William Cash (journalist)

William Cash is a journalist for the Spectator.

Controversy

Cash wrote about the Jewish influence in Hollywood when he was The Daily Telegraph's Los Angeles stringer.^[1] The subtitle was "William Cash investigates the increasing success and influence of Hollywood's new Jewish establishment." He got a critical reaction. He wrote that the Jewish media elite was "culturally nihilist" and that Jewish media influence reflected a Jewish lack of concern for traditional cultural values.

Publication

Although the Telegraph thought it would be too risky of an issue to publish, Dominic Lawson thought Cash's idea was as old as Hollywood itself and that Lawson's being a Jew would mitigate adverse reactions to publication. Owner Conrad Black did not rebuke Lawson despite the fury that ensued. Max Hastings wrote with regard to Telegraph group owner Conrad Black, who also owned The Jerusalem Post at the time, "It was one of the few moments in my time with Conrad when I saw him look seriously rattled: 'You don't understand, Max. My entire interests in the United States and internationally could be seriously damaged by this'." ^[2] Black himself had and has a Jewish wife, Barbara Amiel.

Defense

• John Derbyshire, who says he has "complicated and sometimes self-contradictory feelings about Jews" wrote on National Review Online regarding the Jewish overreaction to the article that "It was a display of arrogance, cruelty, ignorance, stupidity, and sheer bad manners by rich and powerful people towards a harmless, helpless young writer, and the Jews who whipped up this preposterous storm should all be thoroughly ashamed of themselves."^[3]
• The psychologist Kevin B. MacDonald, writing in response to Derbyshire's critical review of his book The Culture of Critique, wrote of how "chilling" it was that "critics of Jews simply disappear from sight - their professional horizons limited if not entirely ended." MacDonald used Joseph Sobran and Cash as examples of such people "who have called attention to Jewish power and influence in certain areas. Jewish groups have made any critical discussion of Jewish issues off limits, and that's vitally important because, yes, Jews are a very powerful group."^[4]
• Kevin Myers wrote to the Sunday Telegraph that "we should really be able to discuss Jews and their Jewishness, their virtues or their vices, as one can any other identifiable group, without being called anti-Semitic. Frankness does not feed anti-Semitism; secrecy, however, does. The silence of sympathetic discretion can easily be misunderstood as a conspiracy. It is time to be frank about Jews." Myers complained that Jews described The Spectator as anti-Semitic.

Consequences

Cash apologized for the article and visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The Forward reported that he had trouble publishing his work and that Lawson could not publish an article on the birth of his daughter with down syndrome in The New Republic because of owner Martin Peretz's complaint about the article.

References

External links

• "Kings of the Deal"