October 30, 2009 | 8:43 pm

SEC releases Madoff investigations

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Trick or treat?

The Securities and Exchange Commission today released a truckload of files from its investigations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities Inc. You remember the guy. From The New York Times:

The 6,157 pages of exhibits include a full account of a June 17 interview with Mr. Madoff, who confessed in March to running the largest Ponzi scheme in history, a fraud whose victims number in the thousands and whose cash losses are now put at more than $21 billion.

In short excerpts from that interview, included in the full 477-page report made public last month, Mr. Madoff expressed amazement that regulators failed so many times to detect his fraud, given the numerous credible tips that came into the agency over a 16-year period.

The exhibits provide additional details about Mr. Madoff’s comments, including his observation that the agency’s investigators seemed to find it “inconceivable” that he was operating a massive fraud.

Indeed, he said he got the impression through all the examinations and investigations over the years that “it never entered the S.E.C.’s mind that it was a Ponzi scheme,” according to a 12-page summary of the interview.

Mr. Madoff said that if the S.E.C. had asked for trading records or talked to the supposed counter-parties in his fake transactions, they would have found the fraud. “If you’re looking for a Ponzi scheme, it’s the first thing you do,” he said.

Because of the risk of being caught, Mr. Madoff said, he was “worried every time” examiners from the agency showed up. “It was a nightmare for me,” he said. adding “I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago.”

Read the rest here.

October 29, 2009 | 12:05 pm

Times a-changin’ at Beliefnet

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Steven Waldman, the founding editor in chief of Beliefnet who saved the religious news site from bankruptcy, is leaving for the FCC:

I’m going to become “Senior Advisor to the Chairman” at the FCC, helping (in the words of the press release) “to assess the state of media in these challenging economic times and make policy recommendations designed to ensure a vibrant media landscape.

In a way, it feels a bit like 1999 for me. I started Beliefnet because I thought a particular group—people of faith—weren’t getting the information they needed. Now, there may be a more systemic crisis in journalism and I’m honored to be able to help address that.

One last factor: I know Julius Genachowski, the new chairman of the FCC, quite well. He’s as talented, honest and decent a person as you’ll find in public service.

I won’t be able to resist reminiscing in this space before I leave—about the extraordinary people I’ve worked with, the caring people I’ve met in the faith and spirituality community, and about how privileged I feel to have been given this gift for the past 10+ years.

This is big news, even if you haven’t seen any mention of it.

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October 28, 2009 | 12:24 pm

Having shiks-appeal in Hollywood

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Here's Scarlett

Everybody knows Cheryl Hines had the right amount of shiks-appeal for Larry David—it’s a central point of conflict on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.“and let’s not forget that Brett Ratner likes a WASPy-looking lady.

But in Tablet Liel Leibovitz writes that Hollywood men have long cast their eyes only upon the blond-haired, blue-eyed leading ladies:

Since the dawn of American entertainment, Jewish women were largely rendered invisible, absent everywhere from burlesque to Hollywood to prime-time television. Instead, they watched as their sons and brothers and husbands became successful producers, directors, and impresarios, powerful men who then chose to populate their works with a parade of sexy, sultry shiksas who looked nothing like their female kin.

Perhaps the first exponents of this tradition were the Minsky Brothers, the influential proprietors of a popular New York City burlesque empire in the first decades of the last century. “If you were a burlesque stripper, you had to be a blonde or a redhead, never a brunette,” Rachel Shteir, author of Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show told me. The brothers, she added, had a readymade explanation for their proclivities: Jewish women, they argued, were simply too pure to lust after. “They would say, ‘we’re not stealing your mothers and sisters and aunts and putting them on stage and taking away their honor,’” Shteir said. “They would say that they were only putting the shiksas on stage. As heinous as it is, that was their reasoning.”

(skip)

A few decades later, as the zeitgeist shifted and Jewish producers, directors, and writers found themselves increasingly comfortable with allowing Jewish characters into the spotlight—Allen himself being perhaps the most obvious example—that light shone exclusively for Jewish men. They, usually jittery and neurotic and smart, were allowed to roam the savannas of the movie screen, usually in search of the same idyll the Minskys knew so well, the blonde American vixen.

You can read the rest of the essay here or a summary of it from Patrick Goldstein’s The Big Picture. In rattling off the shiksas that have dominated Woody Allen’s films, Goldstein first made the mistake of calling Scarlett Johansson a WASP and then corrected himself by descrining her as a “Jewess,” which, though accurate, can have an offensive connotation.

Thanks for the tip, Owen. And for everyone’s viewing enjoyment, a Yiddish-dubbed version of the shiks-appeal episode of “Seinfeld” is embedded after the jump:

Read more of this post

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October 27, 2009 | 5:34 pm

Levi is back to dish dirt on Palin

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Don’t let the photo fool you: I’m no Sarah Palin fan. (Duh.) But is there any question that Levi Johnston—remember, Palin’s grandbaby daddy—is looking out for No. 1?

