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Michael Jackson biopic revives legend of Jewish music mogul who battled MTV’s ‘color barrier’
(JTA) — About halfway through “Michael,” the new blockbuster biopic of Michael Jackson, there is a scene in which Jackson (played by his nephew Jafaar) and his lawyer, John Branca (Miles Teller), are sitting with the president of his record label. It’s early in Jackson’s “Thriller” album cycle, as “Billie Jean” has been released as a single, and the “Thriller” video has been filmed, setting the scene sometime in 1983.
Seated in front of several gold records, CBS Records’ head honcho Walter Yetnikoff (played under heavy makeup by Mike Myers) congratulates Jackson on his breakout moment and asks what he can do for him. Jackson and Branca tell Yetnikoff they want just one thing: for Jackson to be featured on MTV, then a brand-new station broadcasting music videos.
Yetnikoff tells them that it’s “not possible” because MTV rarely plays Black artists. Jackson retorts that he is a “proud Black artist” who makes his music for everyone, and that he “won’t be shoved to the back of any bus by MTV or anyone.”
Yetnikoff says he has tried, and Jackson tells him, “Please try harder.” So Yetnikoff asks his secretary to get MTV founder and executive Bob Pittman on the phone.
The executive is then heard on the phone threatening, in colorfully profane terms, to pull all of CBS’s artists from the network unless Pittman agrees to run “Billie Jean” in the next 10 minutes and, subsequently, put the music video in heavy rotation.
In the next scene, it’s clear that the threat worked. Jackson would remain an MTV staple for many years after that.
So who was Walter Yetnikoff? And did things really go down the way “Michael” says they did?
Yetnikoff was one of the music industry’s most colorful figures. Born into a Jewish family in New York in 1933, Yetnikoff became president and CEO of CBS Records in 1975, after spending the first half of the 1970s running CBS’s international division.
Running CBS during a pivotal time for the music business, he shepherded artists such as Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Gloria Estefan, in addition to Jackson, with whom he began working at the start of his solo career in the late 1970s. Yetnikoff wasn’t known for having a great ear for music, but he excelled at the business side of the music industry and at advocating for his artists.
Yetnikoff was the subject of two well-known books: Frederic Dannen’s “Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music,” published in 1990, and his 2004 memoir, “Howling at the Moon: The True Story of the Mad Genius of the Music World,” written with David Ritz. Also, a 1980 movie called “One Trick Pony,” which starred Paul Simon, had actor Rip Torn playing a fictionalized version of Yetnikoff named “Walter Fox.”
The “Michael” version of Yetnicoff is heard calling the MTV executive “that schmuck” — a Yiddish term in keeping with what both books about Yetnikoff make clear: his Jewish identity was front and center.
“The heart of Yetnikoff’s persona was his Brooklyn Jewishness. An outsized number of label bosses were Jews from Brooklyn, but Walter wore his ethnicity like a gabardine,” Dannen wrote in “Hit Men.”
Later, Dannen wrote, “He would stay late into the night, banging away at the phone, screaming in Yiddish. He shattered glassware, spewed a mixture of Yiddish and barnyard epithets, and had people physically ejected from the building.”
A profile in New York magazine in 1990, after Yetnikoff had fallen out of favor in the music world and given up the hard drinking that had caused him problems at home and at work, cited an array of Jewish antecedents to paint his picture.
“To cut an appropriate figure in the loud-and-dirty rock world, the shy Brooklyn Jew fashioned an indelible caricature for himself — the Orchard Street discounter as music-biz superman, a little Mel Brooks mixed with a lot of Jackie Mason, and dashes of Meir Kahane and Captain Lou Albano,” said the profile, by Eric Pooley. “He could be a mensch — warm, caring, generous — but he could also be a monster.”
So, did Yetnikoff really bring this famous rage to breaking the race barrier at MTV? And did it happen the way the movie “Michael” depicts?
By Yetnikoff’s own account, the answer is yes.
In “Howling at the Moon,” he wrote that “I screamed bloody murder when MTV refused to air [Michael Jackson’s] videos. They argued that their format, white rock, excluded Michael’s music. I argued they were racist assholes — and I’d trumpet it to the world if they didn’t relent.”
He goes on to say that, “with added pressure from Quincy Jones, they caved in, and in doing so, the MTV color line came crashing down.” (While Jones, the famed producer, appears elsewhere in “Michael,” he’s not part of the scene in which Yetnikoff calls MTV.)
