January 28, 2009

"Why were all the writers on the Sid Caesar Show young Jews?"

Larry Gelbart, creator of MASH and the Broadway musical City of Angels, was asked why he and all his fellow writers on Sid Caesar's Show of Shows in the 1950s (including Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks -- see the movie "My Favorite Year" for a fictionalized version of this famous confluence of talent -- and Woody Allen briefly worked for Sid Caesar a few years later) were young Jews. He responded:

"Because our parents were old Jews."

That reminds me of the George Carlin joke:
"I’d like to mention something about language, there are a couple of terms being used a lot these days by guilty white liberals. The first is “Happens to be” ‘He happens to be black’ “I have a friend, who happens to be black” like it’s a #%!@in accident ya know. Happens to be black? Yes, he happens to be black. He has two black parents? Oh yes, yes he did. And they #%!@ed? Oh indeed they did. So where does the surprise part come in? I’d think it’d be more unusual if he just happened to be Scandinavian."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like somebody's been watching PBS tonight...

Ron Guhname said...

Well, considering the four writers you mention, it must have been due to ethnocentrism because those guys had no talent and never amounted to anything.

Anonymous said...

Sailer, you're pretty good, but Taki rules when it comes to airing taboo discussions about Jewish power:

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/madoffs_people

"In May of 1999, a very nice Greek–American by the name of Harry Makropoulos, the world’s greatest expert on derivatives, sent a report to the SEC’s Boston office calling the Madoff operation the ‘world’s largest hedge fund fraud’. My fellow Greek stipulated that ‘my name not be released to anyone other than the Branch Chief and Team Leader in the New York Region without my express permission. I am worried about the personal safety of myself and my family. The report has been written solely for the SEC’s internal use.’ Whom was he afraid of? Those in the know say Mossad and Israel; I say rogue Mossad agents acting alone with Madoff."

"Makropoulos nailed Madoff, listing the back-door marketing and financing schemes as if he were an insider. But the SEC did not respond. Powerful political voices ordered the SEC not to proceed. I am not naming names because libel laws mostly favour the criminal in Europe, and their names will never get past the libel lawyers. The largest investors were not Jewish charities as was reported by Jewish-owned newspapers in New York, but French, Spanish and Swiss private banks. It was Sonia Kohn, of the Medici bank of Vienna, a woman who makes Midge Dexter look like Ava Gardner, who involved Charles Fix, and not Andres Piedrahita, as I reported two weeks ago."

Anonymous said...

They were obviously an exception to the WASPy Harvard elite that runs the entertainment industry.

Anonymous said...

Who asked Gelbart the question? Was it another Jew, an Asian, Hispanic or a black? I doubt the question was asked by a non-Jewish white person.

I get the impression that certain up and coming minorities in the New America are unwilling to give a free pass to Jewish ethnocentrism. Partly because they don't accept the Holocaust brain tatoo, and partly because they see how well giving a free pass to Jewish ethnocentrism has worked out for America's founding population.

In fact, it's logical to assume that an organization like La Raza, after smiles and handshakes and the securing of lavish funding from various Jewish sources, then turns around and strategizes privately...on how to make sure what happened to Whitey doesn't happen to them.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the 1950's were the inflection point of power passing from Jewish first-generation entrepreneurs (the Mayers, Goldwyns, the Warners) to the WASPy elites who ran Television networks: the various Harvard/Yale Vice Presidents (Sarnoff was certainly no WASP, his lieutenants were), and most importantly the major TV studios such as Universal who supplied the actual shows.

You had (Jewish) entrepreneurs who had a good feel for what would be popular and what would not, still in control but fading, and a bunch of WASPs on the up as entrepreneurs were pushed out by corporate structures.

Sid Ceasar's show could never work today -- instead you'd have the "Harvard Mafia" that runs the Simpsons, or Saturday Night Live, or what have you. Guys would not get hired on the basis, proven, of being funny and delivering, but rather on social connection ("he was my room-mate at Harvard and Chote").

Probably the residual anti-Semitism of the time had the function of channeling lots of high-IQ guys into the high-risk/reward area of comedy, as opposed to more stable but lower reward careers. Harvard at the time had informal quotas on Jews, only so many allowed. A number of professions such as Law were closed to Jews. However the key factor was probably the entrepreneurial nature of the leaders like Paley or Sarnoff not the various backgrounds.

