Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Media study revisited Washington, D.C. To the Editors." In your response to my recent letter [Correspondence, June 14], you remark that the study "Media Coverage of the Catholic...
...There we would spend the day sitting in the hallways...
...494: Commonweal...
...What writers used to do before we were all incorporated...
...The editors reply: First, we can't argue with Mr...
...Shortly, all services were again discontinued...
...Second, Mr...
...That is still not an explicit accusation of widespread journalistic bias, but anyone who misses the implication needs a refresher course in Logic 101...
...Georgetown University, Washington, D.C...
...There was another flurry of activity from the agency after the Commonweal article appeared...
...We take these to be topic sentences, telling us what this study is about...
...Given a legal system that attempts to protect the rights of both owners and tenants, tenants will never be completely pleased with all legal remedies...
...Chimienti...
...Mao H belongs to the latter group...
...This is DeLillo's most personal novel...
...Simon supported strict enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act--the key legislation governing labor-management relations...
...In it, "everything" is "a shape, a fate, information flowing...
...And his ill will blinds him to the middle ground between his own statism and libertarianism...
...He fined the landlord a paltry $1,000 for all our years without heat, hot water, or basic repairs...
...As we argued ["Thinskinned," May 17], the very first example offered in the study to show how its authors analyzed news items demonstrated a highly developed capacity for missing the point...
...However, the owner corrected many of the violations by the time the 7A proceeding was finally scheduled for trial in June of 1990...
...Endings have always been a problem for DeLillo, and Mao H concludes without ever really resolving--Bill's own fate becomes almost incidental...
...Is the commissioner claiming that judges are venal, slothful, or biased...
...The appointment of a 7A administrator, after all, essentially removes the property from the possession and control of its owner...
...No one would have accused our letter of being "preemptively" launched if it had been stupid or uninteresting...
...Both the lay letter and Centesimus annus occupy that middle ground...
...The commissioner acknowledges that a landlord who has only a hundred violations, some of which involve a lack of hot water, does not risk much...
...One reads it with constant interest and excitement---excepting Pynchon, no other author sees the way we live now quite so compellingly as DeLillo does--but one also reads it with a growing sense of disappointment...
...However that may be, the lay letter was fully in the spirit of Centesimus annus, about which we are overjoyed, and to which we yield admiring assent...
...459,492, 494, Ross, Rothco...
...After the courts and the city refused to act, the tenants' association pressured the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), which held the mortgage, to address conditions...
...The courts appoint 7A administrators on the recommendation of HPD for about fifty buildings each year of the roughly two hundred 7A cases that we bring...
...Another controlling passage (p...
...In more direct response: It is true that no single statement in the study explains those alleged negative images by accusing the media of bias...
...The tenants were well enough organized to pressure the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to address our complaints, but while we could force the agency to do its job, we couldn't make them do it well...
...The archbishop preferred the first, and so did we...
...It gives an account of what the media have done but expresses no opinion on the bias question...
...But that kinship carries with it a patness that trades more on our assumptions about novelists--or, rather, Great Novelists than on what such a strange and terrible individual must actually be like...
...Even something as bright and familiar as Broadway feels "as if blocks of time and space had come loose and drifted...
...Agency did its job New York, N.Y...
...The implication was that if our letter came out first, it would appear as a recommendation, of the sort the bishops were actively soliciting...
...But he apparently did not read pages 35-37 of Toward the Future, in which our very strong support of labor unions was so much more spirited than that of the bishops' first draft that even Monsignor George Higgins used itto shame the bishops into doing better in their next draft...
...Nature has given way to aura...
...The erroneous impression resulted, I believe, from a fundamental misinterpretation of HPD's role in the 7A process, as well as from small, factual inaccuracies that ran throughout the article...
...That last sentence has an ironic cast...
...The really scary thing about this whole story is that, compared to many others, our building is a lot better off...
...Because such scary hyperbole constitutes the only concrete discussion of the central issue of American political economy for the past century--when and how a democratic government ought to regulate corporate enterprise for the common good of the society--it is quite fair to describe these works as advocating unregulated capitalism...
