"VANITY FAIR": MAYBE JEWS DO CONTROL THE WORLD

Jewish power dominates at 'Vanity Fair' (JPost)
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, at least by one count, 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."

Printed over 15 pages before an interview with Nicole Kidman, the rankings - described on the magazine's cover as the membership of "The New Establishment" - are less than scientific, accompanied by a paragraph-long introduction that neither defines power nor describes the methodology behind the list.

Topping the rankings for the second year in a row is gentile media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who's followed in second place by Steve Jobs, the non-Jewish co-founder of Apple and Pixar.

Highest among the Jewish entries are Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-listed at #3, down one from 2006. The article reported that the 34-year-old Brin and his wife "wore swimsuits as they stood under the huppa." (Page, whose mother is Jewish, was described in the spring 2006 edition of B'nai B'rith Magazine as "raised more in the mold of his father... whose religion was technology.")