Eminentoes/How'm I Doin'?
McGurn, William
HOW'M I DOIN'? by William McGurn Ah! Some love Paris, And some love Purdue. But love is an archer with a low LQ. A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity. So I'm in love with New York...
...Mary Jo Kopechne did not die from drowning...
...If they are successful they stay...
...Nevertheless, Koch knew the strike was no joke...
...consequently he is difficult to pressure...
...For another, there is the blatant fact the Left hates to acknowledge about anyone's success: Koch works twice as hard as anyone else (without spouse or child, there is no family to neglect...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 27 he cut the deal for federal aid to the city, and still another is devoted to the practical reasons behind the Mayor's cooperation with the Republicans...
...Finally, on February 3 of this year, EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus made the scare official: He ordered an immediate ban on EDB's use in fumigating stored grain and milling machinery, set temporary tolerance levels of EDB for food already in the pipeline (e.g., 30 parts per billion in bread, 150 ppb in flour and cake mixes), and then in early March announced that the only remaining agricultural use of EDB--the fumigation of fruit to kill fruit flies--would be permanently banned starting this fall...
...if he were a mayor somewhere in Iowa, I imagine we would see him running about in suspenders, promoting the local 4-H fair...
...And do you know what he did...
...He forbade municipal employees to stay home, and boasted that 88 percent of those employed in the city were getting to their jobs...
...Born in 1924 in the Bronx, this the 105th Mayor of New York has spent his life in politics, starting in 1952 when he went abofft Sheridan Square with his soapbox and American flag proselytizing for Adlai Stevenson...
...Whatever Walter Mondale might promise to the contrary, we can't all live on Park Avenue...
...Yet there is meat as well...
...Primary voters traditionally tend to be closer to the fringes, and Koch says he always expected an attack from within his own party: "The radicals don't like me," writes Koch...
...GI04 Indianapolis, IN 46250 two hundred senior citizens: "A judge I helped elect was mugged recently...
...Mayor is subtitled "An Autobiography," and however far it strays it is never too far from the hero...
...representative from New York's 17th congressional district...
...Why can't we prevail...
...At a town-hall meeting in East Flatbush, for example, a black teenager charged the Mayor with not doing anything for the black community...
...Featuring a cover of the balding Koch with his arms outstretched before a background view of Manhattan, it was originally scheduled for a modest April release...
...Governor Hugh Carey appears a boob...
...The son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, he revels .in it...
...Somebody has to live in Queens...
...Clearly, as Koch now says frequently, he must be doing something right...
...they provide the jobs for the poor people, and we're not able to do as much for them economically as I would like, but at the very least, I'm gonna recognize the sacrifices they make...
...The people yawn...
...2 Finally, PIM reveals that THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 29...
...Most of the commuters told him to stand tough, and Koch got reams of publicity when he began referring to those who badgered him as "wackos...
...Nevertheless, the comments are almost always perceptive as well...
...They see it as luck, a sham that clever people (like themselves) see through...
...He is not now, nor has he ever been, a fanatic...
...Though there is no danger of Mayor's ever being confused with either The Last Hurrah or the Kissinger memoirs, it does present some fascinating lessons in modern civics...
...P.S...
...New Yorkers know that for every rose there are a dozen thorns, for every Brooklyn Heights a Bedford Stuyvesant, for every Broadway theater a 42nd Street porno shop...
...F o r all this, there are still those who cannot understand Koch's (or, for that matter, Reagan's) appeal...
...We might recall the anecdote Koch delivered to the 1980 Democratic National Convention: I went up to a Bronx senior center and told Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...dollars...
...If you want to bloat the economy just take the element of competition out of it...
...This level of risk, moreover, is inconsistent with extant data on workers exposed to EDB levels five to ten thousand times greater than typical consumers over long periods...
...Indeed, they have over the century voted for it in most of its forms: the raw corruption of Tammany Hall and the genial corruption of Jimmy Walker...
...After joining a reform group known as the Village Independent Democrats, Koch subsequently won election as a state assemblyman, a city councilman, and, in 1968, as the U.S...
...Koch makes muchTover the advice given him by his colleagues not to publish the book while he was still in office, which obviously has added to his pleasure in doing so...
...53 million...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...Decide in haste, repent at leisure" goes an old saw that has proved uncannily apt in evaluating previous William R. Havender is an independent consultant on environmental carcinogens who lives in Berkeley, California...
