Agents ... Three themes predominate in contemporary Jewish fiction, says Hochman: the legacy of the Holocaust, survival in Israel or living in the secular world as a practicing Jew. ... Laura Mathews, senior editor at Putnam, calls it 'curious but coincidental' that she has just published two books with Jewish subthemes ... But, notes [Carolyn Starman] Hessel [director of the Jewish Book Council], the audience for these books reaches beyond the Jewish market. 'Society has become more open. What Jewish women have to say is of interest to the American public.' [Jewish novelist Susan] Isaacs agrees. 'If we’re willing to read novels about medieval monks a la ‘The Name of the Rose’ or Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, about a little Anglican lady in a small town in England, then why shouldn’t we read about American Jews?'"

The Full Monica. Yahoo! News [Associated Press], July 9, 2001
"Now that Madonna is boringly, happily married and middle-aged, guess who is emerging as the new darling, the pet subject, of the academic elite? Monica Lewinsky [who is Jewish], that's who. A new academic volume by New York University Press, 'Our Monica, Ourselves,' features essays by a variety of 'progressive' scholars and thinkers on such topics as 'Monica Dreyfus,' 'The President's Penis' and 'The Culture Wars of the 1960s and the Assault on the Presidency: The Meaning of the Clinton Impeachment,' by Eli Zaretsky ... Now, HBO is running around the country taping interviews between Monica and top professors and students. Elaine Showalter, a chi-chi professor of English at Princeton, recently brought 23 of her own students to the mountaintop to earnestly engage Miss Lewinsky in a cultural studies debate. Monica is now a full-fledged cultural icon, but an icon of what? We won't get Monica's full, mature reflection on the meaning of her life's story until January, when the HBO special is expected to air. But, Professor Showalter coyly notes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Monica may not share the professor's story. 'Was the Lewinsky I saw at Cooper Union aware of this range of cultural nuance and allusive complexity? Without violating the terms of the confidentiality agreement, I think I can say that her intellectual journey has not included exposure to cultural studies.' Good thing. In a new book, 'Her Way,' feminist scholar and journalist Paula Kamen (like many younger feminists) defends Monica as the new sexual beau ideal. Monica, according to Kamen, is the new type of woman 'shaped by the sexual revolution,' who shares 'more of men's power, sense of entitlement and social clout.' Monica was 'brazen, relentless and self-centered in her quest for sex and power; in other words, she acted like a man.' Huh? Monica, you may recall, was a young woman who snapped her thong at a powerful, indiscriminate older man for reasons she did not fully understand, and who ended up falling in love, waiting by the phone, fantasizing about the wedding, obsessing about his neckties, and generally acting about as unmasculine in the conduct of her sexual affairs as possible. At the last moment, when she realized her utter dispensability and therefore utter sexual humiliation, she tried to blackmail the president into getting her a paltry, pathetic, $40,000-a-year PR position in the cosmetics industry. Monica's path led neither to much sex nor any power. Except the power, of course, to feed an endless cycle of grad student theses and academic essays on the joys of self-defined sexuality."

Chandra, Monica and the Return of the 'Jewess.' (Jewish) Forward, July 20, 2001
"They're both Jewish girls from California, well-to-do doctors' daughters with luxuriant manes of dark hair, fetching curves, coquettish smiles and a taste for shopping and clothes. Both grew up in Conservative synagogues, attended decent, if not stellar, West Coast colleges and worked hard at launching careers. Both have fancy, ultra-feminine given names and surnames indicating that they come from the tribe of Levi, the servants of ancient Israel's priests. Both were 24 years old when they began what turned out to be disastrous dalliances with handsome, well-connected, non-Jewish, 50-ish married men who they thought could help them get jobs. As young Jewish women of their generation, Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy are pretty typical, probably even in their bad-news affairs with married men. (It's an old story: Doctor [professional] daddy spends more time with patients [clients] than he does with his little girl, who takes up with a father figure.) Which is why wags from Washington to Westwood are asking, 'Why does it seem to be Jewish female interns who get caught having affairs with big-time Democratic politicians?'"

The Jewsweek Fifty. The Fifty Most Influential Jews in America. Jewsweek, July 18, 2001
"Something to consider when perusing this list: You will see some 'small local' people higher up on the list than some of the big power brokers. That’s because being an influential Jew means touching people’s lives and helping promote the Jewish ideal of 'being a light unto the nations.'”

On Passing for Jewish. Village Voice, September 6-12, 1998
[THE definitive self-hating WASP -- Jewish wanna-be -- story]
"Everyone always assumes I'm Jewish ... So why do people think I'm Jewish? My name? My profession? But more interesting than why I pass for Jewish is why it pleases me so much ... I was immediately drawn to the Jews because they seemed so attractive and because the WASPS seemed so repellent ... I came to see WASP life as a rigid, dececitful facade that had to be penetrated if one cared at all about what was real. ... I've always been attracted to Jewish women -- in fact, every long relationshp I've ever had , including my marriage was with a Jewish woman."

The Education of Mike Milken. The Nation, May 3, 1999
"Three years after leaving a minimum-security prison near San Francisco, where [Jewish mogul Michael Milken] served twenty-two months for fraud, rigging securities and prices and other felonies, Milken [has] engineered a comeback as the putative Bill Gates of the untapped gold mine known as American education ... In 1996, a $500 million pot from Milken ..., his brother Lowell, and [Jewish] Oracle Corporation chief executive Larry Ellison launched Knowledge Universe (KU), a holding company for an impressive transnational array of enterprises in the business of training human minds ... Milken's company, with annual revenues of $1.2 billion, has bought or purchased stakes in everything from Children's Discovery Centers ..., the nation's sixth-largest preschool company, with 25,000 toddlers in nearly 300 locations across the United States, to Spring, Britain's largest vocational-training firm. KU owns or has invested in more than a dozen companies involved in computer training, proficiency testing, educational toys, strategic consulting and CEO training, as well as private, for-profit schools (nearly 400 at last count, ranging from preschool to secondary) ... Companies like Milken's are not just competitors with public schools; they are poised to supplement the traditional classroom ... Thanks in part to Milken's financial secrecy, his flurry of acquisitions has received remarkably little public attention ... Educators worry that if curriculum and the tools of teaching (let alone schools themselves) are controlled by conglommerates like Milken's, many of the virtues of public education will be lost."

Spielberg Enables Editors to Start a New Magazine -- Heeb. New York Observer, August 4, 2001
"And now, flush with grant money from a fellowship supported by Jewish big shots like Steven Spielberg, Charles Bronfman and others, Ms. [Jennifer] Bleyer and her post-collegiate buddies are busily working on bringing this new cool-Jew magazine to life. The first issue is due in January. They have assigned some articles and taken some photos, and they also have a title: Heeb, as in the old ethnic slur, short for 'Hebrew' ... 'We also want to be the magazine that gives big props to Monica and Chandra,' Ms. Bleyer said. 'Like, Jewish sluts of the world, unite! ... [Managing editor] Schiller ... said he was interested in non-Jews who reference Jewish culture. 'I’d love to talk to Jay-Z and ask him why he throws up the sign of the kohanim on his album. And, I’d like to talk to some reggae artists about their connections to the whole idea of Zionism,' he said. 'It’d be cool to interview Michael Jackson and ask him what he does with [Rabbi] Shmuley Boteach.' ... The whole idea behind Heeb, Ms. Bleyer said, was to be a general-interest magazine in which everything is connected somehow to Jews.... 'We’re just trying to hold a mirror up to it and reflect what’s going on. There are so many Jewish filmmakers; there are so many Jewish musicians, actors and writers and da da da da, and we want to, like, just create a total venue for it.'"

The Next Jewish Pope. Sydney Morning Herald [Australia], August 6, 2001
"He started life as Aaron Lustiger. Now he is Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, prince of the Catholic Church, confidant of Pope John Paul II. As the Pope grows more and more frail, Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, grows more crucial to the leadership of the church ... [He serves] as Archbishop of Paris and leader of the college of cardinals ... Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and chronicler of the Holocaust, has written that when he thinks about the career of Jean-Marie Lustiger he thinks about the history of transgressions against Jews: 'I think of the tensions and conflicts that over centuries have marked the relations between our two religions: the hateful writings of the church fathers, the massacres during the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms, the public humiliations. I think of the silences of [Pope] Pius XII; his intercessions with Third Reich authorities were restricted to converted Jews. Only those mattered to him.' Of Lustiger himself, Wiesel wrote in his memoir And The Sea Is Never Full: "His evident sincerity makes him seem vulnerable and profoundly disarming ... But he insists that having been born a Jew, he will die a Jew. I try to explain to him why this stand seems untenable to us; I cite laws and customs.' In the end Wiesel pronounces himself a friend of Lustiger, yet, so driven by his career-long documentation of anti-Semitism, Wiesel seems oblivious to the racism of his own argument. Anyone can convert to Judaism, but can a convert ever become a chief rabbi? Whereas anyone can become a Catholic and even an archbishop because it is a religion, not a tribe ... Could this man be the first Jewish pope in almost two millennia? He certainly sits in the first rank of the crimson aristocracy ... His schedule includes visits with current and former governors-general, premiers, religious leaders and business titans. Dick Pratt, the billionaire member of the Jewish community, put on a big bash for him in Melbourne."
('I feel Jewish,' [Lustiger] responds. 'I refuse to renounce my roots, my Jewishness' .... He goes on to make the point that his Jewishness annoys anti-Semites and that this does not displease him. Why should he make them happy by turning his back on the people they execrate?' [WIESEL, E., 1999,  p. 171] ... [He] is determined to remain a son of the Jewish people ... He acts accordingly; anyone who requests his assistance in defending a Jewish cause can count on his support ... During the scandalous affair of the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz [the 'scandal' was that nuns wanted to keep a cross at their convent next to the former concentration camp, against international Jewish demands to take it down] , for example, his interventions [on behalf of Jews] must have raised a few eyebrows in Rome. As must his sympathy for the State of Israel, of which he is the most devoted defender inside the Catholic Church.") [WIESEL, E., 1999, p. 171-172] [Wiesel, Elie. And the Sea is Never Full, Memoirs, 1969- , Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999]

