For as long as I’ve been alive, the image of the ruling class has been the WASP. The caricature was of a horse faced, toothy guy named “Prescott” that liked to wear a tennis sweater draped over his shoulders and used the word “swell” a lot. Alternatively, it was the old guy sitting in a leather chair at his club, reading the Financial Times while smoking a pipe and drinking brandy with the other aristocrats. The point of these caricatures was to highlight the ethnic and cultural divide between the people in charge and the rest of us, not just the financial differences.

Like all stereotypes, the origins of this are rooted in fact. For a long time, the ruling elite of America was very WASPy and somewhat inbred. A relatively small number of ruling clans out of New England ran government, finance, big business and foreign affairs. The Brahmins were folks who traced their roots to the founding, often claiming to have had ancestors on the Mayflower. They went to the best schools, knew the best people and accepted their duty as the caretakers of the nation. They were of course, almost always Episcopalian.

Even back when I was a little kid, this was no longer reality in America. It remained a popular stereotype because it is comforting to people. The people in charge are not there because they are smarter or better. They were born into it or they had connections that allowed them to gain access to the halls of power. The Irish and Italians still carry on like the world is run by guys named Pemberton and Forbes. Jews, of course, love this motif and are endlessly reminding us that they were kept out of golf courses by the WASP elite.

Despite the mythologizing, the fact is we no longer have a WASP ruling class. The real ethnic nature of the ruling class in America is Jewish. As I pointed out in my Mokita post, Jews are smart and we live in an age when being smart counts for everything. The stereotype of the Jewish banker or Jewish lawyer is obviously true. The titans of global finance are all Jewish guys. The US Supreme Court is 30% Jewish and Obama has a Jewish guy warming in the bullpen to replace Scalia.

The argument has always been that Jews dominated banking because of historic discrimination and that’s not entirely false. Catholic prohibitions against usury allowed Jews to dominate the lending business, but that does not explain why Hollywood has always been dominated by Jews. It does no explain why 30% of the Fortune 1000 are people of Jewish descent. Jews are one percent of the population, but represent 47% of major American sports team owners.

Ownership of sports teams is a great metric because it requires more than just money to own a team. You have to have connections in finance, politics and, of course, the sport. These sports leagues are clubs and they don’t just let anyone join. These are clubs for members of the American elite to show they are at the top. It’s the ultimate trophy for the most connected. The fact that close to half the pe

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