It's like Gates vs. Ballmer, or Jobs vs. Sculley. Entrepreneurs take risks but hedge them, it's what they do. Corporations empire-build with WASPy Yuppies. It's what they do.

Anonymous said...

Anon,

It's amazing Taki isn't worried for his safety, given his bravery in speaking out about the biggest Ponzi schemer in history.

T-99,

You are aware, are you not, that the Harvard Mafia includes plenty of Jews?

Also, Steve Ballmer is a Jew.

- Fred

Anonymous said...

"WASPy Harvard elite that runs the entertainment industry."

the term WASPy here must refer to jews who wear polo by ralph lauren

didnt sailer just recently do a post on a chest beater article written by a jewish guy that described the rather brutal facts of total jewish domination in hollywood? yes he did

Joel Stein asks "How Jewish is Hollywood?"

ok boys cue up the argument that the hollywood power elite aint really jewish because they dont wear funny hats or spend half of every day studying scripture or attend synagogue

Anonymous said...

Also, Steve Ballmer is a Jew.

Steve Ballmer who together with his wife and the Gates donated the max for Obama's inauguration.

Anonymous said...

Generoso Pope Jnr, Cohn's classmate, would be the future owner of the National Inquirer,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generoso_Pope,_Jr.

Anonymous said...

You are aware, are you not, that the Harvard Mafia includes plenty of Jews?

Plenty? 25% at most. Go run down the last names. But the problem with the Jew obsessed is they don't know Jewish last names as well as I do

Anonymous said...



"In May of 1999, a very nice Greek–American by the name of Harry Makropoulos, the world’s greatest expert on derivatives, sent a report to the SEC’s Boston office calling the Madoff operation the ‘world’s largest hedge fund fraud’. My fellow Greek [not Greek-American?] stipulated that ‘my name not be released to anyone other


Not short on ethnic pride, is he, old Tacky.

Anonymous said...

Isn't Sonia Kohn on the run from Russian "oligarchs" (many of whom are also Jewish)?

No danger in naming her, she'll probably turn up off floating face down off the coast of France any day.

Anonymous said...

" A number of professions such as Law were closed to Jews."

I guess this could be true in the sense that there was a demand for only so many lawyers on the east and west coasts. Otherwise, this will come as a big surprise to a lot of old-line firms with plenty of Jewish surnames in their titles.

Do you really think it was just an accident of history that quick-witted, high IQ Jews became comedy writers in Hollywood? Why didn't the Hispanics who really were shut out of corporate America and the professions move into this lucrative niche?

--Senor Doug

Anonymous said...

T99, let us know if you ever experience the condition we like to call reality.

Hollywood as a never ending lawn party lead by square-jawed old stock New Englanders? Now I have heard everything.

Jim O said...

Uh, I think it warrants mention that the Your Show of Shows - Sid Caeser stuff was not funny. I mean, Pagliacci suddenly breaking out into "It's just one of those things," to pick a random example, is not funny. Literate, perhaps, but not nearly as funny as "Chef of the Future," or other truly funny stuff from the fifties that still holds up. Of course, the writers on The Honeymooners were Jewish, too, so this comment has little or nothing to do with ethnicity. My point is simply this: that emperor was as naked as a jaybird.

Unknown said...

What about all those Jewish Nobel Laureate scientists? Must be favoritism. A case for Taki.

Anonymous said...

A number of professions such as Law were closed to Jews.

You should spend more time reading and less time making a fool of yourself with your bizarre vision of what life in the 50s was like.

Though your over the top ignorance can be entertaining sometimes.

Anonymous said...

Anon-2 said...

Re Balmer: by his last name I would say his father was the Jewish one. No Jewish mother means you are not Jewish

Not even ethnically, culturally? Yeah right!

Re Harvard mafia: Plenty? 25% at most.

Yet it should only be around 3%. Thats called firing on your own position.

Anonymous said...

"Yet it should only be around 3%. Thats called firing on your own position."

Only if you assume that all human groups have equal abilities in everything. Which is something that I'm sure that you, as an isteve reader, assume.

That's called being intentionally obtuse.

Anonymous said...

When are paleocons going to accept that McCarthy was a closet case who was being used by Cohn and his crowd as a front and the whole Red Scare episode was simply a war between various factions of the Velvet Mafia in NY and DC? Cohn, Hoover, McCarthy, Chambers- come on.