...JOHN J. PIDERIT, S.J...
...Third, Mr...
...But he cites no evidence from the document to that effect...
...Ignatius and the Spiritual Exercises September 27-29, 1991 LOYOLA HOUSE Guelph, Ontario Ronald Barnes, S.J...
...Appreciative of the difficulties the commissioner daily faces, and that the agency will continue to face in view of budget problems, I suggest that HPD should not attempt to bring 7A cases against all buildings with serious code violations, nor should it restrict its suits to those with multiple serious violations...
...FELICE MICHETrI The wtqter is commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development...
...And by "democratic capitalism" I mean a tripartite system that grants the legitimacy of political interventions in the economy, such as the legislation of the Progressive Era that so agitates Mr...
...DeLillo, who greatly esteems Pynchon's work, has clearly drawn upon him for Bill Gray...
...The judge inspected the building in December 1990, and ultimately issued a written decision this past March declining to appoint an administrator...
...HPD's inspection immediately prior to the court date showed that of the 172 violations to which the inspectors had access, 142, or 83 percent, had been corrected...
...The facts are that HPD affirmatively moved for a 7A proceeding, followed up on all of the judge's decisions, and aggressively sought to compel the owner to remove the housing code violations...
...In your response to my recent letter [Correspondence, June 14], you remark that the study "Media Coverage of the Catholic Church" arrives at a conclusion of "bias against the church" on the part of several elite media...
...While I am sympathetic to the author's concern for the tenants in 2645 Morris Avenue, I must correct the impression that conditions at the building could have been improved by "decisive action" on the part of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD...
...Novak says that it "conceded the legitimacy of the legislation" regulating the economy as "the law of the land...
...Others, apparently including the editors of Commonweal, hold that it doesn't...
...Consider only the length of time between 1984~when the tenants of 2645 Morris Avenue first appealed to public authorities for help in making their building safe and otherwise habitable--and the date of my article (April 1991), when serious violations of the housing code were still present...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 00103330...
...The first time HPD paid any real attention to our building was when our landlord and building were featured in a newspaper article describing the ten worst landlords in New York City...
...Some DeLillo novels have been very funny indeed (End Zone, Great Jones Street, White Noise), while in others laughter would have been very much an alien presence (The Names, Libra...
...Even in her response to my article, she could have done more than she does to acknowledge the need for change...
...Single Copy, $2...
...DeLillo himself is very much unincorporated...
...Annual subscriptions: (US) $30, (Canada, Mexico) US $40, (other) US $50...
...Black humor enlivened White Noise' s "airborne toxic event...
...10) says that the way to test whether journalists are fair and impartial (i.e., free of bias) is to examine the coverage they produce...
...After a couple of inspections they promised they would foreclose, based on the clause in the mortgage requiring timely repairs...
...It is a reasonable question, still unanswered...
...Canada, $38...
...in less than a week, the building was under new management...
...What made it surprising was that it was neither a statist document nor libertarian...
...This, too, is false...
...Then, since the condition of the building warranted it, HPD initiated a 7A proceeding, which started in December of 1989...
...The court granted the owner several adjournments, during which HPD conducted additional inspections, at one point finding nearly 300 violations in the building...
...and even there, it remains little more than a powerful conceit...
...that's the way it sometimes is...
...Loyola House, P.O...
...Certainly, the removal or nonenforcement of much regulation in the past decade, e.g., of the savings and loan industry, has not exactly served the public interest...
...Freddie Mac served notice of default on Mr...
...On occasion, however, when the church is depicted as oppressive, authoritarian, irrelevant, etc., the cause is not bias or ignorance, but good sound reporting...
...As I wrote: "Despite the good intentions of individuals, the system itself is unfair and unjust...
...Given the legal context within which the decisions regarding the building were taken, the article's statement that "HPD chose either to ignore or to declare void the valid complaints of the tenants" is both untrue and unfair...
...In Mao H, we get only the first half of the equation...
