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Articles by Jack Newfield
A New York Senator’s Wife Was Flacking for the Shah of Iran in 1976
→ This article from the archives is part of a series celebrating the Platinum Anniversary — 70 years! — of the Voice. The first issue hit the stands on October 26, 1955.
New York's Ten Worst Landlords of 1987
New York City will lead the fight for new housing … we won’t rest until the housing we so desperately need is built. — Edward I. Koch, Inaugural Address, January 1, 1986 Amid the opulent glut of midtown’s overdevelopment, hundreds of people step around a human f orn1 under a blanket, and keep on walking. An acquaintance buys the early edition of the Times and reads the obits first in a desperately cynical attempt to find a vacant apartment in Manhattan.
Voices at a Revolution
By David Swanson "We didn't want to be seen as a left-wing newspaper particularly," said Village Voice founder Ed Fancher, in the the introduction to Tricia Romano's The Freaks Came Out to Write. "The idea of the Voice was independent journalism. And that idea is either lost or forgotten." To anyone who read the paper over it's six-decade run as the house-organ of the American counterculture, Fancher's initial goal sounds foolish.
The Mayor Who Didn't Want To Know
The Mayor Who Didn't Want To Know - And the Whistleblowers Who Tried To Alert Him Perhaps the fairest way to judge the competence, integrity, and character of a government is how it responds when credible information about misconduct is brought to its attention. Any administration can suffer a scandal, because the susceptibility to temptation has been part of human nature since the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Any of us can be fooled or betrayed by a subordinate.
Mugging the White Liberal
Imagine three goldfish dropped into a fish tank filled with sharks. Or imagine Billy Budd mugged by the Emperor Jones.
Mugging the White Liberal
Imagine three goldfish dropped into a fish tank filled with sharks. Or imagine Billy Budd mugged by the Emperor Jones.
Mississippi: A March Resurrects a Movement
JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI — Overcoming disunity, out-of-fashionableness, poverty, and aching feet, the civil rights movement was reborn Sunday on the grounds of the Mississippi state capitol, before the executioners’ eyes of 700 Mississippi troopers and police, armed with M-1s, live ammunition, and tear gas.
The New Politics: Leaders or Guerrillas
In the last 10 days I have read about 20 sophisticated articles analyzing the results of the 1968 elections. Most of these pieces of punditry contained the same two assumptions — which I believe are misleading, and perhaps paralyzing, illusions. One is that the election returns are proof of a sharp veering to the right by the electorate. And the other is that the future hope of liberal politics rests with the “new politics” Democrats. I disagree with both these interpretations.
The Full Rudy: The Man, the Mayor, the Myth
Giuliani's record includes big accomplishments and spectacular lapses. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark Join the Nation Festival Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election. Join the Nation Festival Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.
Mississippi: A March Resurrects a Movement
RCB VV collage JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI — Overcoming disunity, out-of-fashionableness, poverty, and aching feet, the civil rights movement was reborn Sunday on the grounds of the Mississippi state capitol, before the executioners’ eyes of 700 Mississippi troopers and police, armed with M-1s, live ammunition, and tear gas.
After Stanley Friedman’s Fall
It’s Time For The Governor To Act I once saw Stanley Friedman cry. It wasn’t last Tuesday morning in New Haven when the jury foreman said he was guilty of racketeering. It was a night long ago in the Hunter College gym, when Stanley Friedman’s mistake cost City College a basketball game. It was the only time I ever saw Friedman show any weakness or vulnerability. He was 20 years old then, and his wiseguy nickname was already Bugsy.
What Did Koch Know, and When Did He Know It?
Anatomy of a Cover-Up: What Did Koch Know, and When Did He Know It? I’m the perfect route to the downfall of this administration. — Bess Myerson, New York magazine, March 30, 1987 In the middle of the afternoon last Friday, Ed Koch slouched in his office chair, with just a couple of cameras to perform for and a handful of print reporters.
How Ed Koch Handed Over City Hall
Violation! “After eight years of charisma and four years of the clubhouse, why not try competence.” — Koch slogan, 1977 mayoral race Ambitious people often become the thing they hate. History is full of young idealists obsessing about some entrenched evil and then replicating that evil when they come to power. The Ayatollah has become the Shah.
Memories of Meade and the Mob
Bugging Mr. Big After 15 years of investigations that fizzled in dead ends, federal investigators are now confident they have enough evidence to prosecute former Brooklyn Democratic boss Meade Esposito. Sources in the FBI and the Justice Department say they can prove conspiracy, stock fraud, and possibly mail fraud against the legendary 79-year-old political figure. For the past five months, the FBI has had bugs and wiretaps in Esposito’s offices, authorized by four federal judges.