Sam Israel's Legacy. Washington CEO, 1997
"To many, Sam Israel was the invisible slumlord. Seattle's mystery real estate tycoon was an eccentric, cantankerous voice on the telephone, the person who received the rent checks. Few ever saw him and even fewer actually knew him ... His holdings included a wheat farm, extensive waterfront property at his beloved Soap Lake, parcels on the Olympic Peninsula, and more than 2 acres on Mercer Island. But the focus of his holdings was Seattle where he had about 30 pieces of property in the downtown area, 14 of which are in historic Pioneer Square. They include some of Seattle's most famous addresses, such as much of the block between Pike and Pine streets, First and Second avenues. The worth of the portfolio isn't public knowledge, but is believed to exceed the $100 million to $200 million reported in the early 1990s. Israel had one firm rule that earned him a bad reputation throughout the town: He put as little money as possible into the properties. The result was that over decades, some of Seattle's prime and most historic real estate decayed and urban blight set in ... Before his death, Israel created the Samis Foundation, a charitable organization which oversees the management of his vast holdings with the revenue supporting Jewish education in Washington as well as immigrant housing and archeological programs in Israel."

Child Watch. WHDH, Channel 7 News, Boston
"Is it an ad campaign . . . or child pornography. If anything, the new Calvin Klein [who is also Jewish] jean ads are definitely a controversy. Today the designer agreed to pull the mutli-million dollar campaign saying people have the wrong idea about the ads. Did Calvin Klein go too far? Child Watch Reporter Jilda Unruh has the story. When it comes to selling sex . . . nobody does it better than Calvin Klein. First he puts together an ad campaign that industry insiders say . . . crossed the line into child pornography! Then he makes headlines saying he's just been misunderstood! Is it erotica? Or just another jeans ad? You decide ... Calvin Klein is no stranger to controversy. It began in the 80's with a nubile Brooke Shields, then came raunchy rapper Marky Mark and underwear waif Kate Moss. Experts say Klein has continually pushed the advertising envelope. But this time experts say he's gone too far. 'This is much bigger than Calvin Klein. The ads are exploiting our children. This is child pornography basically.' 'And horrifyingly perhaps five years from now this won't be shocking either, because Calvin Klein will be having children having sex on camera in order to sell his jeans.' -- Jean Kilbourne/Marketing Analyst ... Kilbourne says Klein caters to teens who will be turned on by the outrage, and pulling the ads is just another calculated controversy."

A Stylish Obsession: Calvin Klein. Entrepreneur.com
"[Calvin Klein] managed to single-handedly create the designer-jeans craze of the 1970s and revolutionized fashion advertising in the 1980s. Now his name adorns everything from underwear to perfume. And his stylish designs and business acumen have built an empire ... In 1968, at the age of 26, with $2,000 of his own money and a $10,000 loan from his boyhood friend Barry Schwartz, Klein founded his own company, Calvin Klein Inc., with Schwartz as his partner ... After his divorce, Klein embarked on a self-described 'wild period,' spending his nights partying at Studio 54, where cocaine and casual sex were part of the scene ... The year 1980 marked a big turning point for Klein's empire. A series of commercials featuring 15-year-old model Brooke Shields saying, 'Nothing comes between me and my Calvins,' made Klein's new line of tight jeans a nationwide phenomenon, selling 200,000 pairs the first week alone. The provocative commercials marked a revolution in clothing advertising, but prompted criticism from feminist leaders. The negative publicity only fueled sales. Klein once again courted controversy in 1982, when he put his name on the waistband of men's underwear and then started a campaign featuring near-naked men modeling the new designer skivvies. Many publishers rejected the sexy ads. But again, the controversy spilled over into Klein's favor, and stores couldn't keep the underwear in stock."

James Bond Actor Denounces Calvin Klein. Nando Times [from the Times of London], 1996
"Advertisers and film-makers who use childlike girls in alluring roles were accused by Roger Moore Thursday of blurring the distinction between "sexually ready" and "way too young." The former James Bond actor rounded on Calvin Klein and the fashion industry over waifs such as Kate Moss, in his role as UNICEF goodwill ambassador at an international conference against child-sexual exploitation. Mr. Moore said: 'Whereas Lolita the film caused a storm in the 1960s, the many Lolitas of advertising and entertainment today hardly raise a murmur. The creators of these images will argue that this is art. But surely we cannot accept that the dignity, childhood, even lives of thousands of children might be sacrificed for the sake of art without responsibility' ... Calvin Klein's jeans advertisement sent shock waves through the advertising world and President Clinton is said to have intervened personally to have it withdrawn. Britain's Advertising Standards Authority said Thursday it had upheld complaints made in Britain about Calvin Klein's Obsession advertisement featuring Kate Moss lying on her stomach naked on a couch. Critics claimed the androgynous image was designed to make Miss Moss appear childlike beneath the headline 'Obsession for Men.' The Calvin Klein jeans campaign which ran in America was stopped by the ASA before it came to Britain, after being accused of promoting pornographic images of children."

Behind the Velvet Rope. New York Times Books [review of a book about the notorious Manhattan celebrity nightclub Studio 54], April 13, 1997
"For [author] Mr. Haden-Guest, Studio 54 was not just a nightclub; it 'occupies a niche in history' ... [Studio 54 Owners] Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager are interesting characters, no doubt about it. Rubell, who died of AIDS in 1989, was the son of a Brooklyn postman. Schrager, whose father reputedly worked for [gangster boss] Meyer Lansky, is now a hotelier. He would plan every detail of the parties held at Studio and then disappear once the revels began. Rubell, on the other hand, loved the parties, as well as the Quaaludes and cocaine; his sex life, Mr. Haden-Guest reports, was 'brusque and commercial' (isn't everyone's?)."

Interview: David Allyn. Time-Warner Bookmarks.
"Q: Tell me about Plato's Retreat.
A: 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." The owner of Plato's Retreat was Larry Levenson. Its antecedent, in the same building, was one of the original -- and one of the most influential -- American gay bathhouses (from whence Jewish performers Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, among others, began their ascent to fame): The Continental Baths. Its owner was Steve Ostrow. [Jewish?]

Ker-plat! How Comic Books Lost Their Edge. Washington Monthly, June 2001
"[Bradford Wright] argues that [comic book] editors, mostly Jewish and liberal, sought to challenge racism, fascism, poverty, and the threat of nuclear war. Perhaps his most provocative argument is that the dress rehearsal for today's culture wars about television and rap music took place in comic books ... According to Wright, comic books, which first appeared in the early 1930s, occupied a status just above pornography. Crude and formulaic, they were written by aspiring artists eager to see their names in print. The genre didn't take off until 1939, when Superman was published by Detective Comics (DC). Wright shows the extent to which Superman was a New Deal creation. His two young [were] creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster ... More conservative figures had their doubts about the new form. Frank Vlamos, writing in The American Mercury, complained that comics represented 'the most dismaying mass of undiluted horror and prodigious impossibility ever visited on the sanity of a nation's youth ... So enthusiastic for war were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who produced Captain America, that they inspired isolationist outrage by having the good captain denounce Nazism before the U.S. had entered the war. According to Wright, Captain America 'came to epitomize not only the values and fighting spirit of the national war effort but also the fortunes that comic book publishers would reap from their enlistment into patriotic wartime culture' ... Stan "the Man" Lee revived Marvel Comics ... A 1965 college poll conducted by Esquire,' Wright says, 'revealed that student radicals ranked Spider-Man and the Hulk alongside the likes of Bob Dylan [born Robert Zimmerman] 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."

Comic Book Nation. City Beat, May 10-14, 2001
"In the late 1940s Frederic Wertham, a liberal New York City psychologist, argued that comic books were degrading the morals of America's youth. It was time, Wertham said in a 1948 issue of Colliers, to legislate the violent and sexually aggressive books off the newsstands. In retrospect, the notion of comics as a corrupting force seems quaint. However, as Bradford W. Wright explains in Comic Book Nation -- a history of comics and their social, political, and economic implications -- comics were, for a time, the most vital expression of youth culture in America. Although popular music trends and television have eclipsed comics in cultural influence, comics remain an invaluable document of American social history ... Wright's Comic Book Nation presents an entertaining historical overview of the comic book industry. We get the bad deals, [Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster giving away Superman for $130; the court battles, William Gaines unsuccessfully defending his gruesome EC comics in front of a senate committee ... Also reflecting America's Cold War anxiety were William Gaines' EC comics. With titles such as Shock SuspenStories and Weird Fantasy, EC comics presented a surrealistically horrifying vision of America." [A list of expressly Jewish characters in the comic Super-hero genre is at Mikel's Midnight Jewish Supers List]

What, Me Gone? Instant Classics
"William M. Gaines ... founded Mad Magazine and so belongs to that small company of Americans, along with Hefner and Steinhem and Felker and Glaser, who, after World War II and in the face of King Broadcasting, made magazines that changed our lives and our thoughts and our culture ... . By 1950, he hit his stride and, with editors Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, created the latest and the greatest of the under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight genre. Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, Shock Suspensestories, Frontline Combat, and a few other titles 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 comics were all gone, except for the satirical Mad, reborn as a magazine beholden to no advertisers."