Elsewhere in the book, Yetnikoff quotes Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was trying to get him to write his book with her at Doubleday, as calling him “the guy who got MTV to break the color barrier and play videos by Black artists.”
“Don’t really know if Walter was bragging or accurate,” David Ritz, his co-author on “Howling at the Moon,” told JTA. “I have a feeling he was being accurate, but I can’t prove it.”
The Jackson family and estate, it’s clear, give Yetnikoff credit for getting Jackson’s music on MTV.
“It is difficult today to imagine the level of cultural apartheid at the music channels in 1983 when MTV refused to play Michael Jackson’s short film ‘Billie Jean.’ But Yetnikoff was ferocious on Michael’s behalf and didn’t hesitate to play corporate chicken with the powerful music channel,” the Jackson estate said in a media statement after Yetnikoff’s death at age 87 in 2021.
“In short order, ‘Billie Jean’ was added to MTV in heavy rotation, opening the floodgates for Michael’s extraordinary success and also for a whole generation of black artists. Walter forced that to happen, and with that decision, the wall came tumbling down.”
The family and estate were heavily involved in the movie’s production. But there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for the exact circumstances of the scene in the movie — Yetnikoff making that phone call to MTV, with Jackson and Branca sitting in his office in New York.
Dannen told JTA in an interview that, as told in the movie, “the story sounds fishy to me,” although he did remember an incident — included in “Howling at the Moon” — when Yetnikoff “had to coerce Jann Wenner into putting Jackson on the cover” of Rolling Stone, another music industry institution that hadn’t always given fair weight to Black artists.
Some on the MTV side have disputed the account. “It never happened,” Les Garland, then an MTV executive, has said, according to The New York Times. “Folklore, man, folklore.”
Garland, in a 2017 letter to Digital Music News, stated that “No, MTV did NOT refuse to air black musicians.” And indeed, the network had played a handful of Black artists, though not prominently, in its early years. But Jackson was not the only artist to push for more racial inclusion on MTV.
“Superfreak” singer Rick James had been pushing for videos by Black artists, declaring in an early-’80s interview, “MTV don’t play Rick James, they don’t play Michael Jackson, they don’t play the Commodores, they don’t play Earth, Wind, and Fire, they don’t play Stevie Wonder,” going on to even use the same “back of the bus” metaphor that Jackson used in the movie.
David Bowie famously called out MTV, live on its air, over the same issue, also in 1983 — yielding an unconvincing response from Mark Goodman, a Jewish VJ, about how the network was trying to “do what we think not only New York or Los Angeles will appreciate, but also Poughkeepsie or some town in the Midwest that would be scared to death by Prince, which we’re playing, or a string of other Black faces and Black music. We have to play the music that we think an entire country is going to like.”
Bob Pittman, the then-MTV executive named in the movie as the recipient of Yetnikoff’s phone call, did not respond to an email from JTA requesting comment.
Arts industries are filled with historical examples of Jewish executives and creators going to bat for Black inclusion. George Gershwin, for example, insisted that the characters in “Porgy and Bess” be played by Black actors rather than white actors in blackface, while the Jewish sitcom creator Norman Lear was responsible for one of the first shows to focus on a Black family, “The Jeffersons.” Both men tied their advocacy to their experiences and values as Jews.
If Yetnikoff was motivated by his Jewish identity or a sense of justice to crusade for Jackson, the books about him, including his own, don’t say so. Dannen noted that Yetnikoff strongly pushed for all of his artists, including Jackson.
“At the Grammys, when Jackson won the Grammy for… Album of the Year, he took Yetnikoff up on stage with him, which was a big deal.” Dannen told JTA. Yetnikoff’s Guardian obituary noted that at those Grammys, Jackson had called the label boss “the best president of any record company.”
Jackson went on to work with other Jewish producers and executives throughout his career. He performed in Israel during the “Dangerous” tour in 1993, visiting an Israeli army base and even donning an IDF uniform.
In 1995, he drew allegations of antisemitism after releasing the song “They Don’t Care About Us,” which included the lyrics “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me.” Under fire, he denied any antisemitism and agreed to change the lyrics. He also partook in the early 2000s fad of non-Jewish celebrities embracing Kabbalah, even sporting a red string during his 2005 criminal trial.
Yetnikoff, too, had a spiritual side. In his biography, he frequently wrote about God, whom he referred to as “Heshie.” Why?
