Jewish power dominates at 'Vanity Fair'
By NATHAN BURSTEIN
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It's a list of "the world's most powerful people," 100 of the bankers
and media moguls, publishers and image makers who shape the lives of
billions. It's an exclusive, insular club, one whose influence
stretches around the globe but is concentrated strategically in the
highest corridors of power.

More than half its members, at least by one count, are Jewish.

It's a list, in other words, that would have made earlier generations
of Jews jump out of their skins, calling attention, as it does, to
their disproportionate influence in finance and the media. Making
matters worse, in the eyes of many, would no doubt be the identity of
the group behind the list - not a pack of fringe anti-Semites but one
of the most mainstream, glamorous publications on the newsstands.

Yet the list doesn't appear to have generated concern so far, instead
drawing expressions of satisfaction and pride from the lone Jewish
commentator who's responded in writing.

Published between ads for Chanel and Prada, Dior and Yves Saint
Laurent, it's the 2007 version of "The Vanity Fair 100," the glossy
American magazine's annual October ranking of the planet's most
important people. Populated by a Cohen and a Rothschild, a Bloomberg
and a Perelman, the list would seem to conform to all the traditional
stereotypes about areas of Jewish overrepresentation.

Joseph Aaron, the editor of The Chicago Jewish News, thinks it's a
list his readers should "feel very, very good about."

"Talk about us being accepted into this society, talk about us having
power in this society," Aaron wrote this week, in apparent reference
to Jewish life in the United States. "Talk about anti-Semitism being a
thing of the past, talk about Jews no longer needing to be afraid to
be visible and influential."

Printed over 15 pages before an interview with Nicole Kidman, the
rankings - described on the magazine's cover as the membership of "The
New Establishment" - are less than scientific, accompanied by a
paragraph-long introduction that neither defines power nor describes
the methodology behind the list.

Topping the rankings for the second year in a row is gentile media
mogul Rupert Murdoch, who's followed in second place by Steve Jobs,
the non-Jewish co-founder of Apple and Pixar.

Highest among the Jewish entries are Google co-founders Sergey Brin
and Larry Page, co-listed at #3, down one from 2006. The article
reported that the 34-year-old Brin and his wife "wore swimsuits as
they stood under the huppa." (Page, whose mother is Jewish, was
described in the spring 2006 edition of B'nai B'rith Magazine as
"raised more in the mold of his father... whose religion was
technology.")

With Americans making up the vast majority of the list, the Vanity
Fair 100 is also notable for some absences. Just nine of those
included are women, and only two - TV host Oprah Winfrey and rapper
Jay-Z - are of African ancestry.

It's the magazine's readers, however, and not Vanity Fair itself, who
are keeping track of New Establishment members' gender, race and
ethnicity. Though the writers often include telling details about
their subjects - such as that the original last name of #89, comedian
Jon Stewart, was Leibowitz - it's up to amateur demographers to track
their origins.

The approach hasn't attracted much attention this year, but set off a
Hollywood firestorm in 1994 when a reporter for England's Spectator
used that year's New Establishment as inspiration for his own article,
in which critics accused him of perpetrating harmful stereotypes about
Jewish control of the movie industry. (The writer, William Cash,
argued that the piece was partly meant to call attention to the
contrast between the traditional, white Protestant "establishment,"
and the disproportionally Jewish new version.) Considerations of
background don't figure in the Vanity Fair "Establishment," but
neither, it seems, do traditional definitions of "power" as
political.

Besides New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at #9, up 25 places from a
year ago, just two elected officials - former US president Bill
Clinton and former vice president Al Gore - appear on the list. Ranked
at #6 and #19, respectively, the latter two are cited for their work
after leaving office, not for the power they exerted through
politics.

The magazine's limited definition of power, then, constitutes areas in
which Jews have long excelled, often by necessity, says Ruth Wisse, a
professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard
University.

In her most recent book, Jews and Power, Wisse accounts "for the
achievement of Jews through the centuries," describing it, she says,
"as a consequence of their having to develop their powers of
adaptation to an extraordinary degree."

But while they've excelled disproportionately in areas such as
business and medicine, they've often also limited themselves - or been
limited to - fields not connected to the public exercise of power.

With the Vanity Fair rankings' focus on leaders outside the public
sphere, they may coincidentally mirror traditional Jewish patterns of
achievement - and a traditional Jewish aversion to political power.

For Aaron, the list shows how "vital" Jews have become in American
life. The Vanity Fair rankings, he writes, "[tell] you so much about
the place of Jews in this country, about the amazing people Jews
are."
.................................................

And why do you think we are fighting a jewish war in the middle east
for Israel?

To kill their enemies.

Stupid goyum.