Allen Ginsberg. Daze Reader
"[Allen Ginsberg] was from a family of Jewish Russian immigrants, his family had ties to the radical labor movement, his mother was insane, and he was a homosexual: four prescriptions in the conventional 1940s and 1950s for a sense of deep alienation ... In a now famous 1955 poetry reading, he performed his most famous work, 'Howl,' with its famous opening line, 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.' The publication of Howl and Other Poems and a high-profile, unsuccessful obscenity trial made Ginsberg famous as both a poet and a counterculture icon. Unlike [Jack] Kerouac, who retreated from the limelight and came to despise the 1960s generation, Ginsberg cultivated his outsider celebrity and became a ubiquitous figure in American radicalism."

Shock Jock's Spew Ticks Off Wrong Guy. Cincinnati Enquirer, May 15, 1999
"On the air after the high school murders in Littleton, Colo., Mr. [Howard] Stern wondered why the murderers hadn't first raped the 'good-looking girls' before they murdered them. 'At least if you're going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why wouldn't you have some sex?' he asked. It's the sort of stuff that makes a human being aspire to be a porcupine. Mr. Stern couldn't care less that he wounded the victims' families. That he demeaned females. That he made the good guys' job that much harder. All Howard Stern cares about is turning a buck. That and Howard Stern. This man is a manifestation of evil."  

Radio 'Shock Jock' Lands $US 100 million. The Age [Australia], May 17, 2000
"Howard Stern, the American disc jockey who has pushed back the boundaries of bad taste with jokes about blacks and lesbians, is about to become the highest-paid performer in radio history. The 'shock jock' is negotiating a five-year contract worth $US100 million with CBS/Infinity taking his annual earnings past US$25 million. Stern has made a career out of political incorrectness, delivering a mixture of obscenity and humiliation on his daily live show. The 46-year-old broadcaster, once described as 'a sex-obsessed suburban nihilist', bounces risque humour off sidekicks in his New York studio and embarrasses and humiliates callers ... The New York-born presenter, whose show has run since 1985, has been fined record sums by the Federal Communications Commission for obscenity. On one occasion he and CBS were fined US$500,000 for discussing on air the relative merits of shaving and waxing pubic hair. His targets on air include blacks, Hispanics and Wasps (white Anglo-Saxon protestants)."

Stern's CBS Show Is a Slap in the Face to Most Americans. Morality in Media, April 2, 1998
""There is a much larger potential audience for good TV than for shock and depravity, but producing good TV requires talent and a moral vision. Instead of doing that, the 'Tiffany Network's' present owner, Westinghouse, named Mel Karmazin [also Jewish] to head operations -- the man who built a radio empire by befouling the nation's airwaves with Howard Stern's shock, vulgarity, prurience, mean-spiritedness and bigotry." [See also American Decency's Howard Stern Information and Action Page.

Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality, "compiled by his daughter Zeena and Nikolas Schreck," Church of Satan, February 2, 1998
"Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997), along with Charles Manson, Timothy Leary, and other messianic pop gurus, was a notorious figure of the 1960s' subculture of social experiment. As the flamboyant High Priest of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible, he served as an ideal bogeyman for the sensation-seeking American media of that tumultuous period. His curious celebrity was based largely on a self-created legend. This carefully-orchestrated legend may, in the final analysis, be LaVey's most enduring legacy. LaVey disseminated his legend through interviews with journalists, personal discussion with his disciples, and two LaVey-approved [auto]biographies ... LEGEND: Claimed that 'Anton Szandor LaVey' was his genuine birth name. REALITY: Born 'Howard Stanton Levey'. SOURCES: Birth certificate 4/11/1930, Cook County, Illinois. Confirmed by relatives ... "LaVey [was] a self-loathing man of Jewish descent  [scroll down to What About Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey?] who embraced fascism toward the end of his life."

Jerry Springer, by David Plotz.
slate.msn.com [from the Slate archives],March 21, 1998
"Two weeks ago Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., demanded the feds stop funding Springer's closed captioning, calling the [Jerry Springer] show the 'closest thing to pornography on broadcast television.' Activists for free speech and the deaf rose to Springer's defense: It's always good business to be censored ... The Jerry Springer Show is unrepentantly vicious. It's dedicated to strife and misery, to the principles that human frailty should be ridiculed, that the weak and the stupid should be humiliated, and that there is no better cure for your problems than the sorrows of others ... How did Springer, with his do-gooding résumé, end up here? The child of Holocaust survivors ... he resigned [from the Cincinnati City Council] in 1974 when he was fingered in a vice investigation--he had paid a prostitute with a check (duh). But a year later he ran for council again and won. In 1977 he was elected Cincinnati's mayor."

Lieberman, Former Education Secretary William Bennett to Present First 'Silver Sewer Award' to Seagram, Inc. Online Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman, March 17, 1998
"Sen. Joe Lieberman today joined former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett in presenting the first "Silver Sewer" Award to Seagram, Inc. [CEO: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., whose father was the head of the World Jewish Congress] for underwriting the cultural pollution of the Jerry Springer [also Jewish] talk show and the distribution of music by shock-rocker Marilyn Manson ... We have chosen the venerable distiller Seagram, Inc., as the first recipient of the Silver Sewer. While you may be familiar with some of Seagram’s more prominent brands --Tropicana Orange Juice, Captain Morgan’s Rum, and the namesake Seagram’s 7 --we doubt most Americans are aware that Seagram is also responsible for introducing our children to pregnant strippers, teenage prostitutes brawling with pimps, and a woman who wanted to go on national television to boast about sleeping with her sister’s three husbands. "Those are just some of the folks who pop up and punch out each other regularly on the infamous 'Jerry Springer Show,' which up until recently Seagram owned, produced and distributed through its subsidiary Universal Studios. Seagram still co-owns the Springer show after entering into a partnership with TV mogul Barry Diller [also Jewish], as it does 'Sally Jessy Raphael,' another talk show that often spews cultural sewage through our televisions as well. Both of those programs are now produced by the newly-formed USA Networks. Seagram also is a co-owner of Interscope Records, a company that made its name distributing obscenely violent and destructive gangsta rap records for which it made Seagram millions of dollars, and which continues to trade trash for cash by distributing Marilyn Manson, who makes music about pedophilia and the benefits of suicide and targets it to kids."

Love Her or Hate Her, Dr. Laura Has Had a Profound Effect on American Culture. canoe.ca [from the Toronto Sun], October 10, 1999
"The radio phenomenon that is Dr. Laura Schlessinger, undisputed queen of morality on the North American airwaves, inspires devotion in her 20 million listeners and loathing in her many detractors ... Her mother was a Catholic married to a Jew, and their battles were constant (no wonder Schlessinger is against 'mixed' marriages). Schlessinger hasn't spoken to her mother for 14 years, and is equally estranged from her younger sister and her family -- more fodder for critics who claim she's a hypocrite for espousing strong family values ... She fell in love with and married zoology professor Lew Bishop (who was married with three children at the time they met) ... Schlessinger converted to Judaism after watching a show on the Holocaust with her son. The whole family are now Orthodox Jewish and practise traditional Judaism."

Dr. Laura, How Could You? Salon.com, November 3, 1998
"Dr. Laura Schlessinger -- talk radio phenomenon and morality maven to the masses, whose syndicated show receives upward of 60,000 phone calls a day from listeners seeking her counsel on subjects such as premarital sex, fidelity and the importance of being a stay-at-home mom -- had been caught with her pants down. Literally. True, the resulting [nude] photographs [of her] were ancient history, 20 years old or more. But suddenly they were on dozens of Web pages and newsgroups across the Net. How was the best-selling author of 'Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives' going to spin this? It all began on Oct. 19, when Web-porn giant Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), which previously made headlines with the Pamela and Tommy Lee honeymoon sex tapes, posted a dozen pictures purporting to be Schlessinger on its ClubLove Web site. The photos -- taken by Schlessinger's mentor, California radio personality Bill Ballance -- displayed a sportive, 20-something Dr. Laura in various stages of undress, including one classic open-legged money shot. To enhance viewing pleasure, IEG offered 'Live Picture Technology,' enabling users to zoom in on specific body parts. As Seth Warshavsky [also Jewish], the entrepreneur behind IEG, boasted on the site, 'You can point your arrow on any part of her body and blow it up to full size! ... ["The Seattle-based firm said that it bought the photos from Bill Ballance, a retired radio personality. Ballance told IEG he photographed Schlessinger in 1978, while he was having an affair with her during her first marriage"]. ... If her radio faithful failed to see Dr. Laura in the buff at ClubLove, they've certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so since. 'The Dirty Dozen,' as IEG dubbed the photos, have been popping up on pages all over the Web like mushrooms after an Oregon rainstorm. And, almost as quickly, IEG's lawyers have been shutting those sites down. In other words, while Dr. Laura is suing IEG for violating her copyright, IEG is going after others on the Net for violating its copyright. For the time being, at least, Dr. Laura and IEG are complicitous -- though while the former wants to quash the pictures entirely, the latter is merely trying to control their distribution. 'We shut those sites down,' says Warshavsky. 'We own the copyright to those photos and we intend to protect that copyright. If anyone, including Dr. Laura herself, tries to print those pix, we will shut them down.'" [A free site posting the nude images of radio's great Jewish moralist may be found here].