“I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe because Heshie is a familiar Jewish name that I could easily say,” he wrote. ‘‘When a rabbi pointed out to me that perhaps I wanted to say Hashem, I wondered whether my unconscious was playing games with me. Either way, I was trying to connect.’’
The biography was meant as a bit of a mea culpa after a career characterized by the kind of rage shown in that scene in “Michael.” And indeed, Yetnikoff made enemies along the way. But Dannen said the movie’s depiction, which shattered worldwide box-office records for a music biopic during its opening weekend, pointed to a quieter impact as well.
He noted that Jackson’s first solo album, “Off the Wall,” was nominated for an award in the R&B category, despite not really being an R&B record — a dynamic he said “shows sort of the residual racism of the music business” that assumed any Black artist was making traditionally Black music. But by the time “Thriller” came out, Jackson was being ranked in the pop category.
“I would like to believe that Yetnikoff exerted some influence in that area,” Dannon said. Indeed, in the “Michael” scene, Yetnikoff says that “Thriller” is dominating the charts — both R&B and pop.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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This David Schwimmer sweater ad is playing on ‘Friends’ nostalgia. So why are commenters talking about Israel?
David Schwimmer, who played Ross on Friends, is tapping into some late ’90s and early 2000s nostalgia as the star in an ad this week marketing his “dream sweater” for Quince, a clothing and home goods store.
In the ad, Schwimmer, who is Jewish, sketches the perfect red sweater in a notebook while he sits in Central Park and then begins to see it on everyone: a man riding an electric scooter, an angry taxi driver who almost runs into him, a beautiful woman riding in the back of the taxi, even a dog.
The gag is a reference to the Friends episode “The One with the Red Sweater,” where Ross’ on-again-off-again girlfriend Rachel is pregnant and has not told the father, whose identity is a mystery to the group; Joey, Monica and Phoebe know that the father left a red sweater at the apartment, so when Ross stops by and is relieved to find his sweater, they figure out he’s the dad-to-be.
“I’ve been looking for this for like a month,” he says, just after making a reference to the Yiddish-named snack, Mashuga Nuts.
The episode and the ad are apolitical. So why then are some people planning to cancel their Quince orders and boycott the company?
Schwimmer, many of the commenters on the ad are saying, is a Zionist.
“I don’t approve of you featuring a Zio in your ad,” one Instagram user commented. “Please do better.”
Schwimmer on Israel, antisemitism
Schwimmer has been outspoken about antisemitism since long before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Over the course of his career, he’s spoken at multiple Anti-Defamation League events and called for other people to stand against hate, routinely saying, “Silence is complicity.”
The actor appears to have never explicitly identified as a Zionist, and his statements have focused more on galvanizing support for Jews and Israelis — rather than on the Jewish state. But this is of little importance to his critics.
His relationship with the ADL, a staunchly pro-Israel organization, is damning enough for some. Schwimmer also starred in an Israeli commercial for Meitav, an investment management company. The move puts him at odds with the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which stands against any financial relationship with Israel or Israeli companies.
After Oct. 7, Schwimmer put out a statement calling the Hamas attack an “atrocity” and a “genocide,” adding that any attempt to justify what happened is “indefensible and antisemitic.” In the same statement, he also touched on Palestinian suffering:
“One can condemn Hamas and still object to the Israeli government’s policies regarding the occupation (as many Israelis do), still believe in the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and still mourn the loss of Palestinian civilians and the current destruction of their homes, schools, hospitals and places of worship.”
He’s also been vocal about sexual violence that occurred on Oct. 7, sharing the controversial New York Times piece headlined “Screams Without Words,” that investigated allegations of sexual assault committed by Hamas during the attack. Critics of the piece have questioned the validity of the reporting and argued that one of its reporters is biased toward Israel. The Times has stood by the piece.
Additionally, Schwimmer has criticized universities’ responses to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses that he said have veered into antisemitism.
Schwimmer spoke at a 2025 ADL summit about the backlash he’s gotten for his advocacy, noting that while he’s been “attacked” and “abandoned,” he’s found deep meaning in speaking out and has no plans to stop. He concluded his speech calling on fellow celebrities to do the same.
“You don’t have to say anything political,” Schwimmer said. “No one is asking you to solve the conflict in the Middle East. Just say that you stand with your Jewish friends, colleagues and neighbors against hatred and discrimination.”
