Cold Off the Presses

David Berkowitz’s pen pal Jimmy Breslin, best remembered for hosting Saturday Night Live in its disastrous 1985-86 season when it had no idea what it was doing, has died of complications of pneumonia at the age of 88. Breslin spent 50 years with the New York Post, New York Daily News, and New York Newsday laying siege to the occupants of New York’s gilded towers and championing the nobility of the working class, preferably its white male members, one hunt and peck at a time. With a straightforward, blunt style, his columns felt like the meanest kid’s readers ever, such as the famous profile of Clifton Pollard, the man who dug John F. Kennedy’s grave: Pollard is forty-two. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II”. Breslin kept working almost to the end, because he never ran out of the motivation to keep filling column inches: “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.” Among the things that angered him, the plight of David Camacho, struggling with AIDS when no one outside the gay community really noticed or cared about its impact, in a column from 1986, the year he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. That same year he broke a story that Queens borough president Donald R. Manes had been implicated in a payoff swindle involving city officials; two months later, Manes committed suicide. Breslin bragged about applying the sportswriter’s creed – skip the winner’s locker room; the best stories are in the loser’s – from the early days of his career. As a sportswriter for The New York Journal-American, Breslin chronicled the foibles of the first season of the inept New York Mets in the book “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” From there he got a chance to become a news columnist, where he fostered his image as the Everyman with the dark wit that everyone wanted to tell their stories to over a beer, even as he befriended many of the city’s elite, who then had to wait for the fountain pen in the back when Breslin felt he had been slighted or that his pals had gotten too big. Breslin shared the real and fictionalized stories of union gangster Anthony Provenzano, the assassination of Malcolm X, Mafia boss Un Occhio, arsonist Marvin the Torch, bookie Fat Thomas and Klein the lawyer. He took a tongue-in-cheek stab at politics in 1969, running for City Council president on the oddest ticket ever with Norman Mailer for mayor. In 1977, Breslin received a letter from the serial killer known as Son of Sam, who had already killed five people in New York and wounded several others with a .44-caliber revolver, and who signed off: “P.S.: JB, Please inform all the detectives working the case that I wish them the best of luck.” Breslin published the note with an appeal for Son of Sam to surrender, but the killer, David Berkowitz, struck twice more before being captured. Though he was criticized for publishing the note, he actually had done so after consulting with detectives, who thought it could encourage the killer to write another note that might bear clearer fingerprints. Not everyone was as big a fan, and Breslin received a concussion in a beating from Jimmy Burke in Henry Hill’s restaurant after a column mocking another underworld associate, in a scene that didn’t make Goodfellas.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Doom

Or

Less-ly Safer

(Additional accolades to the itinerant Pooligan, Joe)

Moley Safer, who cost the United States the Vietnam War through his reporting, has died of pneumonia at the age of 84. Born in Toronto, Safer aspired to a career in journalism, which meant he had to leave Canada and its 3 news stories a year for London, where he was the CBC’s man in Europe, and became the only Western journalist in East Berlin as the Communists starting building the Berlin Wall. Hired by CBS in 1964 for their London office, he assumed Edward R. Murrow’s old desk, then opened a bureau office in Saigon to keep tabs on the troops the United States wasn’t sending. There, he followed Marines into Cam Ne, a village where 4 Marines had been killed and 27 injured by Vietcong troops being harbored by the inhabitants despite repeated warnings. Those distinctions failed to make it into Safer’s story, which focused on the Marines burning the village down. President Johnson accused Safer of being a Communist and of undermining the war effort, but ordered a halt to any future urban renewal. Safer and two cameramen were later in a helicopter shot down by the Vietcong, but were pulled to safety by Brian Williams. He got pulled into the then-new 60 Minutes in its second season, with the promise he could have his old job back if the show tanked. He never did, becoming 60 Minutes’ longest-serving correspondent, reporting on areas ranging from the Finnish obsession with the tango to a black man in Texas wrongfully convicted and serving a life sentence who was freed after Safer’s reporting. Even into the computer age, Safer was a reporter’s reporter, traveling 200,000 miles a year and banging out his copy on a manual typewriter. He won 12 Emmys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 35, and 3 Peabody Awards. Safer’s last story was filed in March and he died 1 week after announcing his retirement, which inspired a new Republican plan to ensure the solvency of Social Security. 