Twice Blessed. Members of the Tribe.
The Jewish GLBT [Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Jewish] Archives Online
A long listing, with extensive informational links, of prominent Jews in these categories.

John McCain Breaks Up a Fight. Phoenix New Times, February 12, 1998
"[Eddie] Goldman, a sports journalist and extreme-fighting evangelist, has been tracking [Senator John McCain's] successful attempts to snuff out this sport for two years. Goldman sounds like Rocky Balboa and writes much better than he sounds. He recently became editor of a small extreme-fighting publication; now he has a pulpit ... It wasn't until Robert Meyrowitz created UFC in 1993 that extreme fighting became known in the U.S. ... Meyrowitz, whose background is in radio syndication--he created the King Biscuit Flower Hour--owns a company called Semaphore Entertainment Group. It produces programs that are sold to pay-per-view providers; Meyrowitz has the distinction of having brought Ozzy Osbourne into America's living room ... The only real rule, at first, was no eye gouging. In the first UFC matches--now available on tape at your local video store--it's not unusual to see a contender kick out his opponent's teeth, or beat continuously on his head, closed-fisted. The blood flowed, and so did the money. In 1994, according to Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm, 'combat sports'--of which UFC takes the lion's share--grossed $11 million. In 1995, the figure rose to $25 million; combat sports represented almost 10 percent of the entire pay-per-view event market ... In 1996, McCain and his colleague Colorado Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse-Campbell wrote to the governors of all 50 states, calling UFC 'a brutal and repugnant blood sport . . . that should not be allowed to take place anywhere in the U.S.' State and local politicians joined the senators' crusade. Eventually, by McCain's own estimate, the boxing regulators of 40 states banned extreme fighting. By 1996, profits had plummeted."

Ann Landers. Jewish Virtual Library, 2001
"Translated into over twenty languages, Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, known professionally as Ann Landers, reaches millions of readers with her clear, witty and sometimes sarcastic columns. Her parents, Abraham and Rebecca Friedman, were Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States in 1908 ... Nicknamed 'Eppie,' Esther Pauline was born only seventeen minutes apart from her twin, Pauline Esther (later known as columnist Abigail Van Buren). The two girls experienced many important events simultaneously, participated in similar activities, and shared the same interests ... By 1959, 'Ann Landers' had already received 1,004 speaking invitations and made 101 appearances in 30 cities, and had visited China. [She was] active in national and local causes, such as the Christmas Seal Campaign of which she was national chair in 1963."

Jews in Photography. Hebrew History
"Who does not recognize the name of Margaret Bourke-Weiss? No, her name is not spelled wrong. Max Weiss, her grandfather, and her grandmother, were Orthodox Jews from Poland! Margaret Bourke-White’s work in LIFE became the standard of the trade. LOOK owes its success to Arthur Rothstein, its Director of Photography, chosen because of his documentary work for the Farm Security Administration, and winner of 36 photographic awards, and to Ben Shahn, who later became even better known as a painter. They made the magazine a formidable rival to LIFE. The Jewish photographer 'Weegee' is no less famous as a photojournalist. Alfred Stieglitz, among the most renowned of the nineteenth century photographers, left his family’s printing business to become one of the first to promote photography as a fine art. Stieglitz left an incomparable legacy of images of nature, portraits, and street scenes. In wartime, Jewish army photographers Walter Rosenblum, Robert Capa, Martin Lederhandler, and Cpl. Louis Weintraub are the most recognized of the multitude of Jewish photographers who documented the events from D-Day to V-Day. The most famous WWII photograph was taken at Iwo Jima by Associated Press photographer Joseph Rosenthal."

And Then I Met the Rolling Stones, The Scotsman, November 13, 2001
"Best-known for his work as the unofficial photographer for the Rolling Stones in the late 1960s, [Gered] Mankowitz didn’t just take pictures, he created some of the most enduring images of that era. Working with talents such as Jimi Hendrix and the Stones, he produced the kind of photographs that led nice teenagers astray to worship at the altar of rock ... Now 55, the photographer has been creating pop images for so long he has become part of the mythology himself. As integral to swinging London’s music scene as flowing hair and weed, Mankowitz’s studio was deep at the heart of it all. Mason’s Yard, in SW1, was squeezed between the hip nightclub, Scotch of St James, where Hendrix and other stars played regularly, and the Indica art gallery and bookshop, where John Lennon first met Yoko Ono."

Drug Advocate Oscar Janiger Dies at 83 -- Psychiatrist Administered Almost 3,000 Does of LSD. AP/Yahoo! News, [posted at freerepublic.com], August 17, 2001
"Psychiatrist Oscar Janiger, an early advocate of psychedelic drugs who was credited with turning on Cary Grant and numerous other celebrities to LSD, died Tuesday of kidney and heart failure. Janiger was 83. Between 1954 and 1962, 'Oz,' as he was known to friends, administered almost 3,000 doses of LSD to 1,000 volunteers. Among them were Grant, fellow actors Jack Nicholson and Rita Moreno, author Aldous Huxley and musician Andre Previn. Janiger bought the drug, then legal, from Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Sandoz Laboratories and administered it at his Los Angeles office ... He had abandoned his own LSD studies in 1962, however, after the federal government began investigating researchers. The drug was outlawed in the United States in 1966. Born in New York City, Janiger, who was a cousin of poet Allen Ginsburg."

Zapruder Heirs to Receive $16 Million -- And Receive Publishing Rights??? clintonbradford.com.The Source for JFK Assassination Materials.
"A three-member arbitration panel decided on July 16, 1999, that the Zapruder family heirs will be paid $16 million by the U.S. government for taking possession of the JFK assassination film taken by Abraham Zapruder. The announcement of the decision was delayed until August 3. John F. Kennedy, Jr., was killed in a plane crash the same day that the decision was reached. The arbitration panel's decision cannot be reversed. The film will remain in climate-controlled conditions at the National Archives center in College Park ... apparently at taxpayer expense. $16 million amounts to $615,384 per second of film. US District Judge John R. Tunheim, former chair of the now-defunct Assassination Records Review Board, stated it was 'ironic' that the final $16 million award was close to what the Zapruders had proposed in negotiations for both the film and the copyright: $18.5 million. The three-member arbitration panel was selected: one member chosen by the government; one member chosen by the Zapruder heirs; and the third chosen by the first two. This week's arbitration decision disclosed that the film earned $878,997 for the family from 1976 through 1997. The vote for this sum was 2-1. The two arbitrators who approved the award were Arlin M. Adams, a Philadelphia attorney and former US Circuit Court of Appeals judge chosen by his colleagues, and Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington attorney chosen by the Zapruders. In their statement, they said they were 'comfortable that the sum of $16 million is a fair and accurate reflection of the true value of the Zapruder film at the time of taking.'" [This page has links to various mass media reports about this news item].

Daniel H. Cohen, 45, Journalist, Ex-Fugitive.
Columbia University [Columbia AIDS Memorial List]
"Daniel Howard Cohen, an educator who grew up in Baltimore and went from being an outlaw leftist to running the photography program at one of the nation's most prestigious journalism schools, died Wednesday of complications from AIDS. He was 45. Mr. Cohen, who became a free-lance writer and photographer, spent his teen-age years in Baltimore before joining the leftist Weathermen group in the 1960s. He went underground for several years while he was wanted by the law. In recent years, he contributed to such national publications as Smithsonian magazine, Historic Preservation, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine. From 1987 until his death at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, he was director of the photography program at Columbia University's graduate school of journalism."

A Secret History of the Sexual Revolution. linguafranca.com, March 1999
"Today the name Wilhelm Reik evokes a dim memory of the orgone box fad, or, more likely, nothing at all. But odd though it may seem (and it is far from the oddest thing about him), there was a time when Wilhelm Reich enjoyed enormous prestige on both sides of the Atlantic. Reich was once Sigmund Freud’s star pupil and an important player in the radical psychoanalytic movement of the 1930s. His diagnosis of the neurotic roots of fascism would influence thinkers from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. And his ideas about the transcendent power of the orgasm inspired an astonishing number of postwar American writers and critics–Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Irving Howe, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs–who would become central figures in the cultural upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s ... A freelance writer named Mildred Brady wrote a scathing article for The New Republic in 1947, called 'The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich,' in which she accused Reich of fraud and sex-cultism. (Reich thought she had an unspoken motive for lashing out: 'Brady believes that I am the only man who could help her achieve an orgasm, which she so desperately needs.') The FDA was soon alerted to his activities, and it determined that the orgone energy accumulators were hoaxes that fell under its jurisdiction."

Fleeced in Florida. Orlando Sentinel [at pulitzer.org], April 1, 1999
"There are ways to get rich feeding off the finincial woes of those who have little. It's interesting to note who shares in the feast. Who's making money off the poor? Steve McKenzie for one. He owns a company called National Cash Advance, based in Cleveland, Tenn ... His company advances money to people who need a little cash to get by until payday ... But payday advances aren't the only way to get rich taking money from people who have far too little to lose already. There also are title loans that can wrest from their pockets whatever money is left. Title lenders typically lend a small portion of a car's worth and charge 22 percent a month in interest and fees. When a borrower falls behind in payments -- as often happens -- the lenders are quick to repossess and sell the car, usually keeping any excess profit. The giant of the industry is Title Loans of America Inc., based in Atlanta. Yet the principal owner is Alvin Malnik, a multimillionaire lawyer from Boca Raton. Mr. Malnik was reputed for many years to work for the late Meyer Lansky, financier to the mob -- an allegation Mr. Malnik denies. Whatever his background, he's prospering. By contrast, the people who patronize these businesses often live modestly, some even in homeless shelters. And when the high-rate lenders share their ill-gotten wealth, it is not with the unfortunate but with lobbyists and lawmakers who protect these companies' interests. They hire men such as Robert Levy. He represents the Florida Check Cashers Association, many of whose members offer payday advances."