...that is, its findings about negative media images of the church were predetermined (and vastly inflated) by its methodology...
...MARK FEENEY is editor of the Boston Globe's Focus section...
...Some of it is wrong-headed or unenforceable, and there is good reason to fear both excessive state power and corporate misuse of regulatory mechanisms...
...RUSSELL SHAW The writer is director of the office of public information of the Knights of Columbus, a sponsor of the study...
...From the day Nadel took over, he and two companions would knock on tenants' doors at 9 o'clock every night demanding the rent...
...Rather, it should act vigorously against some buildings where violations are few in number but serious enough to endanger life, health, or safety...
...Quite a few readers have concluded that the situation the study depicts does reflect bias...
...one detects an intimate feeling in the writing about Bill Gray and his vocation that is absent from DeLillo's other books...
...Despite the seriousness of a 7A action, I-IPD is successful in using this remedy for irresponsible behavior by owners...
...Piehl so uncritically recommends, which in any case is the law of the land...
...76r three times...
...The HPD lawyers showed no concern that we were all missing time at work, nor did they make any effort to let us know what was going on with the case...
...on each occasion we would be sent home and told to come back again in another couple of weeks--when we would again spend all day sitting in the hallways...
...Chimienti on April 25 of this year...
...She should be able to devise a better strategy to protect low-income renters...
...We remained actively involved in monitoring the building, and when a reinspection in September 1990 showed that the owner was not adequately complying with the consent order, we restored the 7A case and the request for a 7A administrator and also requested that contempt penalties be levied against the owner...
...The important question is whether or not Toward the Future endorsed Progressive economic regulation...
...Without attention to the regulatory question, the general language of "tripartite structures" and "democratic capitalism" serves a rhetorical rather than an analytic function...
...Finally, Commonweal did not say and does not believe that there is no antiCatholic bias out there in media land...
...Piehl accused Toward the Future of pointing "toward restoring unregulated capitalism...
...We asked Archbishop Weakland to choose when our letter should appear, either during the brief five-day window between election-day 1984 (a Tuesday) and the following Sunday, when the bishops' pastoral would be released, or later...
...IRENE M. BALDWIN No r u n s , s i x e r r o r s Washington, D.C...
...Over half of North Carolina retirees came from Florida--learn why...
...To the Editors: I am a resident of the building described by John J. Piderit, S.J., in his article "Give Me Shelter," and secretary of its tenants' association...
...Piehl's problems are twofold...
...492: Commonweal Tenants l o s t o u t Bronx, N.Y...
...and at additional offices...
...That's interesting, i didn't know there was a muse of real estate...
...Microfilm from VoL l, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M148106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, Ohio 44691...
...Even paranoids, it would seem, have mutual-admiration societies...
...The results have been memREVIEWERS JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN is Centennial Professor of political science and professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University...
...Commissioner Michetti suggests that her employees were unable to argue persuasively for a 7A administrator because other buildings had even more problems...
...Meanwhile, Mr...
...As the church has always taught, the church is always peccable...
...It takes a great novelist to render a Great Novelist...
...HPD is continuing to monitor the owner's obligation to correct the remaining violations pursuant to the court order...
...Instead, the judge issued a further order to correct and fined the owner $1,000...
...MICHAEL NOVAK The author replies: Matters of timing aside, it still seems clear that the "lay letter" developed essentially as a reaction to the bishops' initiative rather than as an autonomous enterprise...
...James Nadel, whose approach to building management is even more creative than Mr...
...First, he writes that the lay letter "was issued shortly before the first draft of the pastoral with the plain intent of preemptively countering its widely expected emphases...
...and if it appeared later, it would appear as a GUELPH CENTRE OF SPIRITUALITY A Symposium THE IMAGINATION AND AFFECTIONS In the Life of St...
...Only Thomas Pynchon surpasses him as a master of what one might call the paranoid style in American fiction...
...Her latest book is Power Trips and Other Journeys (Wisconsin...
...Tenants are exhausted, and most are intimidated by the new owner's threats...
...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture...