Simon Says “I’m Dead”

Bob Simon, part of the youth movement on 60 Minutes, has died at the age of 73. In a career that only Brian Williams’ imagination could match, Simon covered conflict in 67 countries, from The Troubles in Northern Ireland to the abandonment of Vietnam to the Yom Kippur War to the tank roadblock in Tiananmen Square to the Persian Gulf, where he and four of his crew were captured and spent 40 days as Iraqi prisoners. In his 47-year career, he earned more than 40 major awards, including 4 Overseas Press Club awards, 4 Peabody Awards and 27 Emmys. After all that, the most dangerous place he worked ended up being New York City, where he was killed in a car accident.

Washington Post Mortem

Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s handler in the FBI-plotted toppling of the Nixon administration, has died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 93. Bradlee fought the Nixon administration over the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, then let Woodward and Bernstein run wild through the muddled Watergate break-in. Bradlee’s connections to attempts to crash the White House date to Nov. 1, 1950 when he hopped off a streetcar in front of the White House as two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to shoot their way into Blair House in an attempt to kill President Harry S. Truman. Bradlee also was the man in charge when Janet Cooke won her Pulitzer. Normally, this would be a good thing. In Cooke’s case, her story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was revealed to be as fact-based as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Or your typical Bill O’Reilly book. 

Burying the Lede

Or

-30-

Helen Thomas, the Rondo Hatton of the Washington press corps, has died at the age of 92. One of the first women in the Washington press corps covering politics, she harassed every president from Eisenhower to Obama for United Press International, moving to Hearst Newspapers after the Moonies took over UPI, before the Lebanon-born journalist’s comments about Israel forced her retirement. Thomas was the first woman to be elected as president of the White House Correspondents Association, the first elected to the Gridiron Club, an ink-stained sausage fest for 90 years, and the only one to accompany President Nixon to China. When Fidel Castro commented on the difference between democracy in Cuba and democracy in the United States, he said "I don't have to answer questions from Helen Thomas." As the dean of the White House press corps, for decades she held a first-row seat, asked the first question at presidential press conferences, then ended them with her signature “Thank You, Mr. President,” a scene she duplicated in Dave. She was less charitable to other men named Klein years later, asserting that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. In becoming the first member of the media to question the United States’ one-sided approach to the two-state solution, Thomas became a pariah, drawing wide-spread condemnation and nary a moment of reflection.

It Was Times to Go

(Monty)

Or

All the Obits that Are Fit to Print

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, former publisher of the New York Times, is once again leading the way for the paper as it lurches toward the inexorable demise of print, succumbing to a long illness at the age of 86. Sulzberger managed to build both sides of the empire, greatly enhancing the profitability of the paper while maintaining and enhancing its editorial independence. The New York Times won 31 Pulitzer Prizes during his three-decade reign, while more importantly winning the New York Times vs. Sullivan libel case, which shielded the press from libel lawsuits by public officials unless they could prove actual malice. The former WWII Marine also personally authorized publishing the Pentagon Papers, a series of classified reports on the Vietnam War, a decision upheld by The Supreme Court in another landmark First Amendment case. By the time he left the paper in 1992, annual revenues of the Times' corporate parent had risen to $1.7 billion.

Stopped Watch

Mike Wallace, who conducted some of the most uncomfortable interviews this side of The Chris Farley Show, has died at the age of 93. For more than 50 years, there were few more chilling phrases in corporate and political offices than “Mike Wallace is here to see you.” With the flair of a showman and the tenacity of a pit bull, Wallace created the public image of what a journalist was and gave 60 Minutes its edge by grilling interviewees, giving them just enough rope to hang themselves before he went in for the kill, or before it became clichéd, setting up ambush scenarios, such as creating a fake clinic for a story on Medicare fraud. But live by the muckrake, die by the muckrake – a 1981 special report on General William Westmoreland charged that he had deliberately misled the country on the strength of the Vietnamese army as part of a great conspiracy. Westmoreland filed a libel suit, and although he CBS was later found to have largely been correct, its methods, including paying for information and interviews, cost it credibility and led it to settle. The incident also contributed to Wallace’s nervous breakdown.

Djaever Notice Retirement Never Lasts As Long As You Want It To?

