Oops. Biden Apologizes for ‘Shylock’ Comment

[cali]

37. I don't know that he had any experience with bankers.

but that's so far off the mark; entirely irrelevant. the point is that for a very long time, calling Jewish bankers shylocks, has been an anti-semitic slur, part of the web of economic anti-semitism.

here, more "educmacation", just for you- because you clearly need all you can get:

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The character Shylock in William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice is a Jewish moneylender who is portrayed in unscrupulous and avaricious. Derek Penslar asserts that Shylock is a metaphor for the Jewish "otherness" and that he represents the "inseparability of Jewish religious, social, and economic distinctiveness".[141] Gerald Krefetz calls Shylock a "classic image" which has haunted Jews ever since it first appeared, since it made Jews a scapegoat.[139]

Historian Richard Hofstadter writes that Shylock was used as the basis for "crankery" by Charles Coughlin and Ezra Pound.[142]

John Gross states that Shylock represented "the sinister international financier" on both sides of the Atlantic.[143]

Abraham Foxman contends that Shylock may have contributed to antisemitism in Japan, becauseThe Merchant of Venice is translated into Japanese more than any other play of Shakespeare.[144]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_antisemitism#Shylock