...andLibra, which took for its subject the one event America has come to regard as its own twentieth-century apocalypse, managed to conclude with a graveside epiphany from Marguerite Oswald...
...481,483, Paul Valerry...
...Novak's charges of McCarthyism...
...The connection between terrorists and novelists never exists on other than a purely intellectual level...
...While that number certainly indicates problems in the building, the typical building in which the courts impose 7A administrators literally do have hundreds of violations, in keeping with the legal requirement that this remedy be applied only on finding extreme and lifethreatening situations...
...Central American Historical Institute (CAHI), Intercultural Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057...
...Canada, $66...
...To the Editors: I am writing in response to the article by John J. Piderit, S.J., "Give Me Shelter: Profits and Code Violations in the Bronx" [April 19...
...Special two-year rate: U.S., $62...
...It's apocalyptic in a way none of his previous novels has been...
...Shaw over "the situation [the study] depicts" because in our opinion it doesn't depict a real situation...
...The judge found that although "numerous violations did exist, these violations did not make the subject premises immediately hazardous...
...Mao H has many such bravura observations...
...We went years with inadequate hot water...
...Lichter has so often had to deny making such an accusation...
...Indeed, a number of scholars (including some on the left) have noted that the bishops' final draft was closer to the lay letter than their first draft...
...The point would be to send a message to all negligent landlords, whether they have few or many violations, that they risk losing control to a 7A administrator if they fail to act responsibly...
...At the extremity, it can nationalize entire industries" (Spirit, p. 173...
...last year alone, thirty-seven heat and hot water violations were placed on the building...
...But the study does not reach this conclusion, a fact noted many times by its principal author, S. Robert Lichter, since its publication in March...
...Piehl accused us of excluding "the structurally unemployed" from social assistance...
...Both Christian conviction and natural law lead us so to include them...
...And we are profoundly grateful for the tripartite structure of the system which makes the rule of law work...
...In his own letter of transmissal accompanying our review copy of the study, Mr...
...The study then produces statistics based on content analysis purporting to show that in the coverage of the Catholic church by five major news outlets, the church was "overwhelmingly" portrayed as "an oppressive or authoritarian institution," a "beleaguered authority struggling to enforce its traditions and views on a reluctant constituency...
...The true subject is "democratic capitalism," for I am not in favor of capitalism apart from the workings of democracy...
...I do not "uncritically" endorse economic regulation...
...we assiduously pursued the legal remedies available to us under the law...
...The first sentence of the Introduction reads: "Anti-Catholicism has deep roots in American life...
...456, 487, Baloo, Rothco...
...HPD staff met with the tenants that September and reinspected the building (there was no "demonstration" as the article states...
...It was, in fact, a democratic capitalist document...
...Chimienti's...
...Michetti correctly notes...
...Readers can judge for themselves the validity of Mr...
...Toward the Future contains no discussion of the structurally unemployed, nor of what kind of government assistance such able workers should receive (e.g., permanent unemployment compensation, retraining for new jobs, or the minimal welfare of general assistance...
...Nonetheless, her own letter provides evidence that her agency is not up to the task--or that the system within which it works is in need of basic reforms that she should be pursuing...
...But this attribution of intention is both malicious and false...
...A voice from the popular church in Central America...
...Currently, more than two hundred buildings in the city have 7A administrators...
...If so, she will serve the public by naming names...
...I think they will find my variety closer to Gene's than to Joe's...
...Illustrations: Cover design, cover art, pp...
...With a limited staff and a large universe of build(Continued on page 491) Commonweal, is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
...That was why I expressed uncertainty about whether Mr...
...That is because neither Toward the Future nor The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism contains so much as a favorable reference to any pieces of economic regulation...
...On the other hand, it's clear to us why Mr...
...Envio Monthly magazine of analysis on Nicaragua and the Central American region...
...467, 471, 473, 475,478, 479, 480, Antonucci...
...orable, unsettling, and occasionally hilarious...
...Chimienti netleased the building to a Mr...