Anonymous said...

t99 rewrites history:

A number of professions such as Law were closed to Jews [in America in the 1950s].

Holy Jay-sus. What planet is T99 living on?

Law was closed to Jews in Ike's America? Tell that to Felix Frankfurter and innumerable others.

A Big Lie as usual. That's our T99!

mnuez said...

Yeah, Taki rules :-) lol.

Taki is perhaps the perfect example of the plutochracy that make up this century's influential class. Taki is such an absolute nothing that were he not the receiver of inherited wealth, his incoherent, chest-puffed ramblings would be in the lowest quartile of worthy comments in these here isteve threads. It's somewhat sad that so many of the prominently published are absolute fools - stupid ones even - who we then comment on and argue about but, in case y'haven't heard, money does grant literary pretenders a bit more column space than does actual talent and brains. And taki is the poster child for that unfortunate fact.

mnuez


p.s. He does however have enough brains to have started bribing (literally) Razib, Derb and other worthies to comment under in his eponymous periodical. That's what we call BUYING talent when you have none of your own.

Anonymous said...

Law was closed to Jews in Ike's America? Tell that to Felix Frankfurter and innumerable others. A Big Lie as usual. That's our T99!


The top level law firms in NYC and other elite cities were closed to Jews. So were top Wall St firms. Also the best insurers. This loosened up post WW2 and after the 1950's

Hank Greenberg of AIG was very lucky to get in AIG when he did. He was a pioneere

You can find a few scattered exceptions to what I wrote

Anonymous said...

Law was closed to Jews in Ike's America? Tell that to Felix Frankfurter and innumerable others. A Big Lie as usual. That's our T99!


The top level law firms in NYC and other elite cities were closed to Jews. So were top Wall St firms. Also the best insurers. Ivy League schools had Jewish quotas. All this loosened up post WW2 and after the 1950's

Hank Greenberg of AIG was very lucky to get in AIG when he did. He was a pioneer

You can find a few scattered exceptions to the above

Anonymous said...

Re Harvard mafia: Plenty? 25% at most.

Yet it should only be around 3%. Thats called firing on your own position.

I thought iSteve readers were against quotas that discriminate against those with better abilities

Anonymous said...

It's somewhat sad that so many of the prominently published are absolute fools - stupid ones even - who we then comment on and argue about but, in case y'haven't heard, money does grant literary pretenders a bit more column space than does actual talent and brains.

Typical ad hominem attack when confronted with damning evidence you'd rather avoid discussing.

Anonymous said...

mnuez said

his incoherent, chest-puffed ramblings would be in the lowest quartile of worthy comments in these here isteve threads.

The pot calls the kettle black.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the Mossad agents Taki says were after all the people who tried to expose Madoff are related to the rabbis Taki says made Murdoch attack Bill O'Reilly are related to (to be filled in the next time Taki talks about Jews)...

Its amazing what being a specialist in Bolivian marching powder can do. I should ask Taki for the name of a good vendor.

Anonymous said...

Excerpts from the National archives…
"Nixon then broaches a subject about which "we can't talk about it publicly," namely Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media…"That right?" says Graham, prompting Nixon to claim that Life magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and others, are "totally dominated by the Jews." He calls network TV anchors Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite "front men who may not be of that persuasion," but that their writers are "95 percent Jewish."

"And they're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff," Graham adds. end quote

Did Nixon and Graham fabricate anything?

A "canard" is a false, especially malicious, report that has been fabricated with the intention of doing harm...

From "The Rest Of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews" by Stephen Birmingham

"Though the boardrooms of the three major networks had become largely populated by descendants of Russian Jews, the out-front faces that the public saw would be the Christian one of Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Harry Reasoner, and Howard K. Smith. As a result, the general public would not think of television as a Jewish enterprise-simply as a rich one."

Sisu

Anonymous said...

MASH was such a lod of crap.

Anonymous said...

"his incoherent, chest-puffed ramblings would be in the lowest quartile of worthy comments in these here isteve threads."

The reason Taki is cool is because he has inside info. Not because he has inordinate insight or great writing. That's what Steve is for. That ridiculous scene in Gstaad was too funny for words.

Anonymous said...

Anon,

The phrase "The Harvard Mafia" doesn't refer to Harvard alumni as a whole, but specifically those alumni that work in Hollywood. The percentage of that group that is Jewish is probably much higher than 25%

- Fred

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?