Mayor Ed Koch-An Equal-Opportunity Provocateur?
Stem, Sol
MAYOR ED KOCH- AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY PROVOCATEUR? SOL STERN It was the kind of summer that brings out everything mean about the city. Temperatures soared into the 90s nearly every day; the subway...
...Later in the speech he suggested that the Kahan Commission (which investigated the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps) was imposed on Israel "by many of our Jewish 'liberals.' " No doubt there are other Jews in America who share that view, but few of them were once so solidly identified as liberals as was Ed Koch, back in the days when he served in the House of Representatives...
...In June, Mayor Koch learned through the media that a congressional subcommittee, chaired by black congressman John Conyers, would be coming to New York to conduct hearings on allegations in the black community of pervasive police brutality...
...Another well-connected Jewish leader said, "I'm very scared, I'm very worried about 198S...
...He is going to have a tough race," says Garth...
...Newfield lied publicly, and apologized for the lie publicly, back in 1972...
...The next election is going to be very nasty," said Haskell Lazere, Executive Director of the New York chapter of the American Jewish Committee...
...It's vintage Ed Koch...
...Kenyatta on the shoulder...
...If anyone comes in for a special interest group he certainly is not careful in the way he verbalizes things...
...But it would be a bit more persuasively mature were it not accompanied by denunciation of yesterday's bedfellows...
...the black leadership, low blows from all sides, a depressingly familiar theme of New York City's politics these days...
...They still have the shtetl mentality...
...Those Jews, he went on, "are only comfortable in the role of underdog...
...Koch was taken down a peg last year, when he lost the Democratic primary for governor to Mario Cuomo, partly because he had so antagonized, blacks, liberal Jews, upstaters—but in the boroughs of New York City, in the white, middle-class, ethnic neighborhoods, he was and still is extremely popular...
...Ed is a complicated guy...
...So that his supporters, even if they have to apologize for the ruffled feelings his words create, can at least claim that he's telling the truth as he sees it...
...Defamatory allegations, questioning unnamed people's motives and loyalties—the stuff of the demagogue...
...A city is not well-governed when its mayor, without warrant, without reason, dismisses those who disagree with him as "morons" and "cowards," when he asks that we celebrate and reward a "style"—and what is style if not character?—that depends so heavily on calumny and mistruth...
...Now, there are some people who say, 'Do it with a different style.' [But] I didn't make up my style...
...Back in 1975-76, Ed Koch recorded, as part of an oral history project, his perception that "the black community [is] very anti-Semitic...
...He was all over the city—conducting town hall meetings, signing proclamations, offering his opinions on everything from the State of Israel to the state of the Democratic Party...
...An unfortunate incident, no doubt, but hardly what Koch remembers, or, in any case, tells...
...The message seemed clear: Black political leaders who attack Koch and the Police Department are soft on black muggers...
...I say it in the name of Martin Luther King,' he shouted...
...I did not find that sense of balance, I did not find that the person who wrote the article presented me with the good and the bad, only the bad...
...If you go back and look at the Barbara primary [in 1981, when Koch lost every single black assembly district in the city to an unknown and underfinanced candidate name Frank Barbara], which was a 60-40 primary, which means 10 percent plus or minus and it goes the other way—he's going to have a fight...
...Koch used the incident to bait the critics of police brutality, asking publicly why those critics hadn't condemned the hoodlums in the park...
...Leave aside the fact that just about everyone understood Koch's initial criticism to be directed at black leaders...
...Under McGuire, the Police Department has tightened up on the use of deadly force to the point where it has one of the best records for restraint in the country...
...Though critical of the Department's inadequate review process for handling complaints of brutality, Emory praises Commissioner McGuire's efforts to curb brutality...
...The fact that so many New Yorkers—for the time being, at any rate—respondlo that invitation is Ed Koch's gain...
...After all, I prompted, Jack Newfield "used to be your political ally...
...No," replied the mayor, "I don't think that Jack Newfield could ever be perceived as a political ally...
...But the man, identified as Charles Kenyatta, was gesticulating wildly...
...Since when do politicans tell the truth...
...Perhaps that's a judgment call...
...In an interview a couple of months later I asked Koch to identify the Jews he was accusing of "knuckling under to the State Department...
...In Ed's way, he has acted the same to everyone...
...No cant...