Las Vegas, Guardian Weekend [London]; [posted here at journalist/novelist Melanie McGrath's web site]
"Everyone knows Vegas is a made-up world, a desert Disneyland, but I had been trying over the weeks to build up a picture of the town beneath the smile and what I had found was troubling me. If there is a single truth about Las Vegas, it is that nowhere on earth so efficiently evades it. In a city whose $5.7bn-a-year gambling business it is to serve up pleasure, reality doesn't sit so well as fantasy. Vegas is a city in denial of the facts. A city where the birds are scared from the trees by ultrasonic bleepers to stop them pooping on passers-by, where prostitution is illegal but there are seventy pages of Yellow Pages ads for private entertainers, where to water a single golf course costs $12m a year ... It wasn't so much the Mob 'n' Mormons who built Las Vegas as the Jews. Bugsy Siegel and his boss, the Mob financier Meyer Lansky, were Jewish. Casino moguls Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn are Jewish too. The town boomed not because gambling was legal but because the railroad ran right through it. And far from being the centre of licence it likes to think itself, Vegas was racially segregated right into the mid-seventies. (Twenty years before Bugsy Siegel booked Lena Horne to perform at the Flamingo but made her sleep elsewhere and instructed the chambermaid to burn her bedlinen.)"

Roots of the Temple. Las Vegas Life, February 2000
"With 70,000 congregants, Las Vegas has the fastest-growing Jewish population in North America ... A growing contingent of Jewish hoteliers in the '50s meant holiday dinners at the Dunes, Riviera and the Sahara. Jack Entratter brought in such celebrities as Steve Lawrence and Met star Jan Pierce to sing the 'Kol Nidre' for Yom Kippur ... Many of these Jewish hotel-casino execs were 'connected,' or at least came from mob backgrounds. Entratter, Moe Dalitz, Moe Sedway, Gus Greenbaum, Davie Berman, and Jake Kozloff all were industry kingpins. Some were seen regularly at services, many were not. 'These men were not deeply religious,' [Barbara] Greenspun says, 'but they longed for a sense of community, and they were very concerned about providing the younger generation with education and training in the traditions. These men raised a lot of money and volunteered a lot of time.'"

The Sun King. Jerusalem Report, 1993
"The anchor of [gambling resort mogul Sol Kerzner's] 62-acre development [in Bophuthatswana, Africa], the 350-room Palace Hotel, is a monument to detail: hand-carved furniture, hand-painted ceilings, ornate crystal chandeliers, animal sculptures, exotic decor. It is surrounded by acres of jungle and rain forest (more than 1.6 million plants, trees, shrubs and ground covers were brought in from around the world). A bird sanctuary was created. Millions of gallons of water were pumped into the area and artificial beaches built to round out the entertainment that includes a wave pool and water slides. Indeed, the local branch of the African National Congress agrees that the Lost City is about as far from reality as you can get in this tiny part of Africa. George Mathuse, a spokesman for the ANC in the area of South Africa bordering Bophuthatswana, suggests that visitors to the area take a look around. To get to Sun City, visitors pass a number of tiny villages where families live in shacks with no running water or electricity. Not as obvious to the casual observer, notes Mathuse, is the Bophuthatswana government's denial of basic human rights to its 2 million residents. Unions are banned and there is no freedom of expression or free political activity ... In March Kerzner was named South African Jewish Business Achiever of 1992, an award sponsored by the Herald Times of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest Jewish newspaper."

Now Gary Stern is King of Pinball-Machine World Ka-Ching! Just One Manufacturer Left. Philadelphia Inquirer [one of four articles posted at sternpinball.com]
"No more machines from [David] Gottlieb, Bally, or [Harry] Williams, three of the industry's former giants? [Gary] Stern feels your pain. After all, he grew up in the pinball business ... 'We don't say we're the last pinball company,' he said. 'That makes us sound like we're going out of business. We say we are the only pinball company' ... Stern's father, Sam, moved from Philadelphia to Chicago in 1948, three years after his son was born, when he bought half of the thriving pinball business of Harry Williams. Coincidentally, that was the year when Gottlieb, the company that ruled the pinball roost for years, introduced 'Humpty Dumpty,' the first pinball machine with flippers ... Through all that, the vast majority of the world's pinball machines have been made at four factories in the environs of Chicago, long known as the pinball capital of the world ... Sixty percent of Stern's machines, which retail for about $4,500, are exported. Germany, Italy and France are all hotbeds of pinball, especially France. 'There is a pinball machine in every cafe in Paris,' Stern said."

The Last of the Bally Bingo Kings, by David Samuels.
Civilization magazine, [posted at rwatts.cdyn.com], 1998
"In the summer of 1941, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, affectionately known as 'the Little Flower' to his constituents, took leave from his normal duties to declare all-out war on an evil that threatened his city. Before an assembled crush of photographers and reporters, La Guardia spoke for a few moments and then picked up a sledgehammer. His eyes popping nearly out of his head, he flexed his shoulders, hoisted the sledgehammer into the air, and brought it crashing down on the polished glass face of the enemy: a shiny, brand- new pinball machine. As strange as the mayor's behavior might seem today, in 1941 a war against pinball was no laughing matter. Pinball machines were devices for gambling ... Every nickel fed to the machines, La Guardia warned, was a contribution to the racketeers, to men like Frank Costello and Charles 'Lucky' Luciano; Meyer Lansky and Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel; Jacob 'Gurrah' Shapiro and Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter, who terrorized the garment district and ran Murder, Inc., the nationwide murder-for-hire syndicate; and Abner 'Longy' Zwillman, who ran the territories across the Hudson River, from Newark all the way down to Cape May. New York would remain pinball-free for 35 years. But despite La Guardia's campaign against the rackets, illegal gambling machines did return to New York City. This was thanks in large part to Uncle Myron, a short, stocky man with an easy smile, a hip-rolling strut, and the excitable air of a kid in junior high with a stash of Playboys at the bottom of his locker ... That a bootlegger's son would make good on the past by transforming New York City into a giant casino--more than 35 years after Mayor La Guardia went after the family pinball table with a sledgehammer--suggests a rare degree of historical feeling in a man whom federal sentencing reports depict as a longtime associate of the Genovese crime family. But that is only part of the story. Myron was loyal to the world of his fathers, of the Jewish gambling machine operators, Jewish bookies, hustlers and thieves, strong-arm men and numbers bosses, all the way up to the boss of bosses of Newark, Abner "Longy” Zwillman."

Wild Man, The Nation [book review], January 6, 1997
"Born into an unremarkable middle-class Jewish family in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1936, [Abbie] Hoffman was from teenage on: a delinquent, a scam artist, a hustler; taunting and impish; driven repeatedly to positions of resistance that made his raging bull of a father beat the shit out of him. Then in 1960 he became a graduate student at Berkeley ... Then came drugs. In 1965 he took his first acid trip, and discovered that he could give a talk without following a prepared text. 'Years later, Abbie would insist that it was LSD that had led him to become a full-time political activist.... For a great many sixties radicals, taking LSD...was the psychic equivalent of 'bursting through the barricades.' Then the addiction to publicity: His wedding to Anita, his second wife, in Central Park in 1967 was performed by Freeman House of the Diggers, whose only request of Abbie was that he not invite the media. But that was the wrong request. 'A modern revolutionary group,' Abbie wrote, is 'headed for the television station, not for the factory' ... In the summer of 1967, after major riots in Newark and Detroit, Abbie 'urged his contemporaries to analyze less and act more. "Riots -- environmental and psychological -- are Holy, so don't screw around with explanations." As a Yippie, Abbie called on his generation to become life-actors: 'Fuck nuns: laugh at professors: disobey your parents: burn your money.... turn your life into an art form, a theatre of the soul and a theatre of the future."

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Women's Intenational Center
"Dr. Ruth Westheimer ['Dr. Ruth'] is a Psychosexual Therapist who helped pioneer the field of Media Psychology with her radio program 'Sexually Speaking' which began in September, 1980 as a 15-minute taped show that aired in New York ... . At 16 she went to Israel where she fought for that country's independence as member of the Haganah [early Israeli army] ... Dr. Westheimer is a pioneer in spreading what she has labeled 'sexual literacy.'"

Growing Up Jewish in America, by Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, travel-watch.com, 2001
"YITZ GREENGERG: From the age of about 12 on, I went out with Jewish National Fund boxes into the Brooklyn subways to collect money for Israel. It seemed the riders on the West End line which ran through Borough Park didn't give much. The best subway was the Brighton Beach line. Somehow Jews gave more money there. The technique was to get on a train with a box in each hand and stand in front of the doors. As soon as they closed, I would shout: 'Open the doors!' Everyone would look up-at which point I'd continue: 'Open the doors of Israel to new immigrants.' It was a great attention getter. My older brother had an old broken down car that he used to transport the boxes from our local branch to the main office. One day he parked his car in a no parking zone to deliver the money and got a parking ticket. The price of the ticket could have broken the back of the organization. Besides that my brother was very headstrong; fighting that ticket was a matter of principle. At the traffic court, everyone was 'guilty, guilty,' no matter what they said. When it was his turn, he said, "Well, I had these boxes to deliver and so I had to park.' 'What boxes were they?' asked the judge. 'Those were JNF boxes,' he answered. 'It's a good cause.' 'Not guilty,' the judge said. Back at the office, no one believed my brother. They called up the traffic court. It turned out that the judge was Manuel Rothenberg, president of the Jewish National Fund."