He’s been exploiting the media circuit for a few months, and now he looks to be stepping up his d-list game. First stop, CBS’ “The Early Show.” Here’s an excerpt of Johnston’s interview with Maggie Rodriguez, courtesy of The Washington Post:

“Sounds like you really resent her now,” she asks Levi during the interview, which was taped in advance.

“Well now I’ve heard all the things she’s said. You know, the Sarah Palin I knew before, it was—it was her putting on a front, it was her being fake to me and now that everything’s slowly coming out and I’m hearing more things, you know, and things she’s said and done, you know, I see the real Palin,” Levi responds, before stepping through the looking glass:

Maggie: Are you hurt by all this?

Levi: I was yeah, and now its just kind of like, alright, well now its my turn.

Maggie: What do you mean by that?

Levi: Well its like Vanity Fair. I’m gonna go out, I told a little bit of stuff and you know, I’m just not going to take it anymore.

Maggie: But you really sound like somebody whose dead set on hurting these people the way they hurt you.

Levi: No, I’m not really in it to hurt them though.

Maggie: That’s what it sounds like…somebody whose bent on revenge and getting even, ‘now it’s my turn’.

Levi: Well that’s part of it, I guess, but at the same time, you know, if she’s going to go out there and say things to me, about me, I’m going to leak some things on her. I mean that’s just how it is.

What are the odds he’s shopping a book and recording a rap album?

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October 27, 2009 | 11:00 am

I get anti-Semitic email: the Westboro Baptist files

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

If you’re familiar with anything about Westboro Baptist Church, it’s likely with something they hate: Jews, gays, soldiers.

An odd group of Kansas “Baptists” who make fundamentalists seem like a bunch of liberals, Westboro operates the Websites JewsKilledJesus.com, GodHatesTheWorld.com and BeastObama.com. They’re best known, though, for GodHatesFags.com

Honestly, I used to think these guys were a creation of the folks at the Onion. They are that out there.

I don’t know how I got on their mailing list, but I get a few emails a week informing me that Westboro is planning to protest “lying,” “hateful,” “covenant breaking,” “faithless” Jews. The email I received Saturday, after Shabbat ended, called out the troops to protest an Overland Park, Kan., synagogue Wednesday. Actually, maybe they wouldn’t call it a protest but a mission. A mission to find “good figs among the filthy, Christ-reject Jews.”

The attached flier continued:

“You have filled modern Jewry with abominations, forsaken God & broken His covenant; He promised you curses for that! You thought the curses of the past
year were bad (financial collapse, Madoff swindle, war in Gaza, Holocaust Museum shooting, Beast Obama in the White House, & more), but you haven’t seen anything yet!”

Wow, somebody really needs to media-train these folks.

Fortunately, the Westboro weirdos don’t get much media attention, at least not in general publication newspapers. Unfortunately, I don’t think that if we all ignore them they’ll just go away.

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October 26, 2009 | 10:12 pm

Scientology spokesman walks out on ‘Nightline’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I missed the “Nightline” special last week on Scientology. But the Friendly Atheist didn’t, and he points us to the 3:40 mark of this clip, in which a Scientology spokesman gets really upset at Martin Bashir for asking about Xenu and subsequently walks out of the interview. It appears the spokesman, Tommy Davis, is getting tired of this question.

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October 26, 2009 | 12:10 pm

Spike Lee on Tyler Perry

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Tyler Perry, whose TV shows and films are full of references to God, faith and family, was profiled on “60 Minutes” last night. Above is an excerpt from the interview. Check out the choice words Spike Lee has for Perry’s caricatures, which remind Lee of “coonery and buffoonery.”

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October 26, 2009 | 12:09 pm

Maccabi has $22,000 stolen from locker room at Staples Center

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Maccabi Tel Aviv’s coach refusing to leave Madison Square Garden after getting tossed from the team’s game against the Knicks might not have been the lowlight of their U.S. trip. After playing the Knicks, Maccabi flew west to face off against the Clippers (also an NBA team).

Somebody entered a locker room at Staples Center and stole more than $22,000 in cash and property from members of an Israeli basketball team that played the Los Angeles Clippers in an exhibition game this week, police said Friday.

“An unknown suspect was able to gain entry to the locker room of the Israeli team,” said Lt. Albert Gavin of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Station. “It was during halftime that they noticed the property missing. And then they lost the game.”

The Clippers defeated Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, 108-96, Tuesday. Maccabi, which has won 47 Israeli national championships, also lost to the New York Knicks, 106-91, Sunday at Madison Square Garden.

The LAPD didn’t learn of the theft until after the game was over, Gavin said.

“The suspect took in excess of $15,000 in U.S. currency and in excess of $7,000 worth of watches and other jewelry,” Gavin said

That’s from a dispatch my old colleague from the San Bernardino Sun, Guy McCarthy, wrote for the City News Service wire. He later notes that Maccabi was playing the Clippers to raise money for Migdal Ohr, the world’s largest orphanage.

