The Daphne Merkin-Bernie Madoff connection, exposed
Daphne Merkin's brother is J. Ezra Merkin, the financier and Jewish philanthropist who put more than $2 billion of clients’ money into Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, (and collected $470 million in fees for it, according to New York’s attorney general). So when Merkin glossed over this fact in a recent column in the Times, Times public editor Clark Hoyt cried foul:
In the fifth paragraph, Merkin noted parenthetically, “I did not know Mr. Madoff nor did I invest with his firm, but have a sibling who did business with him.” True as far as it goes, but about as forthcoming as saying that Milton Eisenhower had a sibling in the United States Army in World War II. Merkin’s unnamed sibling, her oldest brother, is J. Ezra Merkin, a prominent financier and philanthropist who fed more than $2 billion of clients’ money into Madoff’s scheme, collecting more than $470 million in fees, according to New York’s attorney general,who accused him of civil fraud and sued him last Monday.
Daphne Merkin’s mini-acknowledgment, worked out with her editors at The Times, raised the old question of how much disclosure a newspaper owes its readers so that they can assess a writer’s connections and motives. In this case, the answer seems obvious to me: a lot more.
Full column here.
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Re: “The Nepotism of the Times”
once upon a time on a unique affluent island surrounded by a mote of common islands, lived the observant jewish merkin dynasty. loved by all for their kindess and generosity, they ruled the island for more than a generation. one of the daughters, princess daphne, loved to write about herself and spent hours and hours writing in her journal. one day, the “town crier” offered her the privilege to publicly air her familial grievances.
unwittingly, she appeared to be a caricature of ali macgraw in “goodbye, columbus” by Philip Roth, lacking much confidence and self-esteem. her unresolved royal family issues of a detached father, and a nagging mother, were a work in progress. whatever her shrink in the king’s court brought to the surface, she transferred to pen and paper, airing her dirty laundry for all to know...not unlike woody allen in “manhattan”.
how ever “intolerable” the emperor and emperess were, she had been royally endowed with a substantial inheritance from them to indulge her favorite subject: her self-absorbed and chronic misery, spending endless amounts of money and time over-analyzing her self-perpetuating interpersonal “problems”. only a spoiled princess like herself could sense the pea on the bottom mattress.
“Daphne Merkin’s mini-acknowledgment, worked out with her editors at The Times, raised the old question of how much disclosure a newspaper owes its readers so that they can assess a writer’s connections and motives.”
the inference is that prince ezra must actually be an impersonal “sibling” in her eyes. there is no love lost there. her ambivalence in choosing to stoically name him, rather than being prodded to compromise with an editor, to simply “allude” to him, is obvious: SHE HAS A TERRIBLE RELATIONSHIP WITH HER ROYAL SIBLING, EZRA! if she didn’t, she would have affectionately referred to him as her brilliant and philanthropic “prince of a brother”, trusting his managerial acumen and financial guidance. She would have also mentioned both she and HE were “casualties” of the “royal treasurer”, madoff. but alas, she was never part of her brother’s inner circle of royalty-- those who had the “honour and privilege” of bequeathing their inheritances to the man with the “midas touch”.
actually, princess daphne should not be humiliated or embarrassed by her sibling. ezra provided her with a little bit of shalom…
daphne merkin is a negative, self-centered, sad-sack. with all of her fortune, it is long past the time she should have her act together! the Times might make more needed money for their “town crier” with a positive opinion writer in these “worst of Times”.
it appears that the entire family of the “bibical” emperor, hermann merkin needs some new clothes...for ezra, prison stripes for a very long time would be quite satisfactory.
So, it appears that David Shipley, the editor of the Op-Ed page, says that writers do not send in oped pieces cold calling, and if they do those oped pieces are almost never accepted and returned unread, but VIP writers are commissioned to write the opeds after the Times asks them to....... and they are paid for their work too. From US$500 to US$1000 or more, depending on their VIPness......
Mary Duenwald, one of Shipley’s two deputies, says that ideas come out of meetings in which editors discuss possible columns to commission from VIPS and people in the news with recognizable names, never nobodies. Topics and names are suggested. 99 percent of all Times opeds happen this way....
So the Times opeds are hardly democratically selected pieces. Par for the course? Fore!
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Alan Jay Weisbard
04/17/09 09:57 PM
The patent inadequacy of the disclosure amazed me when I first read the piece. I still can’t get my head around the notion that The Times editor knew the reality and signed off on the disclosure. Unless--of course--this is the same op-ed editor who signed up William Kristol. --The Wise Bard