As Cable Applies Pressure, Network TV Sputs Expletives, by Jim Rutenberg,
New York Times [posted here at lucianne.com], September 1, 2001
"Aaron Sorkin, the executive producer of 'The West Wing' on NBC, says he hopes to break a longstanding network taboo this coming television season: he wants a character to use the Lord's name in vain. Steven Bochco [also Jewish], the executive producer of 'Philly,' a new legal drama on ABC, has proposed having a character use a scatological reference that has never before been uttered on an ABC series -- one considered tougher than the profanities already in use on his police drama, 'NYPD Blues.' CBS executives say that writers are submitting scripts for programs that include every curse word imaginable, including one considered to be on the furthermost reaches of decorum (let's just say it has to do with the making of stem cells)."

Hot British Writer Uses Judaism in Play,
JTA [Jewish Telegraphic Agency], September 6, 2001
"Welcome to 'Howard Katz,' the latest play by one of London's hottest playwrights. Patrick Marber, 36, shot to fame in 1995 with his first play, 'Dealer's Choice,' which he wrote and directed for Britain's National Theatre. He cemented his status two years later with 'Closer,' which grabbed fistfuls of awards in London and New York, where it was named best foreign play of 1999. His new play might at first seem to be a departure for Marber. While 'Dealer's Choice' concerned a circle of small-time gamblers and 'Closer' looked at four lovers, Katz is the tale of a middle-aged show-business agent facing a midlife crisis that threatens to become an end-of-life crisis. And, as the opening moment of the play makes clear, Howard is a Jew with a very complicated relationship to his religion and to God. But Marber told JTA that 'Howard Katz' is not as big a change from his previous work as it might appear. For starters, he said, the main characters of his two previous plays have been Jewish, too."

The Greatest Vendetta on Earth, Salon.com, August 8, 2001
"Charles F. Smith [was] a former top executive with Feld Entertainment, owner of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circuses, Disney Shows on Ice, and other subsidiaries that make it the largest live entertainment company in the world ... For years, Smith had been the right-hand man of Ken Feld, who had inherited the circus when his entrepreneurial father died in 1984. But Smith had been fired 18 months earlier. Now he was apparently ready to spill the beans ... [Investigative journalist Janice] Pottker, who had written a controversial, 11,000-word piece on the circus and its colorful owners, Washington's Feld family, for a local business magazine in 1990. Her piece had recounted the Feld family's Horatio Alger-like story, but it had also exposed some unpleasant secrets about the famously tight-lipped Felds -- such as a bitter feud that had broken out between the two chief heirs, and the bisexuality of the family's patriarch, Irvin Feld. The circus had refused to talk to her ever since ... Over lunch, Smith recounted a campaign of surveillance and dirty tricks Feld had unleashed on [Pottker] in the wake of her 1990 magazine piece in the now-defunct Regardie's magazine. Feld, he said, had hired people to manipulate her whole life over the past eight years. Feld had spent a lot of money on it, he said. He may have even tried to destroy her marriage. In fact, Pottker would eventually learn of a massive dirty tricks operation, involving former CIA officials and operatives, that would target Ringling enemies such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups, not just Pottker."

Meet Bush's Guru, CBS News [60 Minutes II], September 12, 2001
"When George W. Bush wants to describe himself to voters, he only needs two words: 'compassionate conservative.' It's a term Bush uses in almost every speech, but it wasn't concocted by speech writers. The man behind 'compassionate conservatism' is an obscure journalism professor at the University of Texas. His name is Marvin Olasky and he is a man with a past -- many pasts, in fact. He's a Jew-turned-atheist-turned-Marxist-turned-evangelical Christian. He's been advising Bush for years - and his ideas are so influential that he's known as 'Bush's Guru.' And his philosophy of compassion features a warm heart and a very hard head. Critics blast Olasky for claiming that people are poor by choice, by their own insanity, or because of parental abuse ... Olasky sends out the word in the pages of World, the weekly Christian magazine he edits; in a syndicated newspaper column; and in more than a dozen books. And it was Olasky's reputation that led George W. Bush, then a candidate for governor of Texas, to first call Olasky back in 1993. Olasky's been advising Bush ever since. He is called 'the country's most controversial Christian writer,' perhaps because he always writes about politics and politicians in religious terms ... Olasky was a student radical - so radical, in fact, that after college Olasky became an official, card-carrying member of the Communist Party. But a few years later, Olasky - like the Great Gatsby - reinvented himself. He threw away The Communist Manifesto, left his wife, and discovered Jesus."

Scientists Look for a Nation to Host Human Cloning Project, Incyte Genomics (originally from the Philadelphia Inquirer), May 17, 2001
"A controversial team of scientists is on the hunt for a nation willing to host one of the most daring ventures in the history of medicine. Using the same technology that conjured up a cloned sheep named Dolly in 1997, they want to clone a human being. And now they have brought their quest to Israel ... The storm over human cloning blew into Israel last week when [Avi] Ben-Abraham arrived to pitch his case. The 43-year-old Israeli-born doctor made a small fortune in the United States in the biotech industry and in the less conventional fields of medicine. He was president of the American Cryonics Society—a non-profit firm based in California that freezes peoples' bodies and tissue with the hope they can be brought back to life later. In Israel, he gained some fame in 1999 by spending what one colleague estimated was close to $1 million running for parliament in the [right-wing] Likud party. He lost. It is only in the last few weeks that Ben-Abraham has hooked up with [Panos] Zavos and [Severino] Antinori's cloning project. Zavos described him as a consultant or adviser, while Antinori told Italian news agencies that Ben-Abraham is providing financing. Ben-Abraham himself said he is a partner and that he recently incorporated a company known as Abaclone to carry out cloning research in Israel."

Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965, by Kevin MacDonald (professor of psychology at California State University at Long Beach), PDF Files (64 pages)
"In addition to a persistent concern that America be a safe haven for Jews fleeing outbreaks of anti-Semitism in foreign countries, there is evidence that Jews, much more than any other European-derived ethnic group in America, have viewed liberal immigration policies as a mechanism of ensuring that America would be a pluralistic rather than a unitary, homogeneous society (e.g., Cohen 1972). Pluralism serves both internal (within-group) and external (between-group) Jewish interests. Pluralism serves internal Jewish interests because it legitimates the internal Jewish interest in rationalizing and openly advocating an interest in Jewish group commitment and non-assimilation, what Howard Sachar (1992, p. 427) terms its function in 'legitimizing the preservation of a minority culture in the midst of a majority’s host society.' The development of an ethnic, political, or religious monoculture implies that Judaism can survive only by engaging in a sort of semi-crypsis. As Irving Louis Horowitz (1993, 86) notes regarding the long-term consequences of Jewish life under Communism, 'Jews suffer, their numbers decline, and emigration becomes a survival solution when the state demands integration into a national mainstream, a religious universal defined by a state religion or a near-state religion.' Both Neusner (1987) and Ellman (1987) suggest that the increased sense of ethnic consciousness seen in Jewish circles recently has been influenced by this general movement within American society toward the legitimization of minority group ethnocentrism."

Pauline Kael. On the Critic, LA Weekly, September 14-20, 2001
"Pauline Kael died last week at the age of 82 ... Kael wasn’t just the most important film critic in this country, she was also a woman, a great and obvious fact that both she and many of those who’ve written about her have tended to ignore. (That, and the fact that she was Jewish.)"

Israeli Becomes BBC Orchestra's Youngest Conductor,
Jerusalem Post, November 13, 2001
"At just 25 years old, Israeli-born Ilan Volkov is the youngest conductor to be appointed to lead a BBC orchestra ... Volkov has been described as one of the most outstanding young conductors of his generation and has already built up a portfolio worthy of his eminent predecessor."

A Passover Posting of Rare Beauty / Connections Column,
Cincinnati Post, April 21, 1997
"To my mind, 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 Freleng, and his voice supplied by Mel Blanc - both of whom were Jewish.'''

Jewish Organizations Urge Energy Vote in Senate, CNS News (Capital Hill News), December 5, 2001
"Members of a major Democratic constituency Tuesday joined the growing list of groups urging Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to bring the energy bill to the Senate floor. 'We simply can't go on assuming we will have cheap gasoline, cheap power, or cheap home heating oil without doing anything about it,' said Mort Zuckerman, Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Zuckerman, who also owns U.S. News and World Report, has, in the past expressed support for Republican energy policy and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, he stopped short Tuesday of endorsing any single version of energy legislation, instead appealing to senators to develop the right version. In an April editorial entitled, 'The Caribou Conundrum,' Zuckerman compared the proposal for drilling in the Arctic with the environmental concerns. 'The argument over oil versus environmentalism is too important to be decided by slogans and slick imagery,' Zuckerman wrote. "The mating habits of 129,000 porcupine caribou are obviously of concern. But so is the welfare of 281 million Americans.'"