See what trying to do a little good will get you?

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October 25, 2009 | 5:53 pm

Madoff associate found dead

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Picowers

Jeffrey Picower’s foundation, a major Jewish philanthropy, was one of the first to fold after Bernard Madoff was arrested last December. A former lawyer who extracted billions from the Madoff pyramid scheme, Picower had been under criminal investigation. Sunday, he was found dead at the bottom of his pool:

In a statement, the Palm Beach Police Department said Picower was found at the bottom of his Palm Beach home’s pool Sunday afternoon by his wife and could not be revived by Palm Beach fire rescue workers. Picower was transported to Good Samaritan Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at about 1:30 p.m.

The police department said it is conducting an investigation into Mr. Picower’s death, as is standard operating procedure in any drowning. The residence has been secured and detectives remain on the scene at this time.

An operator at Good Samaritan said the hospital wouldn’t be making any statements.

Read the rest here.

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October 25, 2009 | 5:38 pm

Piece be with you: Pastor quits pulpit for gun advocacy

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Do you remember Ken Pagano, the Kentucky pastor who invited members of his church to pack heat when packing the pews? Well, he’s found a new calling:

Pastor Ken Pagano ended his 30-year career last month when he resigned from the New Bethel Church in Louisville, Ky., saying that he wants to focus on church security and Second Amendment rights—a crusade he insists is better fought outside the ministry.

“Thirty years was a good, long run, but it’s time for a change,” Pagano told the Washington Times. “If I can write my own ticket, I want to get involved more in Second Amendment issues as they affect the church, and I can do more from outside the pulpit than from behind it,” Pagano told the paper.

Church security is certainly an issue, but is this the Lord’s work.

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October 25, 2009 | 4:29 am

Church custodian arrested in priest’s slaying

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Rev. Ed Hinds was found dead Friday in rectory kitchen of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Chatham, N.J. Saturday authorities arrested and charged the church janitor, Jose Feliciano, 64, with stabbing the priest 32 times. From the AP:

The announcement of Feliciano’s arrest was met with shock and tears at Saturday evening Mass, a double blow to the church community where the priest had served for six years and the janitor had worked for 17.

The pair got into an argument on Thursday evening, and it was during the altercation that Feliciano grabbed a knife and stabbed the 61-year-old Hinds multiple times, Bianchi said.

Sounds like Feliciano’s job was in jeopardy. Read the rest here.

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October 23, 2009 | 10:44 am

The Vatican’s ‘bold bid’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Why is it that every story concerning the Catholic Church has to deal with pedophilia, priesthood celibacy or both?

The latest example follows the Vatican’s announcement this week to invite unhappy Anglicans churches to join the Catholic fold. What would make this move rather unusual, and the source of all the attention and speculation, is that Pope Benedict XVI’s people said those Anglican churches (we call them Episcopal churches in the United States) could keep their current priests—even if they were married. From NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

We’re going to ask, next, about the implications of a big decision by the Catholic Church. The Vatican is welcoming Anglicans to return to Catholicism. The public invitation comes as the Anglican Church is divided over questions like the role of gays. If some Anglican congregations become Catholic now, they could bring their Anglican priests along. And the priests could become Catholic - even if they’re married. That calls attention to the Vatican’s longtime rule that priests must be celibate.

The interview with Allen did, not surprisingly, a great job of putting this move by the Vatican in perspective. Certainly, it is significant. But the Wall Street Journal recognized that it likely doesn’t signify the beginning of the end for celibacy as a priestly requirement.

Why? Well, in reality, the Catholic Church has had married priests for centuries—in its Eastern Rite churches—and has had them for a few decades in the United States.

In fact, I’ve written twice about married Episcopal priests converting and going to work for a Catholic church. Most recently, it was the Rev. Bill Lowe in Camarillo:

When Bill Lowe preaches his first sermon as a Catholic priest in May, he will be the only clergyman in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with his wife, children and grandchildren listening from the pews.

Lowe, 68, is about to become the first married priest in the history of the country’s largest Roman Catholic diocese.

“People are ready for this. They are ready for some married clergy,” said Lowe, who retired in 2001 after 29 years as an Episcopal priest and unexpectedly converted to Catholicism soon after.

Lowe does not represent a sea change for the centuries-old requirement that priests remain celibate. Instead, he is the benefactor of an obscure order that Pope John Paul II issued in 1980.

That Pastoral Provision has allowed about 80 married men, all former Episcopal priests, to continue utilizing their gift for pastoral ministry after Catholic conversion. (Married former Lutheran pastors also have been permitted through a different provision.)

“We see it as a gift, his coming to the Catholic Church,” said Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who leads the Santa Barbara Pastoral Region, which includes Ventura County. “He has a lot of experience. He’s ministered to a lot of people for a long time, and he’s bringing all of that to the Catholic Church.”

Read the rest of that here.

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