In Madoff Scandal, Jews Feel an Acute Betrayal - NYTimes.com
There are people who make a media based living by claiming that Jews control the media and the world banking system. These people (who shall remain nameless here) and their ideas have so much traction in the public mind that I can read all about their work in the New York Times, along with all the rest of the news that's fit to print.
This alleged vast Jewish conspiracy has so much traction in public discourse that a major US national daily can find Jewish commentators of every stripe who feel compelled to quote scripture and bear witness to a sort of collective shame to be Jewish.
Why all this recent fuss in the media? Because a Jewish banker turned out to be a fraud.
Jews who assume a mantle of guilt and shame because of Bernard Madoff's fiduciary sins, are laying claim to a sad history on several fronts. Mainly, they are suggesting that as Jews, they bear part of the shame of Madoff's actions, because he is Jewish.
Anti-Semites who confer the mantle of guilt and shame upon all Jews because of Bernard Madoff's fiduciary sins, are also laying claim to a sad history. In the present and recent past, this principle of collective guilt has been extended to the principle of collective punishment.
But, we live in a period of history that has outlawed collective punishment, through the dictums of the Geneva Conventions.
Therefore the casual observer may legitimately wonder about a situation that pits Jews and anti-Semites not against each other, but allies them in a holy confederacy against common sense and naked self-interest.
It's hard to find evidence that people who check the box labelled White on their census forms feel any form of collective guilt if one of their fellows say, fakes evidence of an offensive military first strike capability by say, Saddam Hussein, and then uses this faked evidence to engineer the wholesale theft of the resources of say, Iraq.
But it's easy to find evidence that people who check the box labelled Black on their census forms feel a momentary tinge of panic when the newsflash about the latest violent escaped felon carries the addendum, the suspect is black, male, considered armed and dangerous.
And the New York Times has ably demonstrated that it's easy to find Jews who feel that sting when one of their fellows from the international banking system robs the place blind.
We'll leave these companion assertions to further debate later, but for now we can say that it seems that the public is afraid to be tarred with the same brush as someone who commits a shameful act.
Given the history of collective punishment, there's a good reason for this.
In the near future, this situation may begin to unravel like a DNA strand on a criminalist's work desk.
In the increasingly brown world, how will we measure group membership when the group's members are hard to identify? The current President Elect of the United States of America is generally seen as Black. But only one of his parents is directly descended from Africans.
If Barak Hussein Obama is photographed smoking crack cocaine behind the White House toolshed, who if anyone, should feel the most shame?
If Barak Hussein Obama is ever accused and found guilty of confining and raping one Jewish White and one Muslim Black woman in the aft washrooms of Air Force One, who will bear the brunt of any collective punishment?
Tags: BarakObama, Bernard Madoff, fraud, crack coaine, conspiracy
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