Who really discovered America?

What we think of today as the American dream -- where you can be all you can be, where people are good looking and good -- come from the golden age of movies. And those movies were made by Jews. Outside Hollywood, Jews were threatened with anti-semitism and international nazism. Inside Hollywood, they created an idea country -- the country we call America.  In a sense, Jews discovered America.

As David Denby writes (New Yorker 16 September 2013) summarizing an argument from Neal Gabler's "An Empire of Their Own":

"The future moguls came from the backwaters of Eastern Europe and arrived in the United States with nothing . . . they worked at whatever trade lay at hand: peddling scrap metal, furs, gloves. Then, soon after the emergence of storefront nickelodeons, in 1905, they threw in their lot with a new, primitive art form that many regarded as a passing fad . . . [and] built their enterprises with a speed that even now, in the age of venture capital and mobile-app entrepreneurs, seems remarkable. And yet, outside their domain, . . . they acted as if all their power and their personal wealth could be taken away if they made a mistake.

"Their fears were not entirely irrational, since anti-Semitism was widespread in America in the twenties and thirties. It could be found in the radio broadcasts of demagogues like Father Coughlin, in the street rallies of Nazi and pro-German groups in New York and other cities. The Jews were blamed in some quarters for the worldwide economic crisis. . . .

"In response, the studio bosses wrapped themselves in Americanism, generating in their movies . . . an ideal country: 'It would be an America where fathers were strong, families stable, people attractive, resilient, resourceful, and decent.'"