Thanks to the Columbia Journalism Review for publishing my little tribute to Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their campaign for Mayor and City Council President of New York, and to Joe Flaherty, whose memoir of the campaign Managing Mailer, was one of the funniest things I ever read when I was 18 years old. I love Flaherty’s description of this campaign appearance at a demonstration at Queens College: “About a thousand students sat in a sun-baked mall waiting for the candidates. Others sat or dangled from walls or windows, giving the campus the look of a seized border town. And then there was the heat and the flesh—young men, shirtless, with bodies that had not yet made the acquaintance of fat, and young girls in shorts whose brown thighs were covered with a veil of blond algae…. [T]he kids were joyously shouting, “What about Nixon? What about the ABM? What about Daley?” Breslin stood waiting for them to quiet down. Finally Mailer could no longer resist the compelling of stink of sweat and sensuality. He put his arm across Breslin’s body and pushed him aside, seizing the podium. And to answer all their questions… he screamed “Fuck!”, plunging into them as though they were a pair of open legs.” Perfect, no?