...By 1976, however, the latest corruption--whose chief trait was the inability to draw the line on anything--had drawn the city close to bankruptcy...
...After first pointing out that over 56 percent of the city's budget--almost $7 billion--went to the poor, the Mayor went on the offensive: We've got to provide for the poorest of the poor, and we're going to, but I want to tell you what you have to know is: there are demagogues and ideologues who don't give a damn about the-middle class...
...But like many clever people, they have blinded themselves to the obvious...
...This amount is more than 250,000 times smaller, on a bodyweight basis, than the cancercausing doses given to test animals...
...In the end, when the MTA board voted against Koch for the final settlement, the Mayor quickly turned to the TV cameras with cries of a sellout...
...The result of staying in the center is that Koch today appears to be on the far right of his party (in the recent gubernatorial primary, Cuomo 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 accused Koch of being a Reagan clone...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Take parades...
...With the discovery last year that EDB was contaminating ground water in Florida (from use as a soil fumigant), the issue became hotter, causing Florida agricultural commissioner Doyle Conner to suspend the sale of all food products containing EDB...
...Koch goes to all of them, not just the biggies...
...I am a capitalist in the sense that I believe in the capitalist economy," he writes...
...So this March 18 it was no surprise to find the New York Times featuring a terrific picture of an ebullient Mayor, sporting his bulky Aran sweater, waving to the 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1984 St...
...When Chicago's Richard Daley was alive, for example, the fulminations by columnists like Mike Royko...
...You know why...
...When Ravitch near the end favored giving in, Koch pointed out that the city's position was actually getting stronger: The people were on the city's side...
...I said it with Lockheed and I lost and I said it with Chrysler and I lost...
...That was promotion of a kind Koch couldn't have bought, and by February 26 Mayor was number one on the New York Times best-seller list...
...Mayor is full of such provoi:ations, and predictably that is what has captured the most attention (not to mention sold the most books...
...When he senses he has an implacable enemy, he baits him, hoping at least that way to gain some mileage from it...
...more recently, the patrician corruption of John Lindsay and the inept corruption of Abraham Beame...
...Beame could have camped out at the Brooklyn Bridge 'Compare Koch against the old legend about Bobby Kennedy who, while campaigning in an Italian neighborhood, allegedly horrified aides by asking for a knife and fork when he was given a slice of pizza to bite into...
...And they have good reason, because I despise them...
...As with even the breeziest of Wordsworth's sonnets, however, Koch's ostensibly flippant words are invariably calculated, designed to appeal to his growing constituency of aggrieved taxpayers...
...The very next day, however, Times readers might have thought they were seeing the same picture--until a glance at the caption explained that here was Koch (sans the fisherman sweater) marching in the Purim parade, commemorating the saving of the Jews from annihilation by Haman in the Persian-Medean Empire...
...levels in the diet could lead to an increase in lifetime cancer risk of 3 per 1000 people...
...So in what has become known as the city that refuses to work, the political life takes place under a cloud of cynicism...
...It is not hard to see why they demurred...
...The story of the book itself deserves, some mention...
...rushed into print six weeks early...
...In fact, no excess cancer has been seen among these workers, though over~ half should have died of cancer were the EPA's estimate valid...
...He has always been an outspoken proponent of civil rights for blacks, but has never favored racial quotas...
...Patrick's Day crowds...
...I speak out for the middle class...
...Koch's slights are their slights...
...Jimmy Carter makes Uriah Heep seem noble...
...Koch is that rare man who has both...
...We have just gone through another cancer scare, this time over the grain fumigant, ethylene dibromide, or EDB...
...The best is Koch's account of the 1980 subway and bus strike, when the 33,000 members of the Transport Workers Union went out for what was to be 11 days...
...Not only do they expect corrupWilliam McGurn is managing editor o f This World magazine and contributing editor o f The American Spectator...
...Though he was re-elected in 1981 with a phenomenal 75 percent of the vote, his is a popularity of recent vintage, one that wasn't there his first time around and grows each time he steps in front of the mike...
...In addition, a skin painting test has been conducted on mice with positive results...
...Isn't it nice that Chinatown is mostly Chinese, and Little Italy mostly Italian...
...But after a front-page story in the Village Voice attacked it in January, the book was 'Simon and Schuster, $17.95...
...The entire meeting was taped by WNYC, the city's municipal radio station...
