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Jewish power dominates at 'Vanity Fair'
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.)
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 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."
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.
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."
(It's pretty internationally acknowledged.)
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