How Rudy Giuliani Took the Media for a Ride
RCB VV collage SUNDAY’S PRETAPED interview with Gabe Pressman on WNBC-TV’s Newsforum was Rudolph Giuliani’s first little-screen appearance since the candidate placed himself under the tutelage of Roger Ailes. You remember him: the sleaze-master who terrorized America into voting Republican last year when his propaganda turned the presidential election into a referendum on street crime and the death penalty by playing fast and loose with the truth.
Blowin’ in the Wind: A Folk-Music Revolt
Blowin’ in the Wind: A Folk-Music Revolt January 14, 1965 On the frontier of every art form guerilla bands of prophets and crackpots are nourishing the orthodoxies and fashions of tomorrow. A decade ago the frontier outlaws were men like Miles Davis, Paul Goodman, and Norman Mailer. Bereft of followers, holed up in private Sierra Maestras, they scrounged for economic survival.
The Mayor Who Didn’t Want To Know
The Mayor Who Didn’t Want To Know — And the Whistleblowers Who Tried To Alert Him February 3, 1987 Perhaps the fairest way to judge the competence, integrity, and character of a government is how it responds when credible information about misconduct is brought to its attention. Any administration can suffer a scandal, because the susceptibility to temptation has been part of human nature since the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Any of us can be fooled or betrayed by a subordinate.
City for Sale : Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York
ThriftBooks, a ThriftBooks Global brand, is located near the Green River in Auburn, WA, 25 miles south of Seattle. Auburn is the original ThriftBooks warehouse. While cutting edge ThriftBooks pricing technology and the latest supply-chain methods allow us to serve you better, it's the hard-working, dedicated, team in Auburn that differentiates ThriftBooks. Each quality, used book is saved, sorted, rated, shelved and finally, shipped by hand from Washington.
Meade, the Mob, & the Machine
Meade, the Mob, & the Machine January 3, 1974 Meade Esposito, the powerful Democratic Party leader of Brooklyn, is currently under active investigation by four separate law enforcement agencies — special anti-corruption prosecutor Maurice Nadjari, the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force, the IRS, and the SEC. The SEC probe involves fraud and manipulation of a stock called Frigitemp.
Thinking About the '60s: RFK and the Frontier of the Possible
The Populist President Who Might Have Been NINETEEN SIXTY-EIGHT was the Year of the Locust. Two of the noblest citizens of the 20th century — Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King — were murdered eight weeks apart. Today, as we wonder why we have no heroic leaders to inspire us, we still pay the price of this loss. In 1968 the Vietnam War continued to escalate, and 12,000 body bags came home. The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush a revolt of workers who wanted more freedom.
Geraldine Ferraro: Her Brilliant Career
Her Brilliant Career July 24, 1984 Last Thursday night I realized the Republicans were nervous for the first time in this election. I saw Pat Buchanan on Nightline sneer that Gerry Ferraro had “no experience” to be vice-president of the United States. Buchanan is the fellow who thought Spiro Agnew was a splendid choice for veep in 1968, when his only experience was in stealing.
From Liberty in Miss. To Justice in D.C.
Tomi Ungerer The Gap Between: From Liberty in Miss. to Justice in D.C. December 2, 1965 LIBERTY, MISSISSIPPI — In the mythology of the Movement, Amite County is synonymous with the Ninth Circle of Hell. It was to this impoverished, remote area of southwest Mississippi, on the border of Louisiana, that Bob Parris (Bob Moses) came in August of 1961 to attempt SNCC’s first voter registration campaign. Beaten twice and jailed three times, Parris left for Jackson four months later.
Marching to Montgomery: The Cradle Did Rock
From the March 25, 1965 issue of the Village Voice, the week before the march on Montgomery. Fred McDarrah It was the Ecumenical Council, a hootenanny, a happening, and a revolution all rolled into one. And it happened in Montgomery, “Cradle of the Confederacy.” A broken-down hipster, the Realist sticking out of his dungarees, marched alongside an Episcopal bishop clutching the Holy Bible.
Mike Tyson: Dr. K.O.
RCB VV collage All fighters come from mean streets and lower depths. Champions such as Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Jake LaMotta, Dwight Braxton, and Macho Camacho have survived prison detours. Mike Tyson, who could be the next great fighter, comes from the mean streets of Bed-Stuy and is a survivor of a penal institution for incorrigible boys.