...Send the Jew back to the synagogue.' Well, you know, you can get crazies almost anywhere...
...What is Hoenline's personal view of the mayor's style...
...In short, no matter (or almost no matter) what Koch does, he can keep the support of those constituents—so long as he resists liberal "cant" and keeps speaking with what Podhoretz calls "nerviness and candor...
...Are you familiar with the fact that he lied publicly...
...What the hell does the mayor mean by saying that those who criticize police brutality ought to criticize those people who were hoodlums in the park...
...An illustration of the kind of thing that makes people so nervous was this summer's flare-up between the mayor and virtually the entire black leadership over the "police brutality" hearings...
...As a matter of fact, it turns out that the first Voice piece on Koch as mayor (by Arthur Bell) praised him lavishly for his executive order on gay rights...
...The hearings finally opened on a blisteringly hot day in July...
...William Gardner, who was making the introduction, and many in the congregation of about 400 people beseeched him to be quiet...
...Once upon a time, Koch was the Voice's lawyer, but that was before Koch moved right and the Voice moved left...
...Yes," he replied, "I did [give interviews to Voice writers...
...Or the fact that in May 1977, Koch took Newfield and his wife to dinner, where he asked Newfield's help in getting the endorsement of the Voice for his mayoral campaign...
...In any event, John Oakes, former Senior Editor of the New York Times, responded to coverage of the mayor's speech with an oped piece in the Times in which he accused Koch of McCarthy ism...
...That may not be quite the formula for continuing political success Koch evidently thinks it is...
...David Garth, the man who engineered his first election victory, acknowledges that the hostility towards Koch in the black community is real, and will be a factor in the next election...
...Now, you should know that he has lied in support of his position...
...On one TV panel show that was supposed Sol Stern is a freelance writer who has written for many national publications...
...He's not wrong...
...And all this, to the embarrassment of the black leadership, was played out under the glare of the TV cameras...
...After all, we are children of God.' "The remark evoked hearty applause...
...Take the case of veteran political writer Jack Newfield, for example...
...And I thought to myself, 'Well, he's a crazy and somebody will say that.' Do you know that nobody stood up on my behalf...
...He is a journalist who seeks to get his point of view executed...
...He refused: "I don't think it helps for me to designate individuals," he said...
...a few weeks later, he was back on the warpath...
...So what...
...Not long ago, there was another mayor who happened to be Jewisli— but Ed Koch is New York's first Jewish mayor, both in his style and in his declared interests...
...Now I'm simply saying to you," Koch continued, "that as of that moment any impact he [Newfield) might have had on my consciousness was ended...
...I went through every issue of the Voice published during Koch's first year in office...
...I did...
...He began his response by describing an incident that occurred on Martin Luther King Day, just 15 days after he took office, in 1978...
...Until 1981—just two years ago—he had, in fact, been quite in step with many of those Jewish 'liberals' he now accuses...
...I was the only white person in the church...
...So the black leaders are black and the black hoodlums are black...
...We got to talking about the Central Park muggers and his suggestion that the black leadership had been remiss in not condemning them...
...Another round to Ed Koch, who, in his by-now-familiar style, kept slugging away...
...Newfield and his paper, the Village Voice, have been quite near the top of the enemies list for some time...
...There was a near-mob atmosphere as hundreds of angry blacks pushed their way into the inadequate and overcrowded Harlem chambers, shouting insults and booing the mayor...
...It's these that set him apart from the run-of-the-mill politicians...
...And I think Ed is a good person and a good Jew...
...I don't think anyone is naive enough to believe that he has caused them . . . but I guess that someone could construct a case that sometimes his style has led to exacerbation of situations...
...But then, during a visit to Israel, he was taken on a tour of the West Bank with Arik Sharon as his guide, and he came away a convert...
...Let the service go on,' he said...
...And then Koch went on to describe Oakes's colleague, Anthony Lewis: "I do find outrageous people like Tony Lewis, who never have anything decent to say about the government of Israel, laud the Arabs, hate the Israelis...
...Early...
...It's a complicated question," he replies...
...Surely not a case study, as Koch sought to have it appear, of dishonorable behavior and toleration of anti-Semitism...
...And then Rangel—who has been mentioned as a potential candidate against Koch in 198S—did a little polarizing of his own: "I've said over and over I can bring as many mob people down to City Hall as anyone else in Harlem...
