It is May 1990. He is in his office. It is one in a row along an interior wall of the 2 Park Avenue newsroom. Perhaps the cleanest newspaper office anyone who worked there had set foot in. Insurance company clean. Law firm clean. Spotless counters. Clean walls. Windows. Big, clean windows. Not the submarine interior of the News, nor the slum conditions of the Trib. Breslin has just published one of those columns that his editors and many readers had once found humorous.
A young reporter—recently an intern, according to executives at the time—did not find it humorous at all. She sent three sentences across an internal messaging system—this was before email and instant commentary became routine. She sent it to Breslin and a copy to Don Forst, the editor. “Finkery,” a columnist of Breslin’s generation wrote of the copy to Don Forst. The finkery was a violation of an ancient code from a time reporters battled only one another and when editors were left out.
With a keystroke, the message could have vanished. Deleted. This was not for J.B. Number One, whose readiness to rage seemed always just below the skin. He read the message in front of him.
Breslin broke out of his office and into the newsroom in an obscenity-laced rage, and ugly, vile, racist words poured out of his mouth and into the ears of every reporter, editor, and clerk in earshot.
“A yellow cur,” he shouted, describing the Korean American reporter who had found his column sexist. “Slant eyed.”
In 1986, when Barbara Ross, an admirer of his work since childhood, came cautiously into his Daily News office, holding the napkin that showed Mel Lebetkin, the Queens Boulevard lawyer who was the clay from which his character Klein the Lawyer was molded, was at the center of the biggest scandal in decades, he was able to shout and bellow “Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck FUCK Fuck Fuck.” It seemed like sixty times in five minutes to Ross, who was no newsroom ingenue. He dialed his phone. Slammed. Dialed. Slammed. Dialed. Slammed until finally he got Lebetkin. “You’re stealing fucking millions and I got to learn it from this fucking c— who walks into my office.” This had happened a mere four and a half years earlier. But that was in fact eons earlier in terms of how sensibilities had shifted, and it was in the coarser and still blue-collar tough confines of the News, not the late twentieth-century, pristine offices of New York Newsday.
Ross later sought Breslin out privately. No editors were involved. She attributed the behavior, she later hoped, perhaps to a tumor that might have already been forming in his brain. And the behavior, she recalled, was witnessed by only two other staffers.
At this newspaper, where diversity was sought for the reporting staff, and according to published accounts about 25 percent of the paper’s readership were people of color, the racist and profane rant was heard by many. And editors could envision reader backlash.
“A yellow cur,” he shouted. “Slant eyed.” There was more.
While the object of his “one great act of bigotry” as it was described in commentary later was not in the room*, another Asian American reporter, Jessie Mangaliman, was there. A wonderful reporter, Jessie was driven to tears by this ugliness from the man who was one of the paper’s stars. A man with a reputation of fighting bigotry, racism, and injustice. A petition was circulated. Many reporters signed it—more than forty, by one account.
In the old newsrooms where Breslin was raised, you didn’t need secondhand smoke. You could suffer nicotine poisoning from touching any hard surface.
In the old newsrooms, desk men sucked down beer at their desks, drank after the first edition closed, and returned to their desks afterward. Here there were one or two who snuck cigarettes by a window and the smell of alcohol was virtually nonexistent.
Down at Police Headquarters, there was a plant in Newsday’s office. This was not the Police Shack at the Daily News where one young reporter had, late for work, picked up a coffee mug resting on a counter and took a swig before sitting down. He gagged. It was more vodka than coffee. When he had opened his left-hand desk drawer for the first time it was filled—to the top—with the damp-smelling butt ends of stubbed-out cigars.
A newer, less coarse world was forming. Breslin’s was closing in on him.
The column in question was one in which Breslin used his wife, a city politician, as the butt of his gruff jokes.
I hate official women!
It is one thing when women have jobs that are not official and they act halfway decent because they’re afraid of a man firing them. It is something else when they become official, get elected . . .
Oh, this is all because of my wife, who is an official woman, don’t you worry about that, and I’m going to tell you about it . . .
The column ran in the paper on Thursday, May 3.
In it, he tells this story about his wife while also passing judgment on a female court officer. It is simplified here just to show the remarks on his wife.
I was still furious from all the trouble that started at home. It was caused solely by my wife, who was elected to public office, the City Council, in this city back in November and immediately, as an official woman, began to kill me in favor of herself.
In this pre-internet, pre-twitter, pre-blog era, it takes days for a cycle of anger, grief and action. On May 8, the newspaper announced to Breslin what he must do, and an apology was issued to the staff.
Don Forst and other executives thought that this slap on the writer’s wrist in the form of an apology to the staff would be enough. A statement was issued on May 8. While it was not a gracious solution, it might have sufficed had Breslin not doubled down. On that same day he went on a call-in radio show that was itself a vehicle for anger and offensiveness. He ridiculed his own apology. And a meeting was called.
The paper’s senior executives packed a conference room. The head of communications for the company was there, the publisher and the assistant publisher were there. The managing editor, assistant managing editors and many others. This was a business as well as an editorial decision. This was star talent. This was expensive talent. This was marquee talent.
Firing Breslin was put on the table. A number of other versions of serious punishment were debated.
The room was so crowded that the youngest editor in the room, the City Editor, sat on a credenza on a far wall.
“Suspend him,” the City Editor spoke up into the din with the sureness of youth. It was a wonderful opening.
“Fine. You tell him,” Forst said. “And you tell him he needs to write an apology for the paper.”
No longer feeling so sure of himself, the City Editor returned to his realm to call Breslin.
“Jimmy, the paper is going to suspend you and you need to write an apology.”
“Fuck you. You were a fucking clerk when I met you and you’re still a fucking clerk. I know it’s not you. It’s that little Jew cocksucker Forst. Tell him I’ll piss on his grave.”
“You still need to write an apology.”
“You do it.”
The City Editor reported back. And then he sat down to write, a journeyman apology that is thankfully lost. Over his shoulder were public relations people, editors and others. It was a corporate apology. After a while, they were satisfied that it was okay to take to Breslin.
“No. Take this down,” he said. “Once again I am no good. Breslin.”
He was suspended for two weeks. A version of the apology he wrote appeared in the paper.
It is hard to remember ever seeing him in the newsroom again. Maybe he came in. Maybe he didn’t. He wrote at home. He never talked to Don Forst again for the rest of Forst’s life.
Loss and betrayal. Betrayal and loss. This was at the core of Breslin. It drove his anger. It drove him. It drove those around him insane.
* The reporter who was the target of Breslin’s ire agreed to be interviewed. However, after the reporter sent a list of 11 non-negotiable conditions the request to interview the reporter was withdrawn. The 11th condition was the right to add additional conditions.