...During the strike, Koch went out to the Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and 59th Street Bridges to urgethe walking commuters on, likening them to "the Russian Army coming over frozen Lake Ladoga to save Leningrad...
...Last, he is always campaigning, as a good Mayor should: Let a building collapse or a major disaster occur, and the Mayor will be there in a hardhat...
...Politically, Koch is now, and always has been, a liberal...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...XHe understands the value of publicity," Simon and Schuster's Julia Knickerbocker told Publishers Weekly, in what must rank as one of the great understatements...
...At a time when the largest chunk of his party has succumbed to the far Left, Koch has remained a Stevenson Democrat from the Village...
...At the moment, Schools Chancellor Anthony Alvarado is being investigated for irregular loans and questionable practices...
...In other words, you would have to consume about 400 tons of food daily to receive the doses of EDB the rats got...
...Does anyone think the Mayor went to East Flatbush without having this little speech somewhere in the back of his mind...
...You're invited to examine "Death at Chappaquiddick" for 10 days on an absolute, no-strings-attached money-back guarantee...
...By the time of the 1977 mayoral elections, New York City was some $1 billion 'in the hole...
...Yet symbols without substance are doomed to backfire...
...There are other, equally informing sections in Mayor, such as on the decision to close Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, which outraged the black community...
...He called a press conference and said, 'This mugging of me will in no way affect my decisions in matters of this kind.' And an elderly lady got up in the back of the room and said, 'Then mug him again.' " This theatrical flair Koch lends to common sense is the Mayor at his best...
...In New York the people knew that the streets were filthy and the Mayor's friends still got rich...
...EDB has been found to be highly carcinogenic in ten long-term, highdose tests on rats and mice of both sexes, and involving exposure by either inhalation or stomach tube...
...I believe it is in the interest of the United States that companies go in and out of business...
...1. What degree o f hazard did EDB pose to the public...
...Because they pay the taxes...
...Politics in Regulatory Washington," The American Spectator, June 1983...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...Then, too, Governor Carey was pressuring MTA chief Richard Ravitch not to enforce the Taylor law at the same time Koch, who had no direct authority in the MTA, was lobbying for full penalties...
...Reagan, Koch concedes magnanimously, is definitely "not dumb...
...E n t e r Edward I. Koch...
...The typical New Yorker, like the Mayor, is mad at behug tipped off, depressed at the squalor of the subways he takes to work, annoyed with the haughtiness of wellpaid municipal hacks...
...a fireman or cop gets killed or injured, there will be Ed Koch at the funeral or hospital--and, of course, on the evening news...
...That is what has made .our economy stronger than the socialist or communist economies...
...What's your next question...
...Based on an early copy of the galleys, the Voice's review essentially lambasted the Mayor for being mean to other politicians...
...We don't, of course, expect you to take our word for that...
...For one thing, Ed Koch--whatever one might think of his policies--is personally an exceptionally honest man...
...What is disputed is whether consumers face any significant risk from the incredibly tiny levels of EDB typically present in foods...
...Unlike Nelson Rockefeller, who would consider himself above such exuberance, 3 Ed Koch is an unabashed cheerleader...
...regulatory decisions.' Four questions might be raised to determine whether it is similarly apt in describing Mr...
...Still, the political graves are full of competent men who never achieved popularity...
...And if the occasion warrants, he steals his critics' thunder by admitting he was wrong...
...No one disputes that EDB is reliably carcinogenic under these conditions, nor that, as pesticides go, it is among the more potently carcinogenic...
...The wackos have yet to figure this out...
...It's a book you must have on your own bookshelf, preferably toward the front...
...For years he was also something of a local celebrity, regularly appearing on Channel 5 (WOR-TV) to debate the conservative Dr...
...tion they would, if it helped, favor it...
...Around the country there was little sympathy and an oftexpressed sense that New York was finally paying the price of its haughtiness (remember the Daily News headline that cost Gerald Ford the 1976 election: "Ford to City: Drop Dead...
...If they are not they fail...
...Perhaps the best explanation lies in the early pages of his first chapter...
...In Chicago the streets were clean and the Mayor's friends got rich...
...and people would only have spit at him...
...Another source of confusion has been the EPA's estimate in PD4 that lifetime exposure to EDB at typical ~See my article "Science vs...
...Koch is the people's mayor, because he is smart enough not to tell them things are getting better when all their five senses tell them things are getting worse...
...I f you know how to use a heckler," writes the Mayor, "he can be very good for you...
