Word: auletta
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...Koch's feelings about nonwhites, about blacks especially, are mixed and volatile. In 1979 Journalist Ken Auletta was researching a two-part profile of the mayor for The New Yorker. Koch gave Auletta permission to go through a series of oral memoirs that he had recorded for Columbia University in 1975 and 1976. Among Koch's statements on race was this: "I find the black community very antiSemitic. I don't care what the American Jewish Congress or the B'nai B'rith will issue by way of polls showing that the black community is not. I think that...
Today Koch is sore at Auletta for printing those remarks because they showed Koch in a bad light, one that his enemies like the Village Voice enjoy switching on. But Koch does not deny having those feelings then, nor does he recant them now. On the other hand, he has frequently spoken out against injustice to blacks. He has appointed a higher percentage of blacks (18%) to top administrative positions than did any one of the three mayors who preceded him. He took the patronage out of the procedure for choosing young people for summer jobs, and raised the percentage...
...Auletta writes in short, clear and unembellished, journalistic prose--a blessing in the long, complicated sections about city finance, but often tiresome in more analytic passages. Almost every paragraph begins with a short, declarative sentence, a basically sound idea, but one which suffers from great overuse. More careful editing and proofreading--the book is riddled with typos--would have helped enormously...
...conclusion, Auletta ridicules Mayor Edward I. Koch's vision of a renaissance in the city. He feels that Koch has been as promiscuous with city funds as his predecessors; and that the mayor has not yet confronted the issues--growing debt and budget, shrinking tax base, et al.--that will determine whether the city lives or dies. On Koch's efforts, Auletta quotes the Wizard of Oz's excuse to Dorothy: "I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad wizard...
...sins of the municipal fathers have placed New York City in a position where only the most drastic measures can restore it to a competitive position among American cities. Auletta never specifies what exactly should be done--that is not what his book is about. It is about a city that sought to do too much--to give what it didn't have, to take what it could not use. Auletta says the city wasn't murdered. It committed suicide...