The Woman Who Cried Wolf

Last week I was doing an interview with Tim Malloy of WPTV, the NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach. We were standing outside the Classic Bookshop in Palm Beach which has a big display of my new book, Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach, in the window. I was telling Malloy of the various problems I have been having.

Just before my book was published last month, the Palm Beach police chief told me that my life might be in danger and I should hire security for my public events. A couple weeks later, I was driving with a team from France's Channel Two when our car was run off the road outside the Palm Beach Country Club by a mysterious SUV. The Palm Beach Daily News refused even to mention the book for months even though it's the fastest selling book here in decades. New York's Harmonie Club asked me to give a talk in which I had to promise not to mention Bernie Madoff and then canceled because Madness Under the Royal Palms mentions a board member unfavorably.

When you write a controversial book that exposes an island of privilege as it has never been exposed before, you can't expect a love fest. But this had gone far beyond that. As I proceeded to list the litany of problems to the correspondent, a passerby started screaming at me. "That was a disgusting article you wrote in Boston Magazine and I'm not even Jewish," he said as he continued down the sidewalk, mentioning my sad, true story about how Madoff deceived the Boston Jewish elite.

"Why don't you come and say what was wrong?" I responded giving him the opportunity to detail the accusation.

"It was a racist and disgusting article," he said as he walked away.

It's a coward's ploy to spit out epithets and to refuse to present one's case in any detail. The accusation is absurd, but you're welcome to read the article in the February issue and make your own judgment.

And you're also welcome to view the video that led the local NBC news last week and has been shown on MSNBC.

I think of myself as a lucky guy, and I'm not worried about my life. My book is on the New York Times extended bestseller list for the second week. The reviews have been fine. My friends, about half of whom are Jewish, are totally behind me and are appalled at these ridiculous charges. And I've gotten all kinds of supportive emails from people I don't even know. But this man in the Palm Beach street is not the only one on the island making charges.

A leading socialite and a member of the Palm Beach Country Club has been calling people saying that my writing in Boston Magazine is anti-Semitic. Last year she and her friend had me give a talk at the club. I was astounded that she would make such a charge. I called her and asked her what I had done that was anti-Semitic. She said it was neither my book nor the article but the title of the article.("Madoff-ed! Boston's Jewish Elite and the Making of a Ponzi King"). I told her that I hadn't even seen the title until I received a copy of the magazine, but in any case there was nothing even vaguely offensive in those words. What she clearly did not like was the attention paid to an unhappy part of Jewish life.

"You can't use the term 'anti-Semitic' because you may not like something a person does or says or writes," I told her. "It's like the story of the boy who cried wolf. One day there will be a wolf and no one will come to your rescue."

I've given lots of thought to this and why so many members of the Palm Beach Country Club are upset at my book. When I gave my luncheon talk at the club last year, there was dead silence when I told stories that had made everyone else who ever heard them laugh. These ladies have struggled to arrive at their positions of economic and social superiority and they did not want to hear me mocking the world of Palm Beach society that they consider the ultimate symbol of success. And now they have to face the terrible reality that Bernie Madoff was an esteemed member of the club and cheated about half of them.

In my speech last year, I did not talk about matters in the book that involve some of the ladies in the room. In Madness, I write with a certain irony about the sense of moral superiority that is so prevalent in the club both toward Jews who are not members and gentiles. And then I detail a couple of adulterous trysts both of which ended in tragedy, the drowning of an illegitimate child, and the death of a member of a heart attack in the arms of his lover. That I would chronicle these misadventures has infuriated some of the members and led them to try to have one of my speeches canceled. They prefer to be celebrated for their generous charitable gifts and pictured in the Palm Beach Daily News in their designer gowns and jewels at charity balls.

There is a problem here that goes far beyond my immediate difficulty. The Madoff scandal and the profound economic recession are fertile grounds for a resurgent anti-Semitism. I understand the apprehension of Jewish Americans. Now is a time to be vigilant. It is also a time to be careful that those who speak or write in an honest manner about difficult matters involving Americans who happen to be Jewish do not risk being pilloried by a few unhappy, disgruntled individuals who speak only for themselves.

Comments

[Rachel144]

Hmmm, think about this.... If a Christian person is involved in a scandal or a member of an elite club, would authors or reporters make a point of pointing out they are Christian? I think this is what is making people uncomfortable. A crook who is Christian is just a crook. A crook who is Jewish is a Jewish crook.

