Inherent Contradictions in Giving Shakespeare the Benefit of the Doubt

I wanted to try to write my blog on something other than the portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, but found myself unable to get past the blatant anti-Semitism in the play. To me, the anti-Semitism is so rampant and repulsive that I am honestly unable to appreciate any other aspects of the play. When trying to think of a topic for a blog post, I found that the only interesting character to me was Shylock; the other characters seem to get upstaged by the very offensive portrayal of Shylock and they all kind of mesh together in my mind. I wonder if other people had the same reaction.
In our class discussion about the scene in the movie we watched, many of us felt sympathetic to Shylock as we watched him suffer the loss of his daughter. Someone voiced the opinion that perhaps this is why Shakespeare made Shylock a stereotypical Jewish moneylender in the play - that he wanted us to realize, through watching a character who was so over the top, that the notion of Jews as stingy is indeed only a stereotype and there is absolutely no truth to the stereotype. I have to say that I completely disagree with this idea. It would be nice to think that Shakespeare was so enlightened for his time and wanted to take a social stand on a controversial issue; however, if this was the case, wouldn't that be extremely unusual for his time period? After all, many bloggers have said that they would be surprised if Shakespeare was especially anti-Semitic for his time, since anti-Semitism was so prevalent in his world. Professor Mulready also commented that Shakespeare may not have been exposed to many Jews because they were forced to vacate London during the time period. If that is true, what reason would Shakespeare have to take such a political stance on the side of a group of people he was unfamiliar with? Additionally, since it is commonly known that Shakespeare wrote his plays to entertain, make money, and hobnob in elite society, wouldn't the elite people who attended his plays hold the very same anti-Semitic views that proliferate throughout The Merchant of Venice? It wouldn't seem likely that Shakespeare, who was a businessman as well as a poet, would choose to alienate his viewers and go against the stereotype just to enhance the reputation of a very marginalized group of individuals. I think that the idea of playing up a stereotype just to show how untrue it truly is is probably a relatively new concept; comedians like Sarah Silverman would not have been able to have the same effect that she has now in Shakespeare's time because people would just think that she was indeed agreeing with the racists. I believe that it is only when a group of people has gained (relative) freedom and enhanced social standing that they can begin to try to work through the hatred that has surrounded their culture in a satirical manner. I feel that the reason we feel pity for Shylock is through pure stage direction; the scene we watched easily could have been taken in another direction had a different actor or director been involved with the film. It seems to me that anti-Semitism is an uncomfortable truth that we must confront in Shakespeare; to give him the benefit of the doubt would be to ignore the probable truth that Shakespeare was just another anti-Semite in a long line of anti-Semitics during his time period.