Political Booknotes
POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Public affairs books scheduled to be published this month. Fall from Grace: The Failed Crusade of the Christian Right. Michael D'Antonio. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $19.95....
...Here we are told to expect, for example, that as the retrenchment of Social Security and Medicare causes the baby boomers to delay retirement well into their seventies, office coffee breaks will be replaced by meditation breaks...
...Well, I'll pray for you...
...It was Governor Cuomo's office, alerting Hynes that he might be called in...
...Strong words...
...But there are other stories—about shattered lives on both sides of the courtroom, about race relations in the city and the country— that we're still waiting to hear...
...The authors describe themselves as former creative directors at "some of the country's top advertising firms," who today are partners in "a consulting firm specializing in marketing to the 50-plus audience...
...Phillip Longman Incident at Howard Beach...
...There's a numbing avalanche of names, but Hynes spends most of his energy detailing the efforts of the hardworking staff...
...Gotti associates were going around collecting money for the gang's defense...
...And the cops' racism: The surviving victim, Cedric Sandiford, was roughly searched and questioned by the police who found him bleeding and shaking on the highway that night, as if he were a perpetrator instead of a victim...
...Yet one is also disappointed there isn't more of an insider's account...
...Instead, he remains sensitive to the struggles and dreams of the Christian men and women who had given so much— spiritually, emotionally, and financially— to the born-again movement...
...I know you do...
...D'Antonio wanders all though the world of the Christian Right, talking, eating, and traveling with members of enormous fundamentalist "megachurches," workers in Pat Robertson's failed presidential campaign, visitors to the Bakkers's Christian theme park, and even right-wing missionaries in Honduras...
...As Hynes says, "Sending him to Howard Beach was like sending a rookie out to pitch the seventh game of the World Series...
...At that moment, the phone rang...
...While it helped propel him into the Brooklyn DA's office, it also forced him to accept round-theclock protection and made him an unwelcome face in once-familiar Queens haunts...
...Man may be evil and the world may be crazy," said Frank's wife, Amy, "but at least we know we are saved...
...Hynes expresses frustration at how they initially refused to permit Sandiford to talk to the police at a point when the cops were on the verge of making arrests...
...Such sensitivity strengthens this book and increases the credibility of the story D'Antonio tells...
...His wounds went untreated for three hours and when he called his fiancee to tell her that her son, Michael Griffith, had been killed, a cop snatched the phone out of his hand after a few moments, snarling that his time was up...
...The case undeniably had a lasting effect on Hynes...
...He, like other New Yorkers, was tossed by the conflicting passions the case aroused...
...AIDS wouldn't be here if we had followed the Bible," said one conservative Christian woman in Houston...
...What is most compelling about Incident at Howard Beach is the story itself...
...Then many dreamed of Pat Robertson in the White House, but his candidacy utterly collapsed soon after the New Hampshire primary...
...And yet, in the course of his autopsy, he shows remarkable compassion for the body under his knife...
...Was Santucci incompetent, stupid, or just counting votes in Howard Beach and places like it...
...Conservative Christians hoped Ronald Reagan would establish this orthodox American-ism, but he let them down...
...Hynes's unique perspective adds depth to a familiar story...
...And I mean that in the best way...
...about the media and black activism...
...Even the investigation detectives were shocked when Santucci sent over a 26-year-old assistant to interview the suspects...
...The problems of modern life could be made bearable only by faith in God's quickly approaching final triumph...
...Then the remainder of the born-again movement was infected by scandals among the televangelists and conflict between moderates and conservatives in the powerful Southern Baptist denomination...
...God has blessed America abundantly, but we've turned away from Him," said a political consultant in South Carolina...
...During the Civil War, an elderly lady rebuked Abraham Lincoln for speaking kindly of his Southern enemies instead of plotting their destruction...
...When old moral lessons were ignored, disaster struck: two of the biggest televangelists, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, were brought down by sexrelated scandals...
...He reveals, for instance, what a chilling effect reputed organized crime chieftain John Gotti and his pals—who call Howard Beach home—had on potential witnesses...
...He found a couple of characteristics that unite these various groups...
...Are these "typical" middle-class families...
...rather, they were honest, caring Americans who were overwhelmed by social turmoil and fearful of changes in their homes, communities, and country...
...Why madam," said Lincoln, "do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends...
...Things are much worse in the world than they have ever been," said a Long Island charismatic named Frank...
...The case's final chapters have yet to be written...
...It would have been easy for a self-proclaimed nonbeliever like D'Antonio to gloat over such developments, but he doesn't...
...Macmillan, $18.95...
...Heroic battlers for racial justice to some, lying obstructionists to others, these two are the most intriguing and complex characters in the story...
...The "A-team," as he calls them, are a committed, brilliant, sensitive band of lovable prosecutors who are apparently without flaws...
...And there's a good chance that a controversial decision made by Hynes to challenge the right of defense attorneys to exclude potential jurors solely on the basis of race could mean an appeal of the manslaughter convictions before the U.S...
...Written by Charles J. Hynes and Bob Drury, a former New York reporter for Newsday (the paper I work for), the book doesn't explore how we got to Howard Beach, only how we got from Howard Beach to a cavernous courtroom on Queens Boulevard...
...Supreme Court...
...The rest of the book explains how the prosecutors broke the case and put at least some of the young thugs in jail...
