Copyright 2009 The New York Sun Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:02:33 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Seth Lipsky :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Seth+Lipsky istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ideal-of-the-scoop/86858/ Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Following are excerpts of remarks by the Editor of the Sun, Seth Lipsky, to the newspaper's staff: It is my duty to report today that Ira Stoll and I and our partners have concluded that the Sun will cease publication. Our last number will be the issue dated September 30, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I want you to know that Ira and I, and our partners, explored every possible way to avoid having to cease publication. We have spoken with every individual who seemed to be a prospective... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/hamdans-trumpet/83270/ Wed, 6 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST For years I've had a theory about the portraits that hang in our courthouses — namely that in addition to the great judges and lawyers who are framed on canvas it would be fitting to include paintings of famed plaintiffs: Oliver Brown, who won his daughter the right to attend a school in Kansas that had been reserved for whites; Ernesto Miranda, who established the right to remain silent, and Clarence Earl Gideon, whose pauper's petition, filed from prison, won for all accused of a crime in... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/rooting-for-rangel/82725/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The one time I met Charles Rangel I took an immediate liking to him. The introduction had been set up by the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, who felt the chairman of Ways and Means was someone a new newspaper editor in town should know. So a breakfast was set up at the Carlyle. Mr. Morgenthau and I got there first, and at the appointed hour, Mr. Rangel joined us in the booth. As he settled in, I nodded a greeting and said, "Good morning, chairman, how are you this... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obama-in-berlin/81806/ Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Senator Obama will be in Berlin later this month for what will no doubt be one of the important tests of his campaign. So far the controversy has been over whether he will speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate, a backdrop for giants — Reagan spoke there — and a symbol, today, of our victory in the Cold War. But who will be with him? Too bad it couldn't be George Meany, Jay Lovestone, and Irving Brown. Those leaders of the free trade union movement are long since gone, and more's the pity. They... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/foreshadowing-2008/80468/ Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST One of the memorable moments in my career was a lunch with Isaac Bashevis Singer. It took place in July 1984 at the home of Simon Weber, who was then editor of the Jewish Daily Forward. Weber lived on the top floor of an apartment block overlooking Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. I've often told the story. When lunch commenced, I reported that the Wall Street Journal, for which I was then working, had just come out in favor, at least in principle, of open borders. "Oy," said the Nobel laureate... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/inside-abu-ghraib/78790/ Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Some years ago I gathered some friends and journalists for an evening with Hugh Thompson. He was the American warrant officer who, in Vietnam, had hovered his helicopter over a group of American GIs who were massacring the villagers of My Lai and forced an end to the slaughter. After Thompson spoke, someone asked why I, a hawk on Vietnam, had organized such an evening. I explained that I felt it is important for the hawks especially to confront the lapses on our own side. And to remember that... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/parenting/left-holding-the-leash/70369/ Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST A time will come in the life of every father — it's as inevitable as rain in the tropics — when his children will break precedent and show up at dinner without being called, some having just had a haircut and others having put on clean clothes and washed their hands without being asked, and, with their mother acting as their lawyer-in-fact, inform the aforementioned father that they desire to get a dog. There are ways to defend against this. One experienced father of my acquaintance used to... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/pearlstines-estimate/56820/ Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST One of the lucky breaks in my early newspaper career was being assigned, in the Detroit bureau of the Wall Street Journal, a desk that was within earshot of Norman Pearlstine. This gave me the chance to listen as Mr. Pearlstine worked his sources, a labor for which he was famous. Once an automobile industry contact balked at providing Mr. Pearlstine production numbers, and Mr. Pearlstine told him that he would publish his own estimate — adding, "and I always estimate low." That line was hung on... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/from-a-fathers-secret-a-universal-tale/51242/ Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST Lucinda Franks begins "My Father's Secret War" (Miramax, 320 pages, $24.95) with a prologue about learning to ride her bicycle with no hands. She starts at the top of a hill above their house, knowing that her father is waiting in the driveway, straddling his own bicycle and smiling. As she gathers speed, she lets go of the handlebars and soars down the hill, arms raised to the sky — only to lose the brakes and end up careering right into her father. "And," she writes, "there is this peace... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hero-in-his-own-right/45685/ Tue, 26 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST Uri Dan, who died Sunday at the age of 71, was one of the great journalists of his time. To thousands of New Yorkers he was known for his dispatches in the New York Post, which he served for 25 years as its correspondent in Israel. In 1954, he started writing for an Israel Defense Force paper. Early on, he met a young Israeli officer, Ariel Sharon, and the famous friendship began. It was Dan who, years later, forecast that those who would not have Ariel Sharon as chief of staff would have him... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hello-lucille/45325/ Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST The first time I saw B.B. King was in 1964 at the freshman mixer at Harvard College. What I recall about the occasion was standing next to my friend and classmate, James Rosenstein, who, when we were in high school, had taught me how to play the guitar. I remember turning to Jim — as we both stood there in amazement at the way Mr. King clamped his entire hand around the neck of the guitar and just seemed to be part of it — and saying, "wouldn't it be something to be able to actually meet him?"... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/jeane-we-hardly-knew-you/44936/ Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST The death of Jeane Kirkpatrick is a moment to reflect not only on a remarkable woman but also on the absence of a certain kind of Democrat from our politics today. When I met her, our defeat in Indochina was only six years past. President Reagan had just surprised the country by choosing a Democrat to represent America at the United Nations. A small dinner was convened so she could meet some of the newspapermen and -women who had an interest in what was then being called the Third World. I drew... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/1975-and-2007/43269/ Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST One of the first calls I made after the Democrats swept into power in the Congress was to Abner Mikva. He is one of the great honest liberals, a man I admire though on many things I don't agree with him. When he was White House counsel to President Clinton, he had taken issue with an editorial I'd written in the Forward ruing the decision of the 94th Congress to abandon Vietnam to the Communists. He'd told me that he was in the Congress back in 1975, when the vote was taken, that it was the... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/hebrew-huck-finn-reports/41556/ Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST The first time Jeffrey Goldberg showed up at the Forward, I could tell right away that he had the slouch of a newspaperman. He was seated in the office of my colleague, Jonathan Rosen. When I walked in to interview him for a reporting job, he made no motion to stand, though he deigned to shake my hand. I was preparing to make short shrift of the encounter, when it emerged that Mr. Goldberg had quit the University of Pennsylvania to join the Israeli army and that he had since taken up writing... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/spirit-of-stripes/32428/ Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 EST For the first time since the end of the war in Vietnam, the GIs who covered the combat there for Pacific Stars and Stripes gathered for a reunion. Held in the ground-floor common room of a condominium in Arlington, Va., the meeting was called by Robert Hodierne, now senior managing editor of Army Times. The rest of us came from around the country, a gathering of what had been - and still is, I discovered - one of the generation's merriest band of newspapermen. Caps were pried off the bottles of... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/framed-in-court/20913/ Mon, 3 Oct 2005 00:00:00 EST The first thing I wondered after Chief Justice Roberts was sworn in was, who is going to paint his portrait? And what kind of portraits belong in the court? Certainly the justices belong in oil; they are towering figures in our national life. But what about the ordinary men and women, sometimes common criminals, other times idealists, some with their backs to the wall, some simply cantankerous, who find their fortunes, reputations and even their lives in jeopardy before the bench? They are the... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/magical-moment/20076/ Thu, 15 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST While our politics were growing more fraught by the hour, with hurricane politics, Judge Roberts, and the United Nations on the boil, several dozen New Yorkers, from the right and left wings and in between, slipped out earlier this week for cocktails at the Carlyle. The occasion was the publication of Richard Tofel's new book - "Sounding the Trumpet" - about President Kennedy's inaugural address. The reception turned out to be a magical moment. Mr. Tofel, a friend for years, is a lawyer turned... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ufts-oasis/19904/ Mon, 12 Sep 2005 00:00:00 EST The school year opened with a historic picture on the front page of The New York Sun showing the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, in class with three bright-looking first-grade pupils at the union's new charter school in Brooklyn. It's the first time that the union has taken on the role of management. Ms. Weingarten was quoted by the Sun's reporter as calling the school an "oasis" but complaining that this is the third year the teachers have returned without a... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/time-line-of-a-revolution/18822/ Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:00:00 EST Listening to the hand-wringing in respect of the birth pangs of the Iraq constitution, one can be led to wonder whether President Bush - who is reported by Reuters to be downplaying the delay - is the only one with a sense of history. He clearly comprehends that America's own revolutionary time-line spanned the better part of a generation. While it's hard to draw analogies between our own history and the struggle to secure freedom in Iraq, it's illuminating to remind oneself of how tumultuous... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/beyond-brandeis/16834/ Tue, 12 Jul 2005 00:00:00 EST A picture of Louis D. Brandeis, who in 1916 was nominated by President Wilson to the Supreme Court, appeared July 3 in the New York Times over a cutline that said, "Brandeis was denounced as too liberal by the American Bar Association, business interests and former President Taft, who considered him a radical." The Times neglected to mention that he was also denounced as too liberal by the Times itself, along with a host of right-wing elements, including The New York Sun. Such concerns... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/evening-with-milton-friedman/16031/ Fri, 24 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The evening with Milton and Rose Friedman, hosted Wednesday evening by the educational foundation named after them, was designed to celebrate "50 Years of an Idea" - namely school vouchers. And it was one of the most memorable banquets this town has seen in years. I hadn't seen the Nobel laureate since the mid-1970s, when I was a young editor on the Asian Wall Street Journal and hosted a lunch for him with a group of local newspapermen in Hong Kong. A young Chinese reporter had pounced on him... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/sarah-aaronsohns-heroic-silence/14688/ Wed, 1 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST Some years ago I listened spellbound as the writer Hillel Halkin told the story of a Jewish spy ring that aided the British against the Turks in Palestine during World War I. It was an incredible conspiracy, led by a beautiful woman, Sarah Aaronsohn. Her heroic span ended in betrayal, followed by her plea for vengeance. The story was so good that I invited Mr. Halkin to tell it in the form of a nonfiction, novel-like narrative that was, in the 1990s, serialized in the Forward under the title... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/breakfast-with-sharon/14308/ Tue, 24 May 2005 00:00:00 EST The prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, high in a midtown hotel, welcomes his guests with the same smile and chuckle with which he has greeted old friends for as long as I have been covering him, now going on 25 years. It's an underappreciated element of his leadership. He is not doing press interviews during his stay, which is a private visit. But one of his friends, Michael Saperstein of Bear Stearns, has gathered for a private breakfast a handful of associates and friends, including the... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/arts/life-on-the-left/13238/ Tue, 3 May 2005 00:00:00 EST One day some years ago, when I was raising capital for the Forward newspaper, I found myself seeking the wisdom of Victor Navasky, who had emerged as one of the owners of the Nation. I discovered that Mr. Navasky was not only an extraordinarily friendly, good-humored fellow but also tough as nails. When I said that my partners and I were prepared to accept but 50% of the ownership of the Forward, on the theory that even a minority owner who was unhappy would make a business untenable, Mr... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/toasting-viktor-yushchenko/8481/ Mon, 31 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST It was a toast that those of us who were there will be telling our children and grandchildren about for years. The occasion was a small lunch at the Postli hotel in Davos Friday for the new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and a group of newspaper men and women attending the World Economic Conference. Even a gathering of cynical scriveners found it was hard to suppress a surge of admiration for the man who led the Orange Revolution that saved, at least for the moment, democracy in the... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/american-story/7576/ Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST As the special report on the scandal at CBS and "60 Minutes" was circulating around town, I was at a long-scheduled editorial dinner with the leader of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, John O'Neill. Among the guests at the table was Jerry Corsi, co-author, with Mr. O'Neill, of the book that halted Senator Kerry's surge in the polls, "Unfit for Command." The Swiftboat Veterans for Truth is the 527 group that ran the advertisements on television and the Internet that so startled the American... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/heroism-of-the-hmong/5399/ Fri, 26 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST The slaying of six hunters in the woods of Wisconsin registered in my mind only dimly as a story when I first read of it earlier in the week, even when the accused killer turned out to be a Hmong whose family had come to America after the war in Indochina. But by Wednesday morning the papers were reporting that the accused killer had given a statement that he had opened fire only after other hunters had, as the New York Times reported, cursed him with racial epithets and that one of them had... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/herzls-divine-spark/4809/ Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST While Yasser Arafat was being buried and mourned by the enemies of Israel, I retreated to my study with a copy of the diaries of Theodor Herzl. I wanted to remind myself of what kind of person founds a state. It's hard enough to start a company, build a suspension bridge, or, for that matter, launch a newspaper. But what manner of man gets the idea of a state into his head and causes it to be created? What is the process like? I was not thinking of any equivalence between the idea of Israel and... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/encounter-with-yasser-arafat/4658/ Thu, 11 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST The one time I met Yasser Arafat was in the spring of 1983, when I was in Amman, Jordan, editing for the Wall Street Journal a series of articles that the intrepid Karen Elliott House was writing on how King Hussein was dealing with President Reagan's peace plan. Shortly before midnight, Karen called my hotel room to report she'd just received a phone call and that we needed to be in front of the hotel in five minutes. No sooner had we stepped onto the sidewalk than three or four Mercedes... SETH LIPSKY http://www.nysun.com/opinion/good-morning-vietnam/4429/ Mon, 8 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST Everyone has a theory about the election. Some say it was about Iraq. Others insist the election was about the economy, President Bush's tax cuts, and Senator Kerry's warning about jobs. Still others claim the election was about gay marriage, which was on the ballot in 11 states. And then there are those who reckon the issue was religion and values. They're all good theories, but my own is that what this election was really about was Vietnam. I recognize it's a minority theory, one that... Seth Lipsky http://www.nysun.com/opinion/tolivers-tale/223/ Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EST A new controversy has erupted over John Kerry's military service, this time over whether Lieutenant John Kerry spent Christmas of 1968 on a gunboat inside Cambodia. In a new book by his critics, Mr. Kerry is quoted as saying he did. But one of the authors of the book, "Unfit for Command," says Mr. Kerry is lying and that he was never inside Cambodia. Well, it all reminds me of Bill Toliver. He was a combat reporter of the Pacific Stars and Stripes, the GI daily, during the Vietnam War. In late...