New York columnist Jimmy Breslin dies at age 86
Source: Reuters
19 MAR 2017 AT 10:42 ET
Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman Jimmy Breslin, a self-described street reporter who chronicled New York City for more than 60 years in newspaper stories and columns and won acclaim for his coverage of the Son of Sam serial killings, died on Sunday at age 86, media reported.
Breslins death was confirmed by his wife, Ronnie Eldridge, a New York politician and television host, the New York Times reported. The cause of death was not specified, but Breslin had been recovering from pneumonia.
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Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/new-york-columnist-jimmy-breslin-dies-at-age-86/
George II
(67,782 posts)....and later television personality. The typical "bombastic" Irish Catholic New Yorker, we all loved him and his work.
dalton99a
(81,386 posts)And yes, Ronald Reagan belongs on a $3-bill.
MADem
(135,425 posts)NYT said he was 88....AP said 87!
RIP, JB...he wrote some great stuff.
' Born James Earle Breslin on Oct. 17, 1928, he grew up in the Richmond Hill section of Queens. '
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/media/jimmy-breslin-dead-ny-columnist-author.html?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)trof
(54,256 posts)Helluva writer.
"The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight"
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)he'd be writing a book titled:
The republican-russian cabal that couldn't pee straight
Kimchijeon
(1,606 posts)He will be missed!
no_hypocrisy
(46,011 posts)I valued Breslin, Nat Hentoff, and Wayne Barrett.
elleng
(130,714 posts)Last edited Sun Mar 19, 2017, 02:02 PM - Edit history (1)
'Jimmy Breslin, the New York City newspaper columnist and best-selling author who leveled the powerful and elevated the powerless for more than 50 years with brick-hard words and a jagged-glass wit, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88, and until very recently, was still pushing somebodys buttons with two-finger jabs at his keyboard.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Ronnie Eldridge, a prominent Manhattan Democratic politician. Mr. Breslin had been recovering from pneumonia.
With prose that was savagely funny, deceptively simple and poorly imitated, Mr. Breslin created his own distinct rhythm in the hurly-burly music of newspapers. Here, for example, is how he described Clifton Pollard, the man who dug President John F. Kennedys grave, in a celebrated column from 1963 that launched legions of journalists to find their gravedigger:
Pollard is forty-two. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.
Here is how, in one of the columns that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, he focused on a single man, David Camacho, to humanize the AIDS epidemic, which was widely misunderstood at the time:
He had two good weeks in July and then the fever returned and he was back in the hospital for half of last August. He got out again and returned to Eighth Street. The date this time doesnt count. By now, he measured nothing around him. Week, month, day, night, summer heat, fall chill, the color of the sky, the sound of the street, clothes, music, lights, wealth dwindled in meaning. . .
Mr. Breslin came honestly to his empathy and distrust. Born James Earle Breslin on Oct. 17, 1928, he grew up in the Richmond Hill section of Queens. When Jimmy was 6 years old, his father, James, a musician, deserted the family, leaving him to share an apartment with an emotionally distant mother, Frances a supervisor in the East Harlem office of the citys welfare department who drank as well as a younger sister, a grandmother and various aunts and uncles.
Many decades later, after Mr. Breslin had become famous, his father, destitute in Miami, came back into his life like heavy snow through a broken window, he would write. He paid for his fathers medical bills and sent him a telegram that said, NEXT TIME KILL YOURSELF. When his father died, in 1974, he paid for the cremation and said: Good. Thats over.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/business/media/jimmy-breslin-dead-ny-columnist-author.html?
sinkingfeeling
(51,436 posts)Jim__
(14,059 posts)DinahMoeHum
(21,771 posts)That was Jimmy Breslin in spades.
Rest In Power, JB.