...And it's reporters like you who find that incredible...
...That just elevates them...
...With his combative political instincts, Mayor Koch smelted a rat...
...What's happened instead is that we've simply traded one set of slogans for another, too often demeaning, offensive, shabby...
...Koch spoke in bitter tones as he told me that depressing story, and I understood, of course, the bitterness...
...I'm going to tell you something," Mayor Koch told me in our interview...
...now they regularly attack him...
...Normally,'reporters and editorial writers are supposed to be out there telling the truth without regard to fear or favor, and it's the politicans who are very zealous in making sure they say nothing that could irritate people...
...It takes "nerviness," doesn't it, for the mayor of New York to take to the airwaves with an attack on a journalist of Tony Lewis's position—and to add to his criticism the juicy fact that Lewis had changed his name...
...In June he began a campaign against those elements in the American Jewish community who had not, in his judgment, been adequately steadfast in their support of the Begin government...
...Or try this: In the course of our interview, I asked the mayor for his reaction to the perception of many blacks that his administration is neglecting them...
...And Jack Newfield's first article on Mayor Koch, a month later, was a balanced—though critical—assessment of the mayor's first 30 days in office: "So far Koch has probably done more things right than wrong...
...So it turns out that the famous Koch style, on which his reputation rests, is built on a platform of abuse, mistruth, a meanness of spirit and temper that go well beyond "style," that reach right down into substance...
...Except the juicy fact is only juicy—it's not a fact...
...But to my mind, that doesn't justify, not for a second, his readiness, falsely and recklessly, to misshape the "truth" about black attitudes towards Jews in remarks to a reporter from a Jewish magazine...
...not one had ever been granted an interview...
...That's how Congressman Rangel understood what Koch was saying...
...He's the urban statesman who was supposed to bring us all beyond the 60s, show us how we could be well-governed on the basis of reality rather than liberal cant and slogan...
...Let Basil Patterson speak first...
...Black leaders responded with nasty personal attacks against Koch...
...And there's a pattern here...
...I do find it incredible—though not in the mayor's meaning of the word...
...The rabbi won't let you come into the synagogue and speak first.' "As the Mayor looked up without comment, the Rev...
...You wouldn't guess it from the way he was casting stones this summer, but Ed Koch is actually a bit of a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to standing up for the Begin government on the issue of West Bank settlements...
...He's been doing it for six years now, and with gusto...
...With me, it's the reverse...
...Koch snapped at me that I was falling into the trap of assuming that he was only attacking black leaders, and he went on to cite two "white leaders" who—he said— had also been critical of the police and silent on the muggers...
...Now isn't it incredible that with the same style you say my opponents don't like and some of my supporters don't like I went from 48 percent of the general vote in 1977 to 75 percent in 1981...
...His report also described the black man who stood and interrupted the ceremonies just as the mayor was about to be introduced— but from there on, everything in his account is at variance with the mayor's version: "The Rev...
...He worked 16-hour days, dominated the media and no one could remember the last time he went on vacation...
...Maybe he believes that today, maybe it is even so...
...Koch fumed at Emory, who, he said, "was prepared to testify that the police were engaging in brutality although he had never, in the six years he had an opportunity to talk to Bob McGuire, the commissioner, or to me as mayor, ever raised the issue on a single occasion...
...What an indictment of the black community, what a rude beginning to his service as mayor...
...There's an attempt to paint Ed as the common enemy for all blacks—and Ed is playing into their hands...
...I don't have the shtetl mentality...
...In that connection, he has communicated with Bob McGuire's deputy for legal affairs dozens of times, and has personally raised issues of police misconduct with McGuire himself on at least three different occasions...
...It's not that it's amazing or surprising, but that it is literally incredible—that is, not believable...
...Is that what he's trying to convey...
...That popularity was shrewdly analyzed a few years ago by another Koch enthusiast, Norman Pbdhoretz, who—in a piece in New York magazine—hailed Koch (along with Ronald Reagan) as a new-breed politican who could so effectively communicate certain "shared values" to his middle-class constituents that his popularity would survive even if there was a deterioration in their "material conditions of life...
...New York Times reporter Edwin McDowell was also there that day, and reported on the incident the next...
...It's as if Ed Koch has his own private enemies list, and once you get on it, rational debate no longer matters, nor truth...
