Cosa Nostra News

One morning in the spring or fall of 1988 or '89 (or '90 or '91) while walking to (or from) my office on the Upper West Side, I happened to turn around and see an old man looking at me. A great reporter. He seemed completely oblivious to his surroundings, so totally lost in thought, it was as if he wasn't really there. He was wearing a three-piece suit and was smoking a pipe and was astride a bicycle. I realized two things: 1) he was Murray Kempton, then a columnist for New York Newsday (sadly, now defunct) and that 2) he wasn't looking at me; I happened to be standing in his line of sight. He was probably mentally composing his next New York Newsday column. Murray Kempton (1917-1997) was "a rarity among newspaper columnists, a self-effacing humanist bemused at his own leftist politics and filled with compassion for the downtrodden and notorious alike."

John Gotti, as New Yorkers remember him. This one, anyway. John Gotti was once the focus of so much media attention, it's difficult to truly comprehend the magnitude, as well as the full ramifications if you didn't live within New York's boroughs. Yes, Gotti's fame is international. But it's in New York where he truly was first a household name, where the pre-Internet media couldn't get its fill of the man. Most New Yorkers weren't sure what to make of him. But all that came later. The Don from central casting had forgotten to assemble a press kit to be distributed immediately following his seizure of power on Dec. 16, 1985.