The controversy isn’t bothering Quince.
“We’ve seen more than 8 million views across our social channels in the first 48 hours, alongside international press coverage and recognition from the marketing community for the creative,” said Dakota Isaacs, head of brand strategy and narrative, in an email to the Forward. “It’s been especially rewarding to see fans connect with the humor and nostalgia while discovering Quince.”
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Why I urged my parents to avoid the counterprotest in Philadelphia
Parents usually tell their children whether they can go out, but last week, on a phone call with my parents, our roles reversed, and I urged them not to join a Philadelphia food crawl with their friends. The event was organized in response to a bicycle rally calling for the boycott of six restaurants, all Jewish-owned, to “show these zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are.”
The counterprotest intended to show solidarity with these businesses by patronizing and protecting them on the day of the protest, given the hostile framing of the boycott against the restaurants and their Jewish owners. However, I was concerned that it would be co-opted by pro-Israel partisans, who not only would instrumentalize it for their own agenda — one which, in my view, is actively detrimental to the fight against antisemitism — but would also stoke chaos and violence. It’s a film that’s played out time and again, including when I was an undergraduate at UCLA: A call is put out that Jews are under attack, counterprotesters mobilize in response, and anger quickly morphs into belligerence, hostility, and violence.
Fortunately, it appears that no one was seriously hurt during Sunday’s bike rally and counterprotest. As I had feared, though, some demonstrators became aggressive as verbal confrontations and scuffles broke out across Rittenhouse Square. While it’s likely that some of the pro-Israel demonstrators were there for the sole purpose of displaying that they are not “Jews with trembling knees,” others ostensibly were there because, as the names of two of the organizations behind it would suggest, they want to StopAntisemitism and EndJewHatred.
If those were the goals, the demonstration was an unmitigated disaster. And much of the discourse surrounding the boycott laid the groundwork for failure.
To many Jews, it may seem self-evident that the boycott was illegitimate and antisemitic. For the protesters, though, there seems to be a genuine inability to understand how it could be. They also seem unable or unwilling to condemn antisemitism.
Anger at the protesters is understandable, but if the goal is to stop antisemitism and end Jew hatred, it is important to address the root of the problem, which starts with understanding why the protesters might have such a profound misunderstanding of antisemitism.
For several decades, following the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Cold War period, pro-Israelism has been a core, essential feature of hegemonic anti-antisemitism advocacy. Groups like the ADL have made the phenomenon of so-called “new antisemitism” – a term that explains hostility toward Israel by claiming that the nation is maligned out of bigotry, as the proverbial Jew among the nations – a central focus of their work, especially in times of increased Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Though this is hardly “new,” the stakes and intensity of attacks against the “new antisemitism” have been raised in a post–Oct. 7, post–destruction of Gaza reality. In effect, this approach has been successful in as much as it has led to a public perception that the fight against antisemitism and the fight in defense of Israel are the same fight, and cannot be separated.
As a result, when anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian activists are accused of antisemitism or expected to condemn it, they view it as purely cynical — an attempt to delegitimize their movement rather than a true objection to how they have treated or spoken about Jews. This very refusal to condemn antisemitism is often read as itself antisemitic by many Jews. This “acrimonious circle,” as philosopher Brian Klug described it 13 years ago, could go on forever.
As the acrimonious circle spins and spins, there are a few options that groups fighting antisemitism can consider:
- They can continue pushing pro-Palestinian activists to see both condemning antisemitism and supporting Israel as intertwined moral duties.
- They can insist on that interconnection, but tell pro-Palestinian activists to choose combatting antisemitism no matter what their beliefs about Israel are.
- They can accept that pro-Palestinian activists will rarely condemn antisemitism at their own initiative, and deploy tactics of intimidation, bullying, harassment, and/or violence against them.
- They can accept that pro-Palestinian activists will rarely condemn antisemitism at their own initiative, and present condemning antisemitism as a human-rights oriented stance, in line with standing up for all marginalized people, including Palestinians.
The first option is the one that organizations like the ADL have often chosen. In its statement about the bike rally and boycott, the group said that criticism of Israeli government policies are acceptable, but discrimination is not. Criticisms that the ADL considers ipso facto discriminatory, however, include claims that Israel has committed the crimes of genocide and apartheid. As a result, activists lend the ADL and groups like it no credibility and will dismiss any of their condemnations out of hand.