...The mayor, who is now in almost daily confrontation with the black community, is also, as it happens, the most outspoken and self-identifying Jewish politician in the country...
...In the Jewish community, some people have already begun to worry about the next mayoral election, still two years away...
...My problem is that I can't get them back home...
...Was this, I asked, because of his declared concern with "fiscal prudence," or was something more involved...
...Why should I lend myself to such an ' interview...
...What is style...
...If Koch is, as some have claimed, the classic case of "the liberal who has been mugged by reality," he's become an expert at mugging back—and doing it with pettiness and lies, large and small...
...The fact is that this city could be torn apart by that mayoral election...
...Today's Ed Koch anathematizes those who are still critical of Begin's policies—as he was until yesterday—as cringing, "shtetl Jews"—and then goes on to describe himself as "proud of being Jewish...
...The problem, as I later learned, is that there is no reason to believe Koch's version of what happened in that Harlem church...
...And I think that's a problem...
...The story, in Ed Koch's version: "I was invited to the Convent Avenue Baptist Church to deliver the proclamation commemorating that day...
...But it turns out that Richard Emory's responsibilities at the CLU include the handling of complaints of police abuse...
...We have within the community those who feel that his style has alienated people, has caused unnecessary tensions, has affected our relationships and exacerbated black-Jewish tensions," says Malcolm Hoenline, the street-wise Director of the Metropolitan Jewish Community Relations Council and a strong Koch supporter...
...Basil Patterson, Deputy Mayor, who was sitting right next to me did not stand up and say anything...
...Kenyatta left the balcony a moment later...
...The same thing with the Jewish groups, for that matter...
...you don't always have to say everything you believe...
...there is not a single story on Koch that is based on a personal interview...
...The pastor didn't say anything...
...There were perhaps 500 black congregants...
...But that's what's supposed to make Ed Koch different...
...Gee, you'd have to be crazy to give this back," he said at the time...
...Watching him, listening to him," Podhoretz wrote, "most New Yorkers—choking for years on hypocrisy and cant—are delighted to see behavior that reflects their own attitudes and to hear words that articulate their own sentiments...
...We can't go into the synagogue and speak...
...The bachelor from Greenwich Village with a 100-percent ADA voting record as a congressman had made himself into a national figure, and much of it was due to style—specifically, to a confrontational, colorful manner that some see as refreshingly blunt and others as disgustingly rude, but that almost all agree involves his giving the back of his hand to anyone dumb enough to believe the things Ed Koch himself just yesterday believed in...
...whatever else may be true of Ed Koch, "he tells it like it is...
...Maybe—but then how are we to explain the fact that Koch and Newfield maintained a friendly, cooperative relationship until 1977, a fact attested by the letters from Koch that Newfield showed me...
...What is it that he was trying to do by telling me the story...
...One of the two white leaders, Koch observed, was Richard Emory, a staff attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union...
...How can the mayor say that, except to polarize...
...Anthony Lewis's name has always been Anthony Lewis...
...Perhaps it's a mark of maturity to be so flexible, to be able so readily to change your mind...
...1 asked the mayor whether his charge of bias was derived from interviews he'd given the paper after taking office...
...Never once...
...These were once his friends...
...Today, as Koch told me, he holds the Voice in "utter contempt," going so far as to refuse personal interviews to any writer from the Voice...
...That's what it comes down to...
...Koch said: "'I am never going to be in a situation where I'm going to sit silently by while whites attack blacks, blacks attack whites, Christians attack Jews, Jews attack Christians...
...Koch then told me how 10 years ago, Newfield helped Bella Abzug, then running for office, cover up the fact that she had once opposed the sale of jet fighter planes to Israel...
...Finally, one congregant said, 'Hush, brother.' I thought to myself, 'Is that the best you can do?' "I give you that illustration by way of pointing out that I am very sensitive, and I think that sensitivity on the part of the pastor or anyone else in that audience would have required a greater response than that...
...For it turns out that this man whose public image depends so heavily on truth-telling doesn't exactly tell the truth...
...You should know that Jack Newfield is not a simple reporter...
...They are still troubled by self-hatred and embarrassed by Israel's emergence as a strong independent state...
...Police brutality, after all, had not been a burning item on the black political agenda for quite some time, furthermore, Koch's Police Commissioner, Robert McGuire, is generally viewed"—even by the mayor's fiercest critics—as doing an excellent job...