Andy Rooney, who spent more than 30 years riffing on whatever happened to be in his line of vision for 3 minutes rather than actually writing and preparing a script, has died of complications from minor surgery, because at the age of 92, there is no such thing as minor surgery. Especially if it was intended to rein in those eyebrows. Rooney has been America’s confused, curmudgeonly, racist, annoying, bat-shit crazy grandfather in nigh weekly commentaries that you got stuck watching because the NFL game ran late and you don’t want to miss the start of The Amazing Race. Over the years, the inanity he has harangued America about has included the spelling and pronunciation of February, how he doesn’t like metal watchbands because his wrist hairs get caught, his dim understanding of inflation, the size of women’s handbags, his ability to sleep anywhere, and the fact that they don’t put bees on nickels anymore. Above all, he lionized his antique Underwood typewriter that he hunted and pecked on for 50 years, compared with him churning through 7 computers in 6 years. Presumably because he kept cracking them open trying to change the carbon paper. He claimed to love properly pressed pants and carefully shined shoes and to have devices in his office to achieve both, yet perpetually looked as rumpled as a bus station suit. Rooney gave his final sign-off just a month ago, so all 60 Minutes needs to do tonight is slap an “Andy Rooney (1919-2011)” graphic up on last month’s retrospective segment.

Schorr Enough

Daniel Schorr, who managed to get on the enemies lists of both CBS News and Richard Nixon, has died at the age of 93 following a short illness. A protégé of Edward R. Murrow at CBS News, he made a name for himself in 1957 when he persuaded Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev to sit for an interview for Face the Nation, but got get kicked out of the country for conflicts with Soviet censors. He won 3 Emmys for his coverage of the Watergate scandal, and his blunt reporting earned him a spot on Nixon’s enemies list, which he discovered while reading the list during a live broadcast. He ran afoul of his CBS uber-bosses in 1976 when he obtained a copy of a suppressed House of Representatives committee report on the questionable activities of the CIA. CBS declined to publish it, so he passed it on to The Village Voice. When suspicion pointed to his CBS colleague Lesley Stahl, he initially let her take the rap before coming forward. He refused to reveal his source to a House committee, narrowly avoiding a citation, but he was forced to resign by CBS. He later became the first employee of CNN as senior news analyst in 1979, remaining there until 1984, when he refused to be paired with John Connally, ex-Texas Governor and Nixon Treasure secretary for commentary on the 1984 Republican Convention. His contract was not renewed, and he left in 1985 to become senior news analyst for NPR, where he didn’t have enough listeners to piss anyone off. He remained a commentator there for the last 25 years, with his last commentary airing July 10.

Meet the Maker

Or
If its Friday, It’s a Massive Coronary
Backstabbing fat bastard Tim Russert has died of a heart attack at the age of 58, ironically enough on “take out the trash day” when politically unpleasant news gets dumped on an even more disinterested than usual populace. Russert, Buffalo’s favorite son and first cousin to Baltimore homicide detective Megan Russert, spent 17 years annoying politicians and pundits by asking direct questions until he got either an actual answer or enough rope with which to hang them later each Sunday morning as host of Meet the Press. He also eschewed fancy schmancy technology for the Electoral College Whiteboard, starting with Election Night 2000 when he showed how hard it was to count to 270. He was considered the definitive interviewer of the political process and scored the first U.S. solo interview with John Paul II. He also proved to be a big pansy coward, turning his back on long-time friend Don Imus, who had shamelessly and annoyingly plugged Russert’s book about his father, “Big Russ and Me,” after Imus questioned the follicular stylings of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

God to Brink: Drop Dead

William J. Brink, former editor at the New York Daily News, has died at the age of 89. Brink is best remembered for the most famous headline since Dewey Defeats Truman. In 1975, President Ford refused to help the city out of its fiscal crisis. While other editors toyed with headlines about refusing aid, Brink put it more succinctly: Ford to City: Drop Dead. Ford himself conceded that headline helped cost him the state in the 1976 election, and with it, the White House. And as proof that the New York Times does have a sense of humor, this was the last line of the Times obit: The corresponding headline in The New York Times that day, FORD, CASTIGATING CITY, ASSERTS HE'D VETO FUND GUARANTEE; OFFERS BANKRUPTCY BILL, remains unsung.

