Word: newfield
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...good magazine; it would be nice if it could survive along with the other bi-weekly politics and arts journals like The Nation and The New Republic. Its difficulties should smooth out, and if Morgan can snare some other old friends from the Voice to write--like Jack Newfield, for instance--it can become solid reading about politics that have a focus--at least as much as they can in America--away from Washington. If not, then we'll be left with the lawn sprinkler evaluations, sandwiched in with reviews of the latest from Linda Ronstadt...
...question of who maimed New York City has become Newfield's obsession. He is concerned not only with immediate injury-the 30-month-long fiscal crisis-but with chronic economic and social ailments. The Abuse of Power is his answer. Though written with Paul Du Brul, a city planner, the book's thesis is pure Newfield: the city was not merely short-shrifted by federal policy, let down by feckless mayors and leeched by the unions. The case was, and remains, an exercise in gang rape with enough perpetrators to fill a penitentiary...
Hundreds of millions more have been stolen from assorted health and welfare programs. Virtually every audit turns up new hanky-panky by the entrepreneurs and "community leaders" who are supposed to serve the poor. Newfield recalls a typical 1974 dinner of the Brooklyn Democratic group whose hero was Mayor Abraham Beame. Seven of the guests have since been convicted of felonies (including two Congressmen) and several more are now under judicial and ethical clouds. From such organizations Beame drew much of his management talent...
...goes Newfield's script. He keeps compounding the felons until, surrounded by nothing but villainy, the reader grows weary and even skeptical. Substandard hyperbole ("We realized that behind almost every horror stood a banker") and doctrinaire populism ("They are making a desert and calling it a balanced budget") further reduce the authors' credibility. Invective obscures insight. John Lindsay was not merely an inadequate mayor but "a volunteer cuckold of the permanent government." The clubhouse crowd is condemned as "back-room dreck," though in fact it produces some good administrators...
...truths. If many of the specifics have been sporadically reported, if criminals have often been called to account, urban systems still manage to fend off basic reform. They will continue to do so until voters decide otherwise. For that millennium to occur, there need to be more Jeremiahs like Newfield willing to howl their grim, invaluable message over and over again. It cannot be heard by too many citizens, or heeded by too many cities...