How To Cure the Police Crime Plague
How To Cure the Police Crime Plague May 28, 1985 We are experiencing a police crime wave. More than 40 New York City police officers have been arrested so far this year for crimes including criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter, assault, sodomy, and robbery. During 1984, 81 police officers were arrested. During the past two months, two sergeants — the backbone of the department’s command structure — have been accused: one of stun-gun torture, and another of being a hit-and-run killer.
Chicago 1968: Blood Outside the Arena
Chicago in August: Prelims are Bloody CHICAGO — The lid blew off Monday night. In the Amphitheatre: Hubert Humphrey made his pact with the South and John Connally became his Strom Thurmond. Eugene McCarthy’s badly organized campaign continued to unravel. The boomlet for Teddy Kennedy turned out to be a fantasy of Bobby’s orphans. In the street: The cops chased, Maced, tear-gassed, and shot blanks at the kids who were in Lincoln Park an hour after curfew.
Chicago 1968: A Riot by the Cops
The Streets of Daleyland CHICAGO — Pigs. Until Wednesday night this was just a Movement nickname for the police. A satisfying exaggeration. An example of in-group argot. A verbal gesture of solidarity with the Black Panthers. But Wednesday night on the streets of Daleyland, pigs became a precise description. The Chicago police, with their thick heads, small eyes, and beery jowls, actually resemble pigs. And they surely behaved like animals in this city famous for its stockyards.
Bob Dylan: Brecht of the Juke Box, Poet of the Electric Guitar
Norman Morrison burned himself to death to protest the Vietnam war, and when reporters visited his spare room they saw quotes from Bob Dylan scrawled on the peeling walls. Students at the University of California have organized a non-credit seminar on Dylan’s poetry. Esquire Magazine quotes Stokely Carmichael singing to himself — not an Otis Redding blues — but Dylan.
Rev Vs. Rev - Nymag
Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton on December 18, 2001 at the National Action Network 10-year anniversary. Al Sharpton and I are having dinner at Ballato on Houston Street. He has his cell phone on the table; it rings thirteen times in 90 minutes. The Reverend is pecking at a salad, trying to keep off the weight he lost while serving his prison time for the Vieques protest. We are talking about his Oedipal struggle with his political, religious, and civil-rights father, Jesse Jackson.
SMART $$ IS AGAINST BLOOMBERG
By Jack Newfield May 10, 2001 | 4:00am I‘VE made a few friendly wagers that whoever wins the Democratic primary for mayor will defeat billionaire Republican Mike Bloomberg. My faith is based on Bloomberg’s early bloopers, as well as long-term historical factors. The other night, Bloomberg was captured by a NY1 camera crew at Columbia University making some bizarre remarks about New York public-school students. “They don’t know how to present themselves,” the ghost candidate was saying.
Blacks and Jews | The Village Voice
Blacks and Jews: The Tragedy of Jackson, the Logic of Coalition March 20, 1984 What Jesse Jackson said is a tragedy: for him, for black-Jewish relations, for champions of compromise in the Middle East, and for the noble concept for a rainbow coalition of the rejected. What Jesse Jackson said will profit and please all the little demagogues who feed off fear and hate.
The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York
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Felix Rohatyn Is Our New Robert Moses
The Unaccountable Elitist: Felix Rohatyn is our new Robert Moses August 2, 1976 Felix the Fixer has overreached, again. Last March Felix Rohatyn gave us the first hint that he really wanted to be Robert Moses or Nelson Rockefeller. It was then that he suggested poor neighborhoods be bulldozed and converted into industrial parks, with lower business taxes as an incentive.
The Myth of Godfather Journalism
The Myth of Godfather Journalism July 23, 1979 A few hours after Carmine Galante was blown away in Bushwick with the cigar clenched in his mouth, a federal prosecutor began to reach out for his undercover informants in the mafia. No law enforcement agency had a tail on Galante the day he was shot, and the prosecutor wanted to know who arranged for the execution. His informants didn’t know anything, either.
WHY BOXERS AREN’T SAFE IN N.Y. ; GATTI WEIGH-IN LATEST DUBIOUS MOVE BY NYSAC
Today, in the second installment of a three-part investigative series on the New York State Athletic Commission, Post columnists Wallace Matthews and Jack Newfield examine the commission’s failure to protect boxers. THE New York State Athletic Commission has failed to carry out its stated mandate to protect boxers, The Post has found. Some attribute the agency’s dysfunctional state to ineptitude; others to politics. Many say it’s a combination of the two.