...Henry G. Brinton Lifetrends: The Future of Baby Boomers and Other Aging Americans...
...And Hynes explains how his prosecutorial team's ingenious legal strategy was almost sabotaged by demands from two black activist lawyers, C. Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox...
...Jerry Gerber, Janet Wolff, Walter Klores, Gene Brown...
...Even someone familiar with the case will still wince at the horrifying details, as if reading them for the first time...
...This particular book, however, is about an investigation...
...For instance, one gang member's brother was a New York City cop and his father was a corrections officer...
...Hynes says Santucci never wanted the case, but what does that mean—that he screwed up the investigation on purpose...
...First, they shared the conviction that the end times were at hand...
...Decades of changing sexual behavior posed such problems for conservative Christians, and they reacted by taking strong positions against abortion and homosexuality...
...One wonders whether Hynes, who recently got elected Brooklyn DA and may have other political ambitions, didn't tiptoe around this one...
...The events of that horrifying December 1986 night (annoyingly referred to throughout the book as "The Incident") are told straightforwardly in the first two chapters...
...This provides a clue to their intentions in writing their book, which seems to have been to establish their credentials as experts on how to sell to the next, very large generation of elderly consumers...
...Second, there was the common belief that America had received a divine blessing—a blessing that would be lost if the country did not follow a Christian agenda...
...With the demise of Robertson's campaign came the death of the Christian Right's political hopes, according to D'Antonio...
...What the fuck do they want now," he screamed, daring Hynes to challenge him...
...But there are other chapters that need to be filled in as well...
...We know much more about this TV-perfect group than about the victims, the police, the politicians, the white kids and their families...
...In the same spirit, D'Antonio has criticized the Christian Right while eliciting sympathy for the foot soldiers of the bornagain movement...
...While in Heritage USA, the Bakkers's theme park, a woman asks, "Are you a born-again Christian...
...If so, God help us...
...No, I'm not," answers D'Antonio...
...If we cross a certain point, He's going to abandon us...
...Another far-reaching prediction: "Conference calls on video telephones will also be a frequent occurrence, especially on 'Family Day,' which aging baby boomers will probably make a national holiday by the year 2010...
...about the courts, the police, and organized crime...
...Members of the born-again Christian movement were not hysterical zealots, in his view...
...another's dad was a small-time hood with a record and ties to the underworld...
...And what about Mason and Maddox...
...Indeed, Hynes himself notes that after hearing Sandiford's wrenching account, he could understand why the fiery Maddox had gotten involved: "New York City, the criminal justice system, the Establishment, none of them had responded to a black man who believed his stepson had been the victim of a lynching . ...I wasn't just embarrassed...
...The result is not unlike an episode of "Colombo...
...I was sick to my stomach...
...He relates how he was in Boston, watching a TV news report on black marchers in Howard Beach when his red-faced cousin stormed into the room...
...One of the abiding mysteries is why Queens DA John Santucci refused to pursue the case aggressively...
...I'm obsessed with sex," said an Oral Roberts University junior interviewed by D'Antonio...
...This is a nonserious book about a serious subject...
...Patricia Cohen...
...Believing that sex should be saved for marriage, the young man played sports and lifted weights in an effort to control his desire...
...Putnam, $22.95...
...Just this past December, the riot convictions of three of the teens involved were overturned by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court...
...One kid's father explained why he couldn't permit his son to testify: "I don't want to come home from work one day and find a slab of cement where my house used to be...
...Yet without their infuriating intransigence in demanding a special prosecutor, we might be reading a book about how fumbling by a Queens DA sparked nasty racial confrontations in New York...
...Fear seemed to permeate every discussion of sexuality in the bornagain community, with many preachers using tragedies like AIDS to "prove" God's displeasure with homosexuals and with a society that allowed the gay community to exist...
...Thanks...
...Michael D'Antonio has cut into conservative Christianity and exposed its internal structure with the objectivity of a medical examiner...
...Charles J. Hynes, Bob Drury...
...There's .plenty here to chill your aging bones, but the authors seem more interested in how some people might make a buck out of the baby boomers' dismal prospects for old age...
...Another ORU student, recently intimate with a woman, described sex as a demon that had almost captured his soul...
...Crucial to this born-again agenda was support for school prayer, opposition to abortion, and staunch anticommunism...
...Attending a Debby Boone concert in Oklahoma, he sees a group of parents with retarded and physically deformed children and admires the way the parents treat their children lovingly and with great dignity...
...about cities...
...about America...
...Did both kids learn the language of hate at their dinner tables...
...We now have the prosecutor's story, and it's one that's worth hearing...
...It also explains why they equivocate about the truly controversial implications of an aging society, such as the pressures it creates for age-based health care rationing or the likelihood it brings of a more general "war between the generations" in the next century...
...There's the kids' battle cry— "There's niggers on the boulevard, let's go fuckin' kill them...
...That odyssey is not without power...
...Howard Beach is many stories—most obviously about race, but also about families and neighborhoods and upbringing...
...But does Hynes think the case would have been properly prosecuted if Mason and Maddox hadn't gotten involved...
...Although intolerant and ignorant, such a statement was part of an attempt by born-again Christians to maintain a sense of security and a feeling that life was under control...
Vol. 22 • February 1990 • No. 1