The third option is what the protest on Sunday became. Any Philadelphian can tell you that a brawl in the middle of Rittenhouse Square during an Eagles game is far from unusual. But the fighting in this instance broke out because of the boycott — one side driven by a fervor that they needed to defend Jews facing an existential threat from anti-Zionists, the other driven by a fervor that they needed to bring justice to a city ravaged by what protesters believe are business-owning war criminals.
The second option is a sensible demand from a moral perspective. However, it is not a strategic one. The hard truth is that for many, though certainly not all, pro-Palestinian activists, the cause comes before all else, including standing up against antisemitism.
Therefore, the only way forward for Jews is the fourth option: to frame the fight against antisemitism as a fight for the rights of all people. This is not a perfect solution — no solution could be. There will always be some unwilling to oppose antisemitism no matter what tactic is deployed. However, it will make plain that there is no contradiction between condemning antisemitism and supporting Palestinian rights, that in fact the task is to support human rights universally and to condemn all who violate these rights. That necessarily includes standing against Israeli war crimes and its regime of inequality, and that includes condemning those who hold Jews as Jews complicit for Israel’s actions and condemning those who harass, intimidate, and scrutinize Jewish business owners for their presumed political stances.
My parents, fortunately, decided to remove themselves from the chaos of this day and went to support the targeted businesses as regular patrons on other days throughout the week. I was pleased to see that our rabbi, who leads one of the largest synagogues in Center City, made a point of trying to de-escalate tensions and confrontations from within the Philadelphia Jewish community, as well as highlighting the strength and vibrancy of Philly’s Jewish life on its own terms.
These are important, positive things we can do in the short term. That said, if we want long-term change to come from the pro-Palestinian movement – and I think this moment requires it – anti-antisemitism groups that cannot meet the moment must step aside and make room for those that are capable and prepared to frame the fight against antisemitism as a fight for, not against, fairness, justice, and equality for all.
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Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israel’s government has approved a NIS 100 million ($31.5 million) plan, initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to strengthen Jewish education in North America, a statement from his office said Wednesday.
Based on a partnership and joint investment with North American Jewish communities, the goal of the plan is to strengthen Jewish identity and ties to Israel among the next generation of Diaspora Jews in the United States.
The approval of the plan, which was developed with representatives of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), follows a government decision made in June.
It comes a day after Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was sworn in and two weeks after a national election left Netanyahu facing a battle to stay in power as his rival, Gadi Eisenkot, received the mandate to form the next government.
It also comes amid signs of growing disaffection among Diaspora Jews, particularly younger generations, toward Israel and the Netanyahu-led government. Recent polls suggest that support for Israel among Diaspora Jews, especially in response to its policies in Gaza and on matters of democracy, is slipping.
A February survey of American Jews by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only one-third of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as Zionist, even as nearly nine in 10 say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.
A separate Pew poll in May examining American views of Israel found that Jewish attitudes have shifted since 2024. The survey found that 83% of Jews view the Israeli people favorably, down from 89% in 2024, while 47% view the Israeli government favorably, compared with 54% in 2024.
“The plan we approved today, in partnership with Jewish communities in North America, is an investment in the future generation of Diaspora Jews. Together, we will strengthen Jewish identity, deepen the connection to Israel and ensure that our heritage and values are passed proudly from generation to generation,” Netanyahu said in the statement.
“The future of the Jewish people depends on our ability to ensure that future generations know their heritage, connect to their Jewish identity and maintain their deep ties to the State of Israel,” he said, adding that Israel would not “stand idly by in the face of challenges,” such as antisemitism.
Under the framework of the plan, which will focus on increasing the number of students enrolled in Jewish educational frameworks, the Israeli government allocation will be matched 50% with funding from Jewish Federations and other non-governmental sources.
JFNA said in a statement that it welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision to invest in Jewish education across the U.S. and Canada, calling it an “unprecedented partnership between the Government of Israel and North American Jewish communities to strengthen Jewish identity and ensure a vibrant future for the Jewish people.”
“We are proud to launch this historic partnership with the Government of Israel to expand access and grow enrollment in Jewish day schools across North America,” said Gary Torgow, chair of the Board of Jewish Federations of North America.
Eric D. Fingerhut, JFNA’s president and CEO, said the partnership “reflected the shared commitment of Israel and North American Jewry to strengthening Jewish identity and expanding educational opportunities for more families.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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