Arson for Hire
Burned out in the South Bronx, 1978 photo: Sylvia Plachy June 2, 1980 There are two crimes that are more than just felonies—they are treason. One is the importation, distribution, and sale of heroin. The other is arson for profit. There are not crimes of passion or desperation. They are crimes of organized greed. They cause the deaths of innocent citizens and brave firefighters. They kill blocks, ruin neighborhoods, and destroy cities. Ultimately, these are crimes that annul hope and diminish humanity.
What books to read to learn about NYC, according to its press corps
Get reading. Image via Pexels There’s no better place to learn than Twitter. Just kidding. But in this case, Twitter helped. A Brooklyn Eagle reporter (me) asked for recommendations from the Twitterverse on books to read to understand modern New York — other than Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker.” And Twitter led us (me) to another land, somewhere far, far away, where character limits don’t exist. Hi all. Could I get some non-fiction book recs on modern New York history that aren’t the power broker?
Jack Newfield and Howard Smith Stalk The Apocryphal Teeny Bopper
Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives. A 13-year-old blonde-on-blonde named Cher Zimmerman, dressed in flowered bell-bottomed pants and a fur vest over her knish-size breasts, comes up out of the subway. She takes a magic marker out of her tiny shoulder purse and scrawls “Buddy Holly Lives” across a tattered poster advertising Leonard Farbstein. Heads for MacDougal Street.
Who Really Invented Rock 'n' Roll
By JACK NEWFIELD | September 21, 2004 https://www.nysun.com/arts/who-really-invented-rock-n-roll/2037/ Little Richard once said, "The blues had an illegitimate baby and we named it rock 'n' roll." This is a fair and clever summary of what happened between 1949 and 1954, when black and white musical traditions cross-educated each other, and then disc jockey Alan Freed popularized the phrase "rock and roll," which was black slang for having sex.
The Shame of Boxing
Someday they’re going to write a blues song just for fighters. It will be for a slow guitar, soft trumpet and a bell. –Sonny Liston Jack Newfield has written about boxing as a reporter since 1964 for the Village Voice, the New York Daily News and the New York Post. His documentary film Don King: Unauthorized won an Emmy in 1991. Boxing is my guilty pleasure. I love it and I hate it.
The Full Rudy: The Man, the Mayor, the Myth
Rudy Giuliani was a C-plus Mayor who has become an A-plus myth. Since the atrocity of 9/11, Giuliani has managed to merge himself with wounded New York until the man and the metropolis–and this almost religious event–seem to be one heroic blur. But in April 1999, in the sixth year of his term-limited mayoralty, Giuliani had only a 40 percent approval rating from the people he governed, who knew him best.
The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America
books.google.com - A new, updated edition of Jack Newfield's hard-hitting unauthorized biography of boxing kingpin Don King, source of the Emmy-winning film starring Ving Rhames. With a new epilogue. Working his way out of a life of street crime and numbers running - and jail time for manslaughter - King rose to become... The Life and Crimes of Don King
Search - The Stanford Daily
Search limited to No search filters set Refine search Category Author Decade Word count Search Results Your search for jack kennedy draft found 16 results. Showing results 1 to 16. The Stanford Daily, Volume 153, Issue 31, 1 April 1968 ... h both he and Johnson were eligible. Associated Press analyst Jack Bell observed that the effect of this on the ... The Stanford Daily, Volume 161, Issue 25, 9 March 1972 ...
The Once and Future Cuomo
The Once and Future Cuomo Cuomo could not convince himself he was indispensable to the country. I suspect he would rather be on the Supreme Court than be president. I have known Mario Cuomo since 1970, when I wrote a piece about him as an unknown community lawyer fighting to save the homes of 69 families in Corona, Queens, from the bulldozers of the elitist urban planners. After that we became friends and he became a politician, and I stopped writing about him so we could remain friends.
The Full Rudy: The Man, the Mayor, the Myth | The Nation
Rudy Giuliani was a C-plus Mayor who has become an A-plus myth. Since the atrocity of 9/11, Giuliani has managed to merge himself with wounded New York until the man and the metropolis--and this almost religious event--seem to be one heroic blur. But in April 1999, in the sixth year of his term-limited mayoralty, Giuliani had only a 40 percent approval rating from the people he governed, who knew him best.
REV. AL TRICKSTER, THE ‘SOURCE’ OF LIES
THE politics of pique have made Al Sharpton a pariah – again. In 35 years in the newspaper business, I have never disclosed a source. But today – and never again – I have to break that rule. Al Sharpton was my source for my column that disclosed he had promised to endorse Fernando Ferrer for mayor. I am reporting this only because I’ve been listening to Sharpton say all week that Ferrer was my source.
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