The Gidge and i, aceweekly.com
"No no, not Sandra Dee or Sally Fields, not Deborah Walley or Cindy Carroll or any of the legions of Gidget impersonators of the big screen or the small screen or even, yes, the stage. We're talking the Real Deal here, the original Gidget, the ür-Gidget you might say, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman herself, whose father, a Hollywood screenwriter named Frederick Kohner, wrote the hugely popular little novel - eponymously entitled Gidget, a best seller in 1957 - that begat all those other Gidgets, and made his daughter Kathy, who inspired it, a legend in the world of surfing. Frederick Kohner's novel is about a high-spirited, vivacious - albeit short - Southern California teen-ager named Franzie and her semi-clandestine adventures with an all-male band of young Malibu surfers, who dub her 'Gidget' - a conflation of 'girl' and 'midget' - and grudgingly admit her to their company, teach her to surf, and even allow her to fall in love with one or another of them on occasion. The book was regarded as mildly scandalous in its day. ('Any parents,' fulminated the Nebraska Farmer, 'who allow their teen-agers to talk as Gidget does should be soundly spanked.') Nowadays, in the era of Sex in the City, it seems as innocent as Rebecca at Sunnybrook Farm. Still, the Gidget character is a bit of a potty-mouth (it was she who brought the adjective 'bitchen' into the language), she cops a smoke now and then, and even knocks back a beer or two when the opportunity presents itself."

Kent State Embraces Its Past, Beacon Journal, May 5, 2000
"It was supposed to be a solemn moment to remember the four Kent State students killed by Ohio National Guard bullets 30 years ago. But near the campus Victory Bell -- rung in memory of the students -- came the clicking of dozens of camera shutters, breaking the silence between the tolls. The bell was nearly surrounded by news photographers when it was rung at 12:24 p.m. yesterday -- the time of the shootings. 'It's kind of a bizarre thing,' said Ken Hammond, noting all the reporters and news organizations that had turned out for yesterday's 30th commemoration of the shootings ... Next to the parking lot yesterday was a big bucket with dozens of small rocks. It was provided by KSU's Hillel Jewish Student Center. A sign explained that three of the [four] slain students were Jewish, and in Judaism it is customary to place rocks instead of flowers at grave sites. Visitors picked up the rocks and placed them on the spots where the students fell."

Jewish Manhood Strikes Out, Jewish World Review, December 24, 2001
"Three of the most-hyped new shows, one for each major network, just disappeared. And they all had something in common: They were about Jewish men [Inside Schwartz, Danny, Bob Patterson] ... Hopefully, the indisputable failure of these depictions of 'Jewish manhood' will cause TV writers and producers to reassess their depiction of Jewish men and of Jews in general."

Looking Back in Anger, Boston Globe, January 10, 2002
"It's been 45 years since Andras Grof left Budapest. He's wealthy now, and famous in a way few scientists or businessmen will ever know. He could pick up a phone, say a few words in his native tongue, and climb onto a plane for Hungary. And at the other end, the nation's leading citizens would wait for him on the tarmac, ready to smile and embrace him and welcome him home. But Hungary isn't Grof's home. It's the place that tried to squeeze the heart out of him, the place that almost killed him. He's called Andrew Grove now, he's 65, and he's the chairman of Intel Corp., maker of Pentium microprocessors and one of the most powerful corporations on earth. But it's no use telling Grove that his enemies in Hungary are long dead now, or out of power. He knows. Still, Grove has never gone back to Hungary. He probably never will. ''I just don't want to do it,'' he says. ''That's how I feel.'' Is he scared, after all this time? 'Not scared. Angry.' In his early days at Intel, Grove flung a dictionary at a secretary who had corrected his English. He's known for aiming paint-peeling tirades at subordinates who fall short of the mark. But this is a different sort of anger, deep and cold. It's the rage of a survivor."

Police State Zionism and Its Discontents. A Deeper Look at the Neo-Paleo Libertarian/Conservative Divide, Pravda [Russia], January 25, 2002
"Gathering around the banner of the Center for Libertarian Studies (http://www.libertarianstudies.org/) and its related organs – Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com, these websites have been notable for being a major voice of libertarian and 'market anarchist' critiques of conservative imperialism. Their renewed uprising represents the latest stage in the decades old battle between the 'paleo-' and 'neo-' wings of the Republican Party. But recently questions have been raised as to how well this circle of writers represents the real populist impulse behind the 'paleo-' critique of the 'neo-'conservative argument. Dedicated to the study of 'Libertarian' ideas derived from Jewish objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, the Center is produced by Jewish publisher Burt Blumert, a former aid to Texas Congresman Ron Paul, and runs organizations like LewRockwell.com, dedicated in large part to the ideas of Jewish libertarian thinker Murray Rothbard, and the noted Von Mises Institute, dedicated to promoting the ideas of Jewish capitalist economist Ludwig Von Mises and the 'Austrian school.' These facts alone have left many of the Center’s White readers, who are generally supportive of the groups flagship issues – an end to war and a reduction of the hopelessly corrupt US Federal government – feeling alienated from much of the group’s writing. Most of the Center’s staff and commentators are also Jewish. Webmaster Eric Garris, assistant webmaster Sam Koritz and assistant Jeremy Sapienza are among the men behind the scenes that have full or partially ethnic-Jewish background."

Ali G Rapped for 'Damaging Jewish Community,'
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), February 21, 2002
"The Jewish actor who plays British comic character Ali G has been branded an embarrassment to his religion because of his trademark insults and political incorrectness. The founders of jewish.co.uk, Britain's largest Jewish website, have sent comedian Sacha Baron Cohen an 'open letter' saying his recent acts were damaging to their community. Ali G's interview on BBC radio on Monday morning caused a storm after he referred to a stuttering contestant in the hit television show Pop Idol as 'spasticated' amid a smattering of four letter words and not so subtle sexual innuendoes. The satirical hip-hop rapper, whose television series featured on the ABC last year, bases his act on crude and politically incorrect jokes at the expense of all walks of life, including homosexuals, women and ethnic groups."

Jewish Culture Plays Across Europe, Often in Places Where Few Jews Live,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 17, 2002
"Since 1988, new Jewish museums or exhibitions have opened in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland and elsewhere. Several dozen have opened in Germany alone, ranging from large-scale museums in Frankfurt and Berlin to small private collections. Paris-based historian Diana Pinto uses the term 'Jewish Space' to describe the place occupied by the Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish memory within mainstream European society. Jewish Space, she says, entails the ways in which European countries now integrate Jewish history and memory, and also the Holocaust, into an understanding of their national history, regardless of the current size or activity of the local Jewish population. 'There is a Jewish Space in Europe that will exist even in the absence of Jews,' Pinto told a 1995 conference in Prague on Planning for the Future of European Jewry. 'The ‘Jewish thing,´' she said, 'is becoming universal.'"

What Betty Friedan Didn't Want You to Know,
Toogood Reports, August 15, 2001
"If I said Stalin was a Communist, would you accuse me of Red-baiting? No? Then you won´t mind if I say Betty Friedan, the 'mother of modern feminism' hid the fact that she was a Communist activist ... Betty Friedan´s The Feminine Mystique (1963) which sold more than five million copies, is considered the manifesto of the modern feminist movement. Friedan and Simon de Beauvoir, are the pioneers of modern feminism. In the book, Friedan describes herself as a typical suburban housewife and mother who had a revelation. She realized that women like herself are being exploited and dehumanized; and, she actually compared their plight to that of Nazi concentration camp inmates. She pointed to career as a woman´s only path to identity and self-fulfillment. What Friedan didn´t say is that she wasn´t a typical housewife. Rather, she had been a Marxist activist since her undergraduate years at Smith College (1938-1942) where she wrote for the college newspaper. She dropped out of grad school to work for a radical left wing news service. From 1946-1952 she was a reporter for the union newspaper of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, (UE) 'the largest Communist-led institution of any kind in the United States.' Daniel Horowitz, a Professor of History at Smith who has impeccable Liberal and feminist credentials, documents all of this. His book, published in 1999, is entitled Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism (University of Massachusetts Press)." [See Horowitz's online article Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminist Mystique ... in the American Quarterly]

Rock of Ages. Jews and Rock,
jewhoo, November 16, 2002
[A long article about Jews in the rock and roll world] "This piece was originally published in 1998 as part of Mr. Benarde’s research into a book he is writing on the contribution of Jews to popular music, 1953-present. If you have something interesting to relate about Jews and rock music, drop me a line. It may be of interest to Jewhoo visitors and I will make sure that Mr. Benarde is made aware of anything quite interesting. Mr. Benarde formerly was the music reporter for the Palm Beach (Florida) Post and Sun Sentinel newspapers."

The Testament of Jean-Paul Sartre,
CLAL (originally in Sh'ma), April 2, 1982
"Jean-Paul Sartre, the most wide-ranging and brilliant mind of his age, died with a broken heart. His final despair, which he bravely resisted with the help of a study of Judaism, began long before, during the occupation of France ... .Sartre dealt with his loss of historical hope by painfully acquiring another kind of hope. He replaced both existential dread and Marxist utopianism with a Jewish messianic patience. In the final interview with his friend and associate, the unlikely baal t'shuva, (returnee to Judaism), Benny Levy (formerly Pierre Victor), he reports his discovery that 'the messianic idea is the base of the revolutionary idea.' For many months before he died, Sartre studied Salo Baron's voluminous, magisterial work on Jewish history and, with Levy, came to a new-old view of the human prospect ... As [Steven] Schwarzschild puts it, the apocalypse of revolutionary terrorism must give way to the ethical possibility of Jewish messianism if we are to fulfill the goal of a humane social order ... In the end, Sartre became a kind of 'Jew.' Already in the resistance of 1940-45, he had risked his life against Fascism. In Les Temps Modernes, at the very time of the Six Day War, he published what remains the most balanced and useful collection of essays on Arab Jewish peace and declared his solidarity with Israel. He did not accept the Nobel Prize of literature, giving reasons that are well-known. But he did accept an honorary degree from the Hebrew University in 1976, reminding the Israelis how deeply he shared their dreams, and telling them that the more he cared about them, the more he cared also about the Palestinian people. 'In order to understand the Jew from the interior, I would have to be a Jew,' Sartre told Benny Levy (himself worth a story, one which might be titled, 'From Mao to Masorah'), and he tried hard enough to achieve that very goal. Studying Jewish history, like many thinkers before him, he caught a vision of the messianic hope: survival, obedience and loyalty to humanity itself. 'The Jew lives. He has a destiny. The finality toward which every Jew moves is to reunite humanity....It is the end that only the Jewish people (knows)….It is the beginning of the existence of men for each other.'"

