Citizen Cohn / The Autobiography of Roy Cohn
Hoffman, Nicholas von & Zion, Sidney
CITIZEN COHN Nicholas von Hoffman/Doubleday/$19.95 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROY COHN Sidney Zion/Lyle Stuart/$18.95 Victor Gold Memorandum to: front seat "having a very involuted R. Emmett Tyrrell...
...American history from, say, the Gore Roy was a pre-eminent legal no-show...
...My real point in writing this Cohn best for reducing anti-Commu- memo is simply to say that, my daughnism to its lowest common denomina- ter's advice to the contrary, I'm bailing tor, i.e., trying to keep his buddy David out on both the von Hoffman and Schine out of the Army and, in the Zion reviews...
...White House...
...but after all, Barry Goldwater, our good friend Roy what are friends for...
...His indaughter—the theatrical one, Paige— terviews—including some with Cohn's entered the picture, insisting that I friends—have the ring of verisimilifinish the assignment, if only in the tude...
...in: "This production is so squalid I left at intermission...
...In the limousine we saw was being treated with podophyllin...
...another reviewer to do justice to Oh, that Roy...
...On a larger was front-running with Lyndon scale, he was a liberal bete noire, high Johnson...
...legal conversation, but if you looked at Editor-in-Chief, TAS him carefully, leaning over the back From: Vic Gold seat, his pants and underwear were Re: The Cohn Books down to his knees and his anus was addressed to the aperture of the air conorry, Bob, but you'll have to find ditioner...
...CITIZEN COHN Nicholas von Hoffman/Doubleday/$19.95 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROY COHN Sidney Zion/Lyle Stuart/$18.95 Victor Gold Memorandum to: front seat "having a very involuted R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr...
...ty to friends (whom he occasionally 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988 stiffed on money matters...
...A sweet piece of work, the Cohn books, because I hifthe wall as they say in south Texas...
...The hearing was be perfectly frank, are of less interest held over a week and called again, but again to me than they might be to some seri- no Roy, no defense, but this time a default century - twentieth of student judgment was entered, meaning that Topous kiss client got the full amount of his claim...
...Hmmm . . . Maybe she had some- S o where do we go from here...
...So I shut the book, bottom of Also, as von Hoffman's book porpage 364, prepared to call the project trays him, a pre-eminent deadbeat, quits (having already given up on Sid- shyster, liar, and cheat...
...with a hundred-or-so pages left in Citi- Smokler's story, understand, came zen Cohn—to be precise, at pages 364- ten pages after one told by Jay Topkis, 65, the place where Dr...
...Is the portrait ney Zion's gaseous "autobiography" of accurate...
...Here we find Roy at which medication, Smokler informs us, work: is "very irritating and . . . quite uncomfortable...
...All of the above is simply for the But having said that, I remember record...
...In any case, my instinct to finish told you on taking this assignment, whatever I start having been twinged, I was never much of a Roy Cohn fan, I returned to von Hoffman, pursuing not sharing the opinion held by some the tale of Roy Cohn's rectal discom- of our mutual conservative acquainfort, i.e., Smokler's description of a tances that Cohn, despite his porno-scene in a limousine going from Hous- graphic lifestyle, had certain socially ton to Galveston, with Cohn in the redeeming qualities, e.g., he loved his mother, once got Alan Dershowitz into Victor Gold is The American Spec- Studio 54, and prided himself on loyaltator 's national correspondent...
...As I thing...
...Not to be prudish, client had too strong a case and was posed to settle for a dime on the dollar dis- only that I've tried with the passage of [writes von Hoffman], but when the suit years to be more selective in my read- was called up in court Roy didn't appear ing, and Roy Cohn's anal miseries, to and didn't send an excuse...
...Vidal school of contemporary literature...
...Roy at play...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988 47...
...which is to say, if Cohn were alive manner of the theater critic who walks he'd sue and, barring his putting the fix out on a play but reviews it anyway, as on the judge, lose...
...that in 1964, when con- No can do...
...on Robert Kennedy's hate list...
...Topkis recollected that he didn't believe his Enough already...
...whatever his personal bias against It was at that point, however, that my Cohn, concocted these stories...
...Unlike theater critics, process, giving the liberals the ammuni- book reviewers can't do the tion to bring his boss, Joe McCarthy, I-left-at-intermission bit, because down...
...Two books on Roy Cohn, servatives were in the trenches with warts and all, is two too many...
...Nor can I forget that Cohn's books are different from plays: the re-"conservatism" became full-blown only viewer is expected to plow on, to the after Nixon and Reagan went to the bitter podophyllinized end...
...I don't know Smokier, but I Cohn which, after three chapters of do know something of Jay Topkis and rancid narcissism, started to give me a seriously doubt that von Hoffman, pain in the ass...
...Herb Smokier a Manhattan lawyer who filed suit goes into detail about how "Roy has a against Fifth Avenue Coach, one of case of venereal warts on his anus" and Cohn's clients...
Vol. 21 • July 1988 • No. 7
