Celebration, apprehension and Breslin’s footprints
Monthly Newsletter: November 2024
Election spillover
There was an election since we last gathered here. Turnout was strong and I’m grateful the popular vote and electoral college results were not in conflict.
Even so, some 74.4 million Americans who voted for the loser (that would include me) are nervous about the future. The 76.9 million who voted for the winner are presumably happy, but even some of them are anxious.
Immediate plans for stiff tariffs on neighboring trade partners and the nomination of certain people to important positions sow apprehension, even among Donald Trump enthusiasts.
I’ve concluded the president-elect never expected Matt Gaetz to win acceptance as Attorney General but saw the Gaetz nomination as a diversion from other controversial picks. Gaetz meanwhile saw the offer as an opportunity for a face-saving departure from Congress, pre-empting a damning investigatory report. Want to make book on whether he’ll wind up as a regular on Fox News? Or on “Dancing with the Stars?”
Even with one party in control of both the White House and Congress and a supportive Supreme Court across the street, I am cautiously optimistic guardrails protecting American democracy will stay in place. It’s just that I think those guardrails are going to need a double set of bumper pads.
Jimmy was there
About a hundred years ago when I was researching and still years away from publishing my book about the Hendricks family murders, I was shocked, frustrated and disappointed when my path was crossed by newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, who had just won a Pulitzer Prize.
Breslin, I discovered, had just interviewed David Hendricks, then serving a natural life sentence for the brutal slayings of his wife and three children. The prison sit-down, it turned out, was for Breslin’s short-lived, twice-a-week ABC-TV talk show, “Jimmy Breslin’s People.” I was both concerned and convinced the New York City newspaper icon would quickly add a volume about the Hendricks case to his already long list of books and make my emerging effort superfluous.
But, to my relief, he didn’t pursue the story for a book, and mine was published three years later.
Now, seven years after his death, Breslin: Essential Writings has been compiled by New York Times editor and columnist Dan Barry. It’s really three books in one: a curated compilation of 73 Breslin newspaper and magazine articles, Breslin’s book-length view of the Watergate scandal, and another book-length expose of New York City malfeasance in the death of an undocumented immigrant laborer.
What made Breslin so popular was his ability to find the unusual angle in a big story. A good example? When he covered President Kennedy’s funeral, he told the story through the eyes of the grave digger.
Breslin was launched into a national spotlight in the 1970s when the “Son of Sam” serial killer, who terrorized New York, communicated with Breslin, then a widely-read New York Daily News columnist.
This book also contains a chronology of Breslin’s life. He was a master on-deadline storyteller who happened to be there when Malcom X was killed, when Robert F. Kennedy was shot, and not long after John Lennon was taken down.
This is a nostalgic flashback to a time when newspaper columnists were the opinion shapers. And also sometimes prescient. Check out Beslin’s 1990 column about Donald Trump where Breslin quotes advice from Trump’s father to his son: “Never use you own money. Steal a good idea and say it’s your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought.”
Inside man
If you’re looking for some holiday viewing that doesn’t have a Christmas tree in it, take a look at “A Man on the Inside,” the new Netflix eight-parter starring Ted Danson.
It’s funny, sweet, poignant and tastes better than year-old fruitcake.
Danson plays Charles, a widowed retiree encouraged by his daughter to find a new hobby or avocation. Meanwhile a private detective firm is seeking an older man to go “under cover” in a retirement community to uncover a thief.
Just a little flavor of how things go: The PI firm decides a newspaper “want ad” (if you’re under 40, google the term) is the best way to find a senior citizen sleuth, and it downwardly revises its technical knowledge demands from “skilled with technology” to “good with technology” to “has a phone.”
The first applicant has a phone, but it’s hooked to a wall.
Charles gets the job, moves into a posh retirement community and the investigative adventure begins. This is a thoughtful comedy with a pretty good story line.
It's the most wonderful...
For those of you here in the Phoenix area ready to feel the joy of the season, the East Valley Pops Orchestra launches its four-program series of holiday concerts Tuesday in Mesa. You can find schedule details at https://www.eastvalleypops.org/calendar.html along with a photo of the orchestra (that’s me safely sitting at the back of the second violin section).
I can reliably report the program includes an audience sing-along, so bring your best voice.
Christmas quilt
Also at Tuesday’s concert will be this beautiful holiday quilt done by spouse Mary (of “Mary’s Quilted Treasures”).
Titled “Noel,” it’s being raffled in an orchestra fundraiser. Tickets will be available in the breezeway outside Tuesday’s concert and potentially at a later concert. But only 200 will be sold.
Facing forward
In just a few days I’ll begin my 79th trip around the sun, hoping the year to come will find global weather extremes, political discourse and economic inequality all moderating.
I can’t help but notice that two others born in 1946—Bill Clinton and Cher—have lately made big public relations splashes in an effort to sell their new books. I probably won’t read Clinton’s Citizen: My Life After the White House or Cher’s Cher: The Memoir Part One because I’m too busy trying to complete my own new book. Besides, I doubt Clinton or Cher will be reading my new book either.
At this advanced aged I’m also noticing how such a high percentage of the subjects of newspaper obituaries are younger than me, though I sometimes wonder whether the families of people my age and older don’t bother to publish the once-free-but-now-expensive death notices because the deceased have so few friends remaining.
I do take comfort that there still are people from my “birth year”—people like Clinton and Cher and Steven Spielberg and Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton who can produce a hit, even if they are called to the plate less often.
Another ‘46er, George W. Bush, chose to stay on the bench in this month’s election. Donald Trump, also born in ’46, didn’t.
More Americans chose the 78-year-old over the lady who had just turned 60. Everything else being equal (which it wasn’t), I’d prefer that the person we choose to lead our nation be somewhere between 40 and 70.
And there is this concerning any problems I’ll be experiencing at age 78: I can be pretty sure it’s not a midlife crisis.
Thanks for reading! 🎄