...On paper the Taylor law made public strikes illegal, yet past settlements had included either amnesty from its penalties or hidden benefits that in effect paid the fines: The law had no teeth...
...What has not been so well publicized is that the equation relating animal and human risks used to derive this figure was only recently cooked up by the EPA's own Carcinogen Assessment Group, and has yet to be subjected to outside peer review...
...According to Koch, he courted the Republican endorsement in the 1981 election (he ran on both tickets) as a kind of "insurance policy" because he knew he would not necessarily win the Democratic primary...
...4" (hereafter PD4), the average person ingests about ten micrograms of EDB a day (by comparison, the average person ingests 140,000 micrograms of pepper a day...
...with this year's budget he reported a $500 million surplus...
...The scare goes back to 1975 when EDB was first discovered to be a potent carcinogen in rats and mice, leading the Environmental Defense Fund to petition the Environmental Protection Agency to take action...
...Martin Abend, who lately has been reduced to debating college professors...
...Koch insisted on the firm line because the city literally could not afford to give in...
...According to EPA estimates given in its "Position Document No...
...For all the maneuvering, though, most of it comes down to just plain politics...
...he asked Barbara Walters on ABC-TV's "20/20...
...The 220 pages contain facts never before disclosed...
...Governor Mario Cuomo is blamed in no uncertain terms for the rumors of Koch's homosexuality and the failure to act against the "Vote for Cuomo Not the Homo" flyers that surfaced during both the 1977 mayoral and 1982 gubernatorial primaries...
...So every time he lashes out at some poor schnook, those frustrated taxpayers experience that vicarious thrill of telling the boss off, saying the unsayable...
...Other states soon followed Florida's lead, and the environmentalists and media did their part...
...In his recent book, Mayor,' New York's chief executive has outraged his enemies and delighted his fans by combining a shrewd look at city politics with his peculiar brand of invective, answering his own favorite question, "How'm I doin...
...W~en it comes to local city politicians like Herman Badillo, Koch is often rougher...
...Many admire it, some hate it, and most simply tolerate it, but the only truly unifying element among these people is the superiority they exhibit toward the inhabitants of every other American city...
...Phyllis McGinley "A Kind of Love Letter to New York" Few New Yorkers really love their city...
...When Edward I. Koch was sworn in on January 1, 1978, New York City was $1 billion in the red...
...Also, the assumptions underlying this estimate would lead to grossly unrealistic predictions of risk for other dietary carcinogenic hazards, such as aflatoxin...
...In sharp contrast to Mayor John Lindsay, who during the last strike in 1966 had told people to stay home except for emergencies, Koch took on the unions squarely...
...He believes in the free market: He has no illusions about Communism, and endorsed President Reagan's invasion of Grenada...
...The reason they took it for granted was that they knew city history...
...If anyone can love a beast as diverse as New York, Ed Koch is the man...
...Throughout it all the Mayor remains the central figure, a Dostoyevskian character who sees slights in every gesture and doesn't hesitate to write about them...
...Ruckelshaus's decision to order a nationwide ban of EDB...
...In fact, most of the local press was sucked into unconsciously promoting his book when he distributed the juiciest of these sections first...
...He is for the death penalty, and abortion...
...Another chunk is on how Ads to sell books are supposed to go into enormous detail, lavish praise, long descriptions...
...Although the state had overall financial authority for the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority), and every wage increase of one percent cost the state some $10 million, the liability of the city--whose more than 200,000 municipal workers would demand roughly the same raise--was 2Here are Koch's own words, strange from the mouth of a big-city Democrat these days...
...about the Daley regime's lack of virtue were incomprehensible to New Yorkers...
...We'll merely say that Thomas and Richard Tedrow have done an exhaustive job of research, their book is well written, carefully presented, and what you've suspected all along is true...
...By refusing to argue on his opponents' terms, Koch turns potential disasters into political points...
...So I'm in love with New York City...
...I really can't understand why everyone takes for granted that the City has to love every strike," he told his aides at the beginning...
...If you decide the book is not an invaluable investment, just return it within the 10 days, and we'll refund your $9.95 in full, no questions asked...
...Belief does not come easily for them, and so there are many more "I love New York" bumperstickers on the Jersey Turnpike than on Fifth Avenue...
...City inhabitants accept imperfections and consequently are baffled by what they see as the relatively minor concerns that occupy the citizens of other American metropolises...
Vol. 17 • June 1984 • No. 6
