Joel Stein: “Who Runs Hollywood? C’mon”
By Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2008.
“Jews totally run Hollywood.”
I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22 percent of Americans believe “the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews,” down from nearly 50 percent in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.
How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great-uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). The eighth signatory was News Corp. President Peter Chernin, whose father was Jewish, though Chernin was raised Unitarian, which is close, if you ask me. If both Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah. The person they were yelling at in that ad was Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg (take a guess). The scathing rebuttal to the ad was written by entertainment superagent Ari Emanuel (Jew with Israeli parents) on The Huffington Post, which is owned by Arianna Huffington (not Jewish and has never worked in Hollywood.) The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.
As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you’d be flipping between “The 700 Club” and “Davey and Goliath” on TV all day. So I’ve taken it upon myself to reconvince America that Jews run Hollywood by launching a public relations campaign, because that’s what we do best.
I’m weighing several slogans, including “Hollywood: More Jewish than ever!”; “Hollywood: From the people who brought you the Bible”; and “Hollywood: If you enjoy TV and movies, then you probably like Jews after all.”
I called ADL Chairman Abe Foxman, who was in Santiago, Chile, where, he told me to my dismay, he was not hunting Nazis. He dismissed my whole proposition, saying the number of people who think Jews run Hollywood is still too high. The ADL poll, he pointed out, showed that 59 percent of Americans think Hollywood execs “do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans,” and 43 percent think the entertainment industry is waging an organized campaign to “weaken the influence of religious values in this country.”
“That’s a very dangerous phrase, ‘Jews control Hollywood.’ What is true is that there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood,” Foxman said. Instead of “control,” he would prefer people say that many executives in the industry “happen to be Jewish,” as in “seven of eight major film studios are run by men who happen to be Jewish.” But Foxman said he is proud of the accomplishments of American Jews. “I think Jews are disproportionately represented in the creative industry. They’re disproportionate as lawyers and probably medicine here as well,” he said. He argues that this does not mean that Jews make pro-Jewish movies any more than they do pro-Jewish surgery. Although other countries, I’ve noticed, aren’t so big on circumcision.
I appreciate Foxman’s concerns. And maybe my life spent in a New Jersey-New York/Bay Area-L.A. pro-Semitic cocoon has left me naive. But I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.
Joel Stein is an American journalist who wrote for the Los Angeles Times for Time.
