Jack Newfield’s Lessons

The end of the year is a time for assessment, going over the internal ledger books to ruminate on what has been lost and gained and learned. One of the great losses of the year occurred last week, when a columnist for The New York Sun, Jack Newfield, passed away at the age of 66. Many people in New York had an opportunity to work with him over a period of decades. I did not have that privilege. But during the past year and a half, I had the honor of getting to know him over regular lunches near the Sun offices in lower Manhattan and near his home in Greenwich Village. Every meal was an enjoyable education.Here was a man who had been a confidant of one of my heroes Robert F. Kennedy, a kid from Brooklyn who had traveled down to Mississippi in 1963 and been jailed alongside Michael Schwerner. He knew I’d been proud to work as chief speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani, a man he’d first supported as U.S. attorney and then opposed as mayor, but there were no ideological litmus tests at his table and he had the rare ability to disagree agreeably.Instead, we talked about how after the death of Robert F. Kennedy liberals seemed to lose their ability to build broad winning coalitions. We talked about the lessons of the 1960s and New York City history, the rise of conservative populism, the corrupting influence of special interests on both parties, and the energizing pursuit of idealism in politics. He was generous with his time and insights, which is why he inspired such devotion, especially among younger writers.It is difficult not to feel cheated by his premature departure from this world, but nursing that hurt is not a useful emotion. Instead, I thought it might be worthwhile to look back at some of the lessons of his life.Over the Christmas weekend, I spent time reading some of his work, selected columns and books, especially 1977’s “The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York.” I was struck again by the fact that Newfield was not content to be a passive observer of his times. He was a participant. He not only pointed out problems, he helped people find solutions. When New York City was being sucked into the quicksand of fiscal default and permanent decline, Newfield — with his co-author Paul DuBrul – investigated the causes and solutions in “The Abuse of Power.”He asked, “How does a city die?” and then rattled off the facts: “More than a million citizens on welfare. A $13 billion paper debt. A decline in population of more than 300,000 in four years…30,000 apartment units abandoned every year.” He put human faces and stories to the statistics. And when you shudder and reflect on how far we have come as a city in less than 30 years, it is because people like Jack Newfield refused to give up. People responded to his call as “pessimists of the intelligence but optimists of the will.” In time, New York City challenged old assumptions, implemented new ideas, and turned around our ship of state.Because Newfield did not let his sense of civic responsibility end on the newspaper page, he remained engaged by promoting causes close to his heart: documentaries on RFK; getting an innocent man released from prison; working to achieve an overdue official pardon for the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson; encouraging City Hall to erect a statue in honor of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese back in Brooklyn – to name just a few.In an era where high style often trumps real substance, and parroting the party line is the fastest way to receive praise, Jack loved defending the underdog and speaking out on behalf of inconvenient truth. There was no evident ego in this, but there was a love of principled combat. Watch him in old footage of a Q&A with his frequent nemesis Don King. Newfield is standing in the first row of reporters and King is bellowing in response to a question, trying to intimidate him physically. Newfield is smiling in the face of King’s gale force winds, almost leaning into the assault like a boxer, calm and courageous, knowing that truth always has the last word.Finally, at his funeral last week, it occurred to me that Newfield’s final enduring lesson was his ability to bring people together. He was eulogized by loving friends from disparate walks of life: a former governor, a boxer, a fight-promoter, a union leader, family and fellow journalists. In his daily life, he made the effort to bridge all the usual societal divisions – race and class and profession – in order to form new friendships and unexpected coalitions. As his coffin was carried out of the chapel to the strains of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” the petty grudges that so often dominate local politics were briefly forgotten in the common loss.Jack Newfield was a critic because he believed in the obligation to form a more perfect union. To his credit, unlike many members of his generation, he never gave up on his city or nation. As he wrote in a 4th of July column this past summer, “Happy Birthday America, from a loyal native son, who has retained his idealism after losing his innocence.” I don’t believe that any of us can hope for a finer epitaph.

Jack Newfield’s Lessons

Jack Newfield’s Lessons

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