"He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II." - a self-written epitaph by the former 105"Hizzoner" passed away on Friday morning at the age of 88, and the New York Times City Room blog spent the day collecting and posting stories about him.th Mayor of New York City: Edward Irving Koch.
The Most Memorable Lines from Ed Koch’s Film Reviews: "Amid all the obituaries and remembrances of former New York City mayor Ed Koch, let us not forget his post-political career as an amateur movie critic, first for a small giveaway neighborhood newspaper, The Westside Spirit, and later in video installments on his own Web site, Mayor Koch at the Movies. Everyone has a beloved elderly relative who spouts off delightfully off-key, ill-informed opinions about popular culture, don’t they? (A beloved elderly relative of mine recently told me she had seen a really funny wedding picture: Melancholia.) Koch was like New York City’s—and the world’s—beloved (by some), elderly, off-key, ill-informed uncle.The Atlantic has an archive of some of Koch's movie review columns.
"Although we argued about everything from my marching in Bensonhurst, to Florida and Trayvon Martin, and although we disagreed on politics from his views on President Obama to other matters, I have found that he was never a phony or a hypocrite. He would not patronize or deceive you. He said what he meant. He meant what he said. He fought for what he believed. May he rest in peace."Epitaph
"No proof was offered" that Koch was gay? PUH-leeze, as Koch himself might say. His own Human Rights Commissioner David Rothenberg has spoken publicly about Koch's late partner Dick Nathan, having been social friends with them in the Village. (Koch shut Dick out of his life after getting elected mayor.) My colleague, the late Dennis de Leon (Dinkins' Human Rights Commissioner) told me about Koch propositioning him when he was younger and working in the City Law Department. But Koch felt he was doing a public service by not acknowledging who he was because he believed such questions were out of bounds. Yet his closetedness contributed to his abysmal record on AIDS...Just for snarking on the topic, I also kind of liked this Don't Tell Anyone that Ed Koch Was Gay blog post:
It’s “inning” time! That time of the year when someone famous, and gay, dies and the media cures him.posted by RogerB at 9:51 AM on February 2 [4 favorites]
A lifelong bachelor, the former mayor had said it's unacceptable for people to ask if he's gay since the 70's, when placards surfaced in his mayoral race against Mario Cuomo that said "Vote for Cuomo, not the homo!"posted by ericb at 9:59 AM on February 2 [5 favorites]
At the time of the Cuomo allegations, Koch said: "No, I