"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers." -- Jimmy Breslin
Jimmy Breslin (born October 17, 1930) is an American journalist and author. He has written numerous novels, and columns of his have appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City. He was a regular columnist for the newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, and still has occasional pieces there.
"Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.""Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.""Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.""I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I'd never take a job in a place where you couldn't throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.""If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.""Media, the plural of mediocrity.""Politics, where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.""Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks.""The first funeral for Andrew Goodman was at night and it was a lot of work. To begin with they had to kill him.""The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.""The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.""Those of Manhattan are the brokers on Wall Street and they talk of people who went to the same colleges; those from Queens are margin clerks in the back offices and they speak of friends who live in the same neighborhood.""When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.""Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me."
Born in Jamaica, New York, Breslin was a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, the Daily News, Newsday, and other venues. When the Sunday supplement of the Tribune was reworked into New York magazine by editor Clay Felker in 1962, Breslin appeared in the new edition, which became "the hottest Sunday read in town." He has been married twice. His first marriage, to Rosemary Dattolico, ended with her death in 1981. They had six children together: sons Kevin, James, Patrick and Christopher, and daughters Rosemary and Kelly. His daughter Rosemary died June 14, 2004 from a rare blood disease and his daughter Kelly, 44, died on April 21. 2009, four days after a cardiac arrhythmia in a New York City restaurant. Since 1982, he has been married to former New York City Council member Ronnie Eldridge.
Among his notable columns, perhaps the best known was published the day after John F. Kennedy's funeral, focusing on the man who had dug the president's grave. Digging John F. Kennedy's Grave Was An Honor: November 1963 The column is indicative of Breslin's style, which often highlights how major events or the actions of those considered "newsworthy" affect the "common man."
He ran an unsuccessful campaign as an independent for the position of president of the New York City Council in 1969. He allied himself with Norman Mailer, who was running for the position of mayor at the same time, on a platform which proposed the secession of New York City from the rest of New York state. Both were soundly defeated.
Breslin's public profile in the '60s as a regular guy led to a brief stint as a TV pitchman for Piels Beer, most memorably in a bar room commercial where he intoned in his deep voice "Piels- it's a good drinkin' beer!".
His career as an investigative journalist led him to cultivate ties with various Mafia and criminal elements in the city, not always with positive results. In 1970, he was viciously attacked and beaten at The Suite, a restaurant then owned by Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill. The attack was carried out by mobster Jimmy Burke, who objected to an article Breslin had written involving another member of the Lucchese family, Paul Vario. Though Breslin suffered an epistaxis(nosebleed) and a major concussion, he survived the ordeal without any permanent injury. In 1977, at the height of the Son of Sam scare in New York City, the killer, who was later identified as David Berkowitz, addressed letters to Breslin. Excerpts from these were published and were later used in the Spike Lee film Summer of Sam, a film in which Breslin, portraying himself, bookends. In 2008, The Library of America selected one of Breslin's many Son of Sam articles for the New York Daily News for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.
Breslin has received numerous accolades throughout his career. In 1985, he received a George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting. In 1986, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
After fellow Newsday columnist Ji-Yeon Mary Yuh described one of Breslin's articles as sexist, Breslin threw a tantrum in a newsroom, calling her a "slant-eyed cunt" and a "yellow cur", stating that "the fucking bitch doesn't know her place". While the Asian American and anti-hate groups forcefully decried Breslin's outburst, he went unpunished until he later went on to "call into the Howard Stern show to joke about his outburst and exchange jabs about Koreans". It was after his second act of insensitivity that led Newsday managing editor Anthony Marro to suspend Breslin, who then apologized.
Upon the death of George Steinbrenner on July 13, 2010, Breslin was interviewed live on ESPN by Brian Kenny and asked about his thoughts regarding Steinbrenner and his legacy. Breslin responded, "We need to stop deifying this man. He never played first base. He was the owner of the Yankees, and he was a good guy, but that's it." He also stated "You're living in a phony history. This town never has much trouble, it's New York,"