...He told a tenant with a large family that if he kept going to housing court, Nadel would have him evicted for having too many people in the apartment...
...The article really captured the flavor of our ten-year effort to obtain basic services...
...450: Commonweal influence...
...A judge should make a decision based on the law and on the case at hand, not on what happens in other, more dilapidated buildings whose conditions are not before the court...
...Piehl in McCarthyite fashion wonders about my recent support for labor unions...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...COMMONWEAL, 15 Dutch St., NYC 10038...
...DeLillo's fictional world is one charged with menace and meaning...
...In all DeLillo's books an almost medieval sense of immanence collides with a clinical delight in the amassing of data...
...It was agreed that the judge would decide the case on the basis of a single visit to the building, and that HPD would not appeal the decis i o n - a l l this without the knowledge or consent of the tenants...
...We accept that law...
...Pynchon, in turn, has contributed one of his rare blurbs to Mao II...
...we offered our own examples of it...
...Nadel's lawyer told me that ifI kept complaining to Freddie Mac I would be liable for interfering in Mr...
...The signs for Mita, Midori, Kirin, Magno, Suntory--words that were part of some synthetic mass language, the esperanto of jet lag...
...Yet from the packingcase shanties of Tompkins Square to the "millennial image mill" of Beirut, a desperate unease pervades Mao 1I...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $36...
...North Carolina golf & lake homesites from only $10,900...
...The author replies: Commissioner Michetti is, I am sure, a reliable and sensitive public servant who encourages members of her staff to be persistent in demanding adequate housing for poor and lower-income people in New York City...
...Given the high rate of correction, the only genuine legal remedy for HPD to pursue was a consent order to correct the remaining violations...
...Michetti notes that a judge, not her department, appoints a 7A administrator when conditions are sufficiently dangerous...
...Nevertheless, your author's characterization of HPD's role with 2645 Morris Avenue and with the 7A process in general is unfair...
...In mid-1989, when the tenants of 2645 Morris Avenue asked HPD to move for a 7A proceeding, 102 violations were listed against the building, not the "hundreds" stated in the article...
...Regis College, Toronto, Ontario Thomas King, S.J...
...Free literature...
...Since the building was recently sold, we intend to go back to court to formally ensure that the court order compelling repairs is applied to the new owner...
...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 450) ings with housing code violations, HPD must target its efforts toward those buildings with the most serious problems and with the highest probability of success in the courts...
...Novak now accepts such regulation--though it sounds more like grudging acquiescence than positive endorsement--that represents a new position that no one could infer from his previous works...
...At HPD's request, several of us took off from work an average of twice a month for close to two years to go to housing court...
...72r six times...
...Classified payable with order...
...He just keeps adding to what is as impressive a body of fiction as any American novelist has produced over the past twenty years...
...MEL PIEHL CLASSIFIED RATES: 80r a word, one time...
...ROBERT ELLSBERG is editor-in-chief of Orbis Books and a doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School...
...The misplaced heartland hotel...
...In any case, it misrepresents "Media Coverage of the Catholic Church" to say that it attributes bias to the media when in fact it does not...
...Ms...
...Esperanto of jet lag" is the sort of brilliant phrase only Don DeLillo might come up with...
...Novak and Mr...
...It is not a remedy that the courts impose without finding, as the statute requires, "conditions dangerous to life, health, or safety...
...bank...
...He finds it hard to be fair to those with whom he disagrees...
...There was, of course, wonderful heat and hot water on the day of the judge's visit...
...foreign, $72...
...All the material in every life is channeled into the glow...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...foreign, $41...
...The examples of regulation are uniformly described in hostile terms: "It [the government] may harass executives through wiretaps, FBI visits in the night, investigations, and subpoenas...
...If a well-organized tenants' association in a building like ours cannot get repairs done, what about all those buildings out there that are in worse shape and whose tenants are not organized...
...It should also bring suit against a few landlords who tolerate many serious violations...
...Nadel's contract with Mr...
...If so, that situation needs to be put before the public and the legislature...