By Learner saying "In Madness, I write with a certain irony about the sense of moral superiority that is so prevalent in the club both toward Jews who are not members and gentiles," he is holding Jews to a different standard then others. If he was talking about a Christian person who has a sense of moral superiority, wouldn't we expect them to look down on everyone else? Why would a Jewish person who thinks they are superior NOT look down on everyone else too? That's the nature of thinking you are morally superior!

I think this is why Learner is leaving people with a bad taste in their mouth.

[Rule Of Law]

Like any other club, as Leamer points out, being Jewish gives you the often false impression that a fellow club member won't rob you, and that made these people even easier for Madoff to fleece.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Re "and the death of a member of a heart attack in the arms of his lover."

Co-ed?

[Rule Of Law]

They could have been Masons or Rotarians just as easily, and lord knows--pun intended, that the religious right will steal from each other just as quick

[brocko]

Henrietta Hughes, the woman in Ft. Meyers FL who asked Obama for housing assistance just sold $40,000 worth of property.

[OhioObamaVoter]

What? Would like to hear more.

[got2Bkidding]

How much do you want to bet, that there will be no more info forthcoming from brocko?

[ched]

To Madoff, add the fact that Jews are, in fact, overrepresented as a percentage of population in banking and finance (as well as the arts and professions, but nevermind that), and Israel's recent massacre in Gaza, and one can only conclude that these are, indeed, perilous times to be Jewish.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Methinks your sarcasm-alert light ain't workin.

[CosmicChaos]

Anti-Semitism has been growing larger in recent years. Sacremento, CA has had a ton of Synagouges bombed. My Synagouge in Michigan has had protesters standing in front of it every Saturday for 5 years yelling hate speech.

That said, in reading the article I just got the feeling that obscene wealth in general leads people to behaving badly towards each other. The misbehavior of lording it over people happens in every social class, it is just more apparent in the filthy rich where an extra $50 million in assests is more noticeable than $50,000 more in assests.

Few if anyone deserved losing all that money with Madoff. I just hope that criminal and his enablers (including the SEC) are punished with long jail sentences.

[Rule Of Law]

If stealing from other Jews makes you an anti-semite, then Madoff is one of the biggest anti-semites of all. This probably has less to do with religion than it does members of the club not wanting anyone hollering that the king has no clothes.

[cylindar]

Madoff was Madoff, his ethnicity is of no consequence. There are crooks of every stripe under the sun. I think these people are mad because their sense of superiority has been challenged by an event and a person who engaged in the same type of thinking and attitude. Money is as money does. It can be very strange indeed. Of course being poor can make you goofy also. What's for lunch?

[maxfax]

Do you sincerely believe that anti-semitism will increase either because of Madoff or the economic crisis?

When money is involved, in my experience, that's all anyone is thinking about, how much is left. People are only concerned with the green.

[FalconerHK]

The Jews were an easy target for Hitler in a depressed, humiliated, post-hyper inflation, post-World War One Germany.

There were rumors of a Judeo-Bolshest communist conspiracy (Hitler viewed Jews as the "biological root" of Bolshevism, xenophobia (Jews were seen as "taking German jobs"), a long history of suspicion of Jews, if not outright anti-semitism, a belief that "Jewish bankers" were behind the Treaty of Versailles, and perhaps most significantly, the widely-held belief that Jewish financiers like the Rothschilds and others had plunged the world into war for the sake of profit.

What was true then is true now: people are angry and see high-profile bankers feeding at the trough if not outright stealing. Some of them have Jewish names (including Madoff, the current topic of conversation). When you have Dobbs and others blaming "the Mexicans" for job losses, etc., it isn't hard to see how this kind of rage can develop into cancerous, vile movements.

The author of this article is correct; we need to be vigilant and not let an entire class, religion or race of people get thrown under the bus for what is most definitely a situation created by people of all backgrounds over decades.

[Doug Kings]

A survey in Europe this month showed 31% blamed Jews for the current financial crisis.

[zanzig]

History shows that it is exactly when money (or the lack thereof) is concerned that people start blaming Jewish financiers for their ills, as Shylock could have confirmed. Wealthy Jewish families involved in banking faced considerable anger in Germany prior to the rise of Nazism. Even before then, during the Napoleonic Wars, when the Rothschilds first came to prominence in Europe, anti-semitic accusations were made against them. The 19th Century in England saw the rise of several Jewish families involved in banking and finance, including the Rothschilds and my personal belief has always been that this was a contributing factor to the delays (relatively speaking) in any rescue of Jews during WWII.