Shana, you inanimate slut

Shana Alexander, the liberal Itchy to conservative James J. Kilpatrick’s Scratchy on "60 Minutes" in the late 1970s, has died at the age of 79. The Point-Counterpoint segments entered the pop culture lexicon when they were spoofed on Saturday Night Live by Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd. Alexander was a trail-blazer as the first female staff writer employed by Life magazine and the first female editor at McCall's magazine. She also covered the early days of the women's rights movement, President Nixon's handling of the Vietnam War and the slaying of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany.

Sad Sack

John Sack, a battlefield correspondent who covered American wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan died Saturday. He melded the "new journalism" literary style with a determination to accurately tell the story. Perhaps his most famous story was the account of William H. Calley, Jr., the man responsible for the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians, at 33,000 words, the longest ever published by Esquire. Sack was indicted on federal charges for refusing to hand over his notes to prosecutors during Calley’s trial, but the charges were dropped.

Editor Fails to Fake Own Death!!

Or
Actual Mortality Strikes for First Time!!
The man who brought us Bat Boy, saw Satan’s face in clouds, smoke, volcano eruptions and his morning pancakes, disclosed that 12 U.S. Senators were aliens, asserted that the Loch Ness Monster was being used by the military and confirmed that Elvis was alive, then had faked his own death, again, has died. Or has he? Eddie Clontz, long-time editor of the Weekly World News, allegedly died of kidney and liver complications at the age of 56. And really, with a name like that, what else could he have done but run a supermarket tabloid? Where are his miracle doctors who kept women’s heads alive for years in jars now? What happened to the mystery space vegetables that cure all disease? Why didn’t his alien friends give him a lift to someplace where diabetes has been cured? It’s enough to make one lose one's faith in the media.

The Law of Supply Side and Dead Men

(Props to Monty)
Robert L. Bartley, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal for more than 30 years, once again did the fiscally responsible thing to help save Medicaid, dying this week at the age of 66. Suckered by Arthur Laffer's cocktail napkin-based economic theories, during his tenure the Journal emerged as a practical treatise on why taxes and liberals are bad, honing its status as one of the leading conservative voices in the nation. The self professed "mouthpiece for supply-side economics" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and earlier this month was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In later years at the Journal, Bartley was highly critical of President Clinton and his administration, particularly White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster. When Foster killed himself, a note in his briefcase read, "WSJ editors lie without consequence."

Game Over

George Plimpton has taken participatory journalism too far, seeking to send dispatches from the other side after passing away last night at the age of 76. The Harvard-educated son of a diplomat who founded the literary magazine Paris Review, Plimpton found his greatest following recounting his tales as an underdog everyman in extraordinary circumstances. He boxed with heavyweight champion Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions in a preseason game, pitched to Willie Mays in an All-Star exhibition, and manned the trapeze in the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. He also conspired with Sports Illustrated to pull off one of the all-time great April Fool's jokes, detailing the exploits of Sidd Finch, a mysterious pitcher from Tibet who threw a fastball 168 mph during spring training with the Mets in a 1984 cover story that fooled hundreds of readers. Despite his noble upbringing and regal bearing, Plimpton's self-deprecating nature kept him well grounded, and he deigned to do ads for Mattel Electronics Intellivision "Intelligent Television" video game console and cartridges, appeared as John Carter's (the other one) grandfather on ER and appeared in a Simpsons episode. In his later years, he was beseiged by lifetime literary awards, but the pyrotechnic-phile was most pleased with the honorary position of New York City Fireworks Commissioner.

Good Night, David

Breaking News: The floodgates have opened, our second mortal-coil shuffling of the week. David Brinkley, rated as one of the giants of broadcast journalism for more than 50 years, has accepted a new assignment in the afterlife. He learned the true meaning of the term deadline last night at the age of 82 following complications from a fall.

Brinkley anchored only one pool entry - Greg's Wily Veterans, bringing him into a five-way tie for first with himself, his lovely wife Kirsti, their lovely friend Michelle and me, whose loveliness goes without saying. I don't want to suggest mob ties or anything, but the Chicago contingent has accounted for 4 of the 5 hits in the pool this far.

Now that we actually have 5 hits, the leaderboard returns
1st: Greg's Fresh-faced Rookies 1 dead, 20 points
(tie) Kirsti 1 dead, 20 points
(tie) Michelle 1 dead, 20 points
(tie) Greg's Wily Veterans 1 dead, 20 points
(tie) Me 1 dead, 20 points