...Specifically, the article implied that HPD did not act when in fact HPD took appropriate, affirmative action within the constraints of the legal system...
...As a last resort, roughly one-third of the tenants had gone on rent strike last winter...
...1-800768-7358...
...Piehl in his response...
...HPD's role in the 7A process is constrained by law, and the ultimate decisions regarding appointments of 7A administrators are made by judges, not by HPD...
...It conceded the legitimacy of the legislation that Mr...
...Finally, the HPD lawyer decided to resolve things without a trial...
...Kathleen McGhee, SND Clwyd, N. Wales For Registration Materials contact: Virginia Varley, C.S.J...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...For DeLillo, facts have auras, and Bill Gray is only half kidding when he complains, "Nothing happens until it's consumed...
...If, as he says, Mr...
...R e t i r e to North Carolina WHY RETIRE TO FLA...
...Nadel told one woman receiving a Section 8 rent subsidy that he would see to it that she lost her subsidy if she continued on rent strike...
...Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory...
...HPD's sole role in the process is to recornmend appointment of a 7A administrator in those cases where we believe that the court will find that the seriousness of the conditions warrants such action...
...They make raids on human consciousness...
...Michetti is intelligent and has an able staff...
...Granted, HPD intervened in the case as requested, but not, it must be said, successfully...
...To the Editors: The heading Commonweal put over my recent letter, "Novak on Capitalism," may have misled Mel Piehl [Correspondence, June 14...
...HPD takes its obligations to protect tenants very seriously, as is witnessed in this instance by our request for a 7A administrator and our continuing monitoring of the owner's progress toward meeting his obligations...
...Box 245 Guelph, Ontario N1H 6J9 (519) 824-1250 9 August 1991:493 criticism...
...Next winter does not look to be much better than previous ones...
...The managing attorney for that particular division of HPD informed us flat out that we were wasting his time, that conditions in the building were not that serious, that there was nothing wrong with the way we were living...
...Unfortunately, no matter what we did or how hard we fought, we were unable to compel Nicholas Chimienti, our landlord, to give us hot water or repair our apartments...
...How many people have to get the flu or catch a cold before having no hot water becomes dangerous to one's health...
...As a result of HPD's motion, it was agreed that the decision whether to appoint 9 August 1991:491 a 7A administrator would be based on an inspection of the building by Judge Gilbert Badillo...
...LEE SIEGEL is a free-lance writer living in New York City...
...But close examination of such regulation will show, I believe, that much of it has worked to the good of society, the environment, and business itself though few business people recognize it...
...nothing mediates it...
...For what it may be worth, my view is that bias may be too thin a word to express the complex problem it depicts...
...Consider: The first paragraph of the study's Executive Summary refers to "the long history of anti-Catholic prejudice in American society...
...p. 463, Rita Corbin...
...We did not "drop" the case, as the article alleges...
...Ultimately, though, there's something hollow about the novel...
...Even apart from basic reform, it can be argued that HPD needs new strategies to cope with its assignment, given the limited resources that Ms...
...indeed, the election news would have swamped it...
...but we in fact included them...
...Shaw quotes its passage about "the long history of anti-Catholic prejudice in American society," cites its finding that contemporary news accounts repeatedly depict the church as conservative, oppressive, and irrelevant, and concludes: "This is, frankly, a troubling record...
...Copyright _9 1991 Commonweal Foundation...
...He doesn't teach, he doesn't tour...
...The judge's decision did not mean that the matter was dropped...
...Thus while failing to rebut my charge that his earlier article had erred three times, his reply to my letter again errs three times...
...Similarly, without citing any evidence Mr...
...Are the statutes that judges must follow too lax and loopholeridden, so that poor people can obtain redress only in extreme cases...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...The few paragraphs on unions in the document combine generalized praise of their contributions to democracy with some specific statements that convey ambiguous messages to those familiar with labor questions, e.g., the emphasis on "voluntary association...
...Institutions: US $50...
...A man cuts himself shaving and someone is signed up to write the biography of the cut...
Vol. 118 • August 1991 • No. 14
