new york | In the world according to the comedy writers at “Saturday Night Live,” the pyramid of complicity in the current financial crisis runs like this:
On the bottom are poor and minority homeowners victimized by predatory lending. Next come condo-flipping yuppies out for a quick buck. They’re followed by rapacious bankers who cashed out before the economy crumbled. On top are billionaire financiers who pocketed the government bailout and quickly moved it offshore. In SNL’s imagination, the top two categories seemingly are populated by Jews.
In a skit broadcast Oct. 4, barely a day after Congress authorized a massive bailout of the ailing financial industry, the show parodied a post-vote news conference in Washington by featuring these four categories of characters.
The rapacious bankers were personified by actors playing East Bay residents Herbert and Marion Sandler, the Jewish owners of World Savings, an Oakland-based bank sold to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion in 2006.
“Actually, we’ve done quite well. We’re very happy,” “Marion” cackled in a thick New York accent, as the screen identified her and her husband as “People who should be shot.”
The actor playing Soros, the billionaire Jewish Holocaust survivor and financier, brags that he pocketed the bailout money and converted it into Swiss francs because he has taken a short position on the U.S. dollar.
Are these caricatures anti-Semitic?
As of Tuesday morning, the clip had been pulled from the show’s Web site, but not due to concerns about Jewish sensibility. “Upon review, we caught certain elements in the sketch that didn’t meet our standards,” NBC said in a statement. The network said the Sandlers had called to complain about the clip, and the tagline “People who should be shot” was removed, along with a reference to “corrupt activities.”
The skit is sure to aggravate a growing concern: that Jews could find themselves blamed for the nation’s financial meltdown.
“There is definitely a fear among certain Jews in this industry,” said a Jewish employee with a top New York investment bank who asked that his name be withheld. “There’s a growing animosity toward the wealthy … that have made money on Wall Street and real estate and finance, as so many Jews have. It’s very easy to generalize that it must be the entire Jewish people.”
Others in the industry are not so sure about a backlash against the Jews.
“I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind,” said Daniel Cohen, who works in investment banking at JPMorgan Chase.
The prominence of Jews in the financial industry — and the conspicuously Jewish names adorning many of the nation’s top investment banks — have given the conspiracy theorists a rich trove of ammunition while giving many Jews a cause for anxiety.
“Whenever there is trouble or uncertainty in the economy or world events, Jews become the scapegoats, and ugly anti-Semitic canards are given new life,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Last week, the ADL reported a “dramatic surge” in anti-Semitic Internet postings related to the economy. The group said the Internet chatter is not limited to neo-Nazi and white supremacist sites, but has spread to mainstream Web sites such as Yahoo! and AOL, where “hundreds” of anti-Semitic messages have flooded financial discussion boards.
Writers on these sites lay responsibility for the crisis squarely at the feet of Jewish bankers and Zionists. They allege that Jewish government officials, notably U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, supported a congressional bailout to help their co-religionists on Wall Street. A Frank character also was featured on the “Saturday Night Live” skit.