Kiss Founder Extols Virtues of Selfishness,
Gainesville Sun, March 27, 2002
"Rock star Gene Simmons attributes his success to being completely selfish, and he says that selfishness is the core of everybody's strength. Simmons spoke Tuesday night at the O'Connell Center in honor of Jewish Awareness Month. His appearance was sponsored by the University of Florida ACCENT speakers bureau and the Jewish Student Union. Although he had no prepared speech, Simmons, 52, told the audience of more than 800 about the things he had found important in his life, including the necessity of being selfish. He said people should act as they are told to on airplane flights in the event of an emergency - first put the oxygen mask on themselves before doing so for others. He encouraged listeners to live their lives as they want and to remove any "blinders" that might impede success ... Simmons, whose real name is Chaim Witz, was born in Israel, the son of a Holocaust survivor. He co-founded KISS in 1973, and has since marketed the band on everything from caskets to Visa credit cards. KISS has sold more than 90 million records and has broken concert attendance records set by Elvis Presley and the Beatles. The band is known for its outrageous makeup, black leather and chains, and Simmons' lengthy tongue ... He said his mother, Florence Witz, was his biggest influence."

In Effort to Lift Their Rankings, Colleges Recruit Jewish Students,
Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2002
"Vanderbilt is far from the only U.S. university seeking to boost Jewish enrollment. In fact, competition for top Jewish students is prompting a flurry of new Jewish cultural centers and Judaic Studies programs at universities across the country. But at Vanderbilt and a few other universities, including some officially Christian campuses, the unabashed wooing of the Jewish community has struck some Jews and non-Jews alike as a questionable new form of ethnic profiling -- even though it's based on a seemingly positive stereotype ... 'Yes, we're targeting Jewish students,' Chancellor Gordon Gee told a March 17 board meeting of the Vanderbilt affiliate of Hillel, the nonprofit national Jewish campus organization. 'There's nothing wrong with that. That's not affirmative action. That's smart thinking.' Mr. Gee, who left the presidency of Brown University for Vanderbilt two years ago, says niche marketing to Jewish students is part of his 'elite strategy' to lift Vanderbilt to Ivy League status ... Scott Allen, Vanderbilt's Baptist chaplain, says the strategy of recruiting Jews to improve academic stature denigrates the Southern white Christians who dominate the school's student body. If he were told that Jews were better students than other groups, he says, 'my first reaction would be, 'Wait a minute. I want to see factual research that would support this. Because I don't believe it' ... At Ivy League schools, about 23% of students are Jewish, even though Jews comprise just 2% of the U.S. population, according to Hillel. These universities say they seek top students regardless of ethnicity. As a result of federal-court rulings against racial preferences in college admissions, it's considered dicey for a non-denominational college to recruit students of a particular faith. Specialists in affirmative-action law say that, while Vanderbilt as a private school has more leeway than public universities, it could be vulnerable to an anti-discrimination claim from an equally qualified Christian student turned down in favor of a Jew."

Jews and the Beatles

It's Alive! It's Alive!, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg
New York Times, May 5, 2002
"It was the early 1970's, the dawn of the era of gene-splicing, when Prof. Paul Berg, a Stanford University biochemist, proposed slipping a bit of DNA from a cancer-causing rodent virus into a bacteria, E. coli. Even his colleagues were alarmed. So Professor Berg, faced with panicky accusations he was breeding some kind of Andromeda strain, temporarily halted his own research and helped impose a moratorium. Congress, frightened, wanted a ban. Recombinant DNA was not banned, of course, thanks in part to lobbying by Professor Berg. Rather, the field he pioneered has exploded into the modern biotechnology industry. Professor Berg, meanwhile, went on to win the Nobel Prize. Today, at 76, Professor Berg is back in Washington, trying to talk the United States Senate out of banning research using human cloning. The House of Representatives has already passed a bill that would prohibit cloning, either for reproduction or to generate human embryos that could give rise to cells and tissues to treat disease. If the Senate, expected to vote this month, does the same, an entire area of scientific inquiry would be branded a federal crime - a felony, punishable by 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine ... Critics say opponents of cloning opponents have fallen prey to the myth of the mad scientist. "I think that somehow these people have become susceptible to bogeyman nightmares about cuckoo scientists run amok," said Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "In fact, the history of the rogue or outlier scientist has been far more likely to produce Nobel Prizes and praise than condemnation." In Dr. Caplan's view, it is the politicians who exploit scientists, and not the scientists themselves, who are to be feared."

Davis: Corporate Gadfly, CEO Groupie,
Yahoo!Finance (from Reuters), May 5, 2002
"Evelyn Davis, a 70-something who chides CEOs as easily as if they were her grandchildren, this week put in a typical performance at IBM's shareholder meeting. "When are you going to start building revenues?" the shareholder activist asked the chief executive of the world's No. 1 computer company, Louis Gerstner. "Instead of big blue, it has been a little bit of pale blue recently," the corporate gadfly said, playing on the computer giant's nickname. She did not cede the floor gracefully -- Davis is renown for many things but retreating is not one of them -- and chided Gerstner for not allowing newly appointed chief executive Sam Palmisano to speak ... The exchange -- which involved prodding questions along with a healthy dose of flirting -- was quintessential Davis, who has been a longtime fixture on the U.S. shareholder meeting circuit. With a preference for donning the labels of European designers like Chanel, Armani and "old" Valentino, Davis has been attending these gatherings for over 40 years. IBM in 1959 was her first, she said -- after she inherited stock from her father. The heads of some the country's largest corporations are on a first-name basis with her and don't hesitate to take her calls. Davis counts some executives, like No. 1 U.S. financial services firm Citigroup Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Sanford "Sandy" Weill, as her close friends. By some measures, she has helped make companies more responsive to small shareholder wants. But there are those who believe Davis has lost touch with reality and only wants to rub shoulders with top-level CEOs. Davis, who was born Jewish in the Netherlands and survived the Holocaust, has also been faulted for her harsh manner with women or anyone who is not a bigwig ... Davis, who said she owns shares in about 86 companies, is one of a tribe of gadflies who tour the country to attend shareholder meetings. Often these people own just a few shares, enabling them to file proposals and take the floor."

Untangling a Web of Intrigue at a Comic Book Giant,
[Jewish] Forward, May 10, 2002
"Sure, Spider-Man'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 — 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."

Judaism has become a light for non-Jewish rock stars, including Carlos Santana, Dion DiMucci and Artimus Pyle,
Detroit Jewish News, August 26, 2002
"[Carlos Santana] stepped to the microphone and acknowledged God by reciting part of a Hebrew prayer: 'Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Adonai tzfa’ot.' Translation: 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts' ... Those weren’t the first instances he appears to have been influenced or inspired by Judaism. In 1992, he used a photograph of himself wearing a kippah and praying at the Western Wall for the cover of his album Milagro ... Judaism has influenced the lives of other prominent non-Jewish rock stars as well [including] Dion DiMucci ["Dion"] ... In 1984, at the suggestion of Jewish friends who had made aliyah to Israel, ex-Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle moved from Florida to Jerusalem to work and study at the Diaspora Yeshiva with no intention of returning to the United States ... He lived on Mount Zion in a room in the King David’s Tomb complex, which housed the yeshiva. He worked as a caretaker, sat in on Torah classes, learned about the concepts of tzedakah and mitzvot (righteous acts and commandments), listened to students engage in talmudic debate, learned Hebrew prayers, kept kosher, observed Shabbat and joined the Diaspora Yeshiva Band. Pyle also imported his APB bandmates to perform benefits for the yeshiva, as well as tour Europe. Three years after moving to Israel, Pyle accepted an invitation to join a Lynyrd Skynyrd reunion commemorating the 10th anniversary of the plane crash ... In 1998, Allen Woody, the bass player for the Allman Brothers Band (1989-1996) and Gov’t Mule, asked his friend Matt Eichen, an Orthodox Jew, oral surgeon and owner of Musicvox Guitars, to put a Star of David on his Musicvox bass. Eichen asked the burly long-haired rocker, who was not Jewish, if he wanted the Star done in a pearl inlay. Woody’s reply, according to Eichen: 'Burn it on. I want it to look like the numbers tattooed on Holocaust victims. I want the guitar to have a [don’t-mess-with-me] look, just like I do' ... . During his two months in the Promised Land, he picked up a little Hebrew, became acquainted with many of Judaism’s holidays, rituals and commandments, and learned about the Holocaust. Woody, who died in 2000, was deeply moved by the devastation of the Holocaust and hated the Nazis for what they had done. He even had Stars of David tattooed on his upper arms, explaining to Eichen that if Nazism ever reared its ugly head again, 'I’d have to cut off both my arms to deny how I feel about the Jewish people.'"

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SEE ALSO:

MASS MEDIA MOGULS

JEWISH POWER

ART

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