Is It True What They Say About Tim Geithner?

The subject of this article fell right into my lap.

Like just about everybody else in the country over the last forty-eight hours, I googled Tim Geithner.

It turned out to be a rather revelatory search – and that was before the results even displayed.

I didn’t get past the “e” in his last name before Google automatically suggested popular Tim Geithner queries.

The second query on that list? “Tim Geithner Jewish.”

Wait … he’s not, it turns out – although whether that’s to the relief or the dismay of web surfers remains unclear.

The point is that people aren’t googling “Tim Geithner bailout” or “Tim Geithner AIG” or even “Tim Geithner tax problem.”

What people are looking for, it would seem, is not explanation or information, but a confirmation of something that itself explains and informs.

Like a lot of things these days, it’s probably Bernie Madoff’s fault.

The world’s most high-profile swindler also happens to be Jewish – and now the world’s most high-profile Jew.

And on top of that, his passel of victims happens to be, more often than not, Jewish investors.

Alongside Madoff are Rahm Emanuel (Jewish), Larry Summers (Jewish), Alan Greenspan (Jewish), Ben Bernanke (Jewish), and Jim Cramer (Jewish). Back from oblivion has come Eliot Spitzer (Jewish) to chronicle the financial crisis and the brethren at the center of it.

And speaking of Cramer, Jon Stewart (Jewish) just last week skewered him for whatever his role in the recession might be.

Just for fun, I ran a search for Hank Paulson and Rod Blagojevich – and sure enough, googlers everywhere want to know if those two are Jewish, too.

Like Geithner, they’re not. And neither is Madonna, at least not actually.

But, for all the mess these souls make, they should at least get to be Honorary Jews.

Seriously, it’s kind of disappointing that there are some troublemakers – like Geithner – who aren’t Jewish.

Which is probably why there are so many Google searches about it.

After all, who do you think is responsible for all those queries?

Jews, naturally.

Half of the searchers – those for whom suspicions were confirmed by Google – end up writing articles about Madoff, anti-Semitism, Jewish overrepresentation, the Holocaust, or some permutation thereof. The other half don’t end up writing anything, because their bad boy troublemakers turned out not to be Jewish. Like Geithner.

It sucks when that happens. I should know because it happened to me tonight … and I just happened to happen upon the gentile fact of Geithner’s mess-making.

The upside – for googling Jews, at least – is that the granddaddy of mess-makers is turning out to be Barack Obama.

Sure he’s not exactly a member of the tribe, but that’s just for the time being. He is the Messiah, after all . . . Obamessiah.

That more than makes up for Geithner.

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