...In my earlier interviews with reporters of the Voice...
...That same perception is even more crucial to Koch himself than it is to his supporters...
...Koch's media advisor, David Garth, echoes the uneasiness of many Koch supporters over his confrontational style...
...No, he didn't...
...With me, I'm out there telling the truth, irritating people, not to irritate but simply to convey to the people of the City of New York what in fact their government is doing...
...And what he does, he does because he honestly believes it...
...and Ed Koch was once again trading insults with angry blacks...
...So it is natural that among those people who worry about the delicate state of black-Jewish relations, there's special interest in Koch and his impact...
...Accordingly, Koch went public with a charge that the hearings were being used as a "vehicle to enhance the political objectives" of his potential electoral opponents in the black community...
...And the shame of it, the depressing shame of it, is that Ed Koch is not another hack politician...
...I don't think he can control himself and I think it's very dangerous...
...the fact that Ed Koch, who ought to know better, persists in doing it is New York's loss, and shame...
...Wilson, the pastor of the church, walked to the balcony and patted Mr...
...Take Koch's public remarks about Anthony Lewis...
...Then Mr...
...That's not right...
...I think Ed is a good mayor...
...In an interview on a local Jewish radio program called "The Freilach Hour," he said he found Oakes's response "comical" since Oakes was one of those "self-hating, shtetl" Jews he had in mind...
...instead, a "crazy," to use his term, and then a response from the audience as decent as one might wish...
...If Ed Koch is as popular as he surely appears to be, it's not because New York City works so much better these days, but because people across quite a wide spectrum of political belief appreciate his "honesty," his evident lack of political doublespeak, his candor...
...I like my style," he told me...
...Patterson made some brief remarks...
...Afterward, Mr...
...In a prepared speech to Emunah Women he castigated "fellow Jews in the United States who have knuckled under to the pressures of the State Department and the anti-Israel sentiment that has grown in our land...
...If the Oakes critique ruffled Koch, he didn't show it...
...There were times this summer when, indeed, Koch seemed determined to prove that he can be an equal-opportunity provocateur...
...It's taken him quite a while to understand the importance of how you verbalize certain problems in sensitive ethnic groups...
...He viewed the settlements as an "irritant to the peace process, further alienating the Arabs and world public opinion...
...A few days after the hearings were aborted, several hundred black toughs went on a rampage of muggings and beatings in Central Park after a concert there by singer Diana Ross...
...I think maybe he hates himself a little bit, because his name wasn't always Tony Lewis...
...Koch himself knows it's substantive...
...And when I got up just simply to deliver the proclamation— and you have to bear in mind that I hadn't done anything bad, I hadn't done anything good, I had only been in office for IS days—a black in the audience stood up and said in loud, ringing terms: 'Don't let him speak...
...There may, in other words, be a penalty for practicing the politics of malice...
...to discuss whether a black could be elected president, Harlem congressman Charles Rangel couldn't stop talking about the mayor...
...When I spoke with him about the matter, he was livid: "The problems the mayor has with blacks are not just political...
...The Ed Koch that you see here today is the Ed Koch you would have seen in Congress...
...This summer he seemed to be the only New Yorker not wilting in the heat...
...Again, a plausible response by a politician who feels he's been treated unfairly...
...I spoke to every reporter who has covered city politics for the Voice since Koch became mayor...
...These people are my guests.' "Mr...
...He was easily the most visible, mos,t accessible, most verbally gifted mayor since the legendary Fiorello LaGuardia...
...It works...
...Conditions became so chaotic that Congressman Conyers decided to postpone the hearings—but not before a few of the more demagogic community activists—one of them a pronounced anti-Semite—got their licks in at Koch over the microphone...
...True enough, but there's growing anger among Koch's opponents and, apparently, growing edginess among his supporters...
...His feeling, though, is that he's telling the truth...
...the subway system teetered on the brink of total breakdown...
...He felt the story would illustrate how it was he who had been unfairly victimized by blacks, and not the other way around...
...And so it went through the summer: Koch vs...
...Style is your character, style is your personality...
...Me charged that Koch's problems with blacks were personal and that his response to the hearings was "sick...
...I had imagined that by talking about Newfield and the Voice, we'd get at the subject of liberalism and Koch's shift over the years...
Vol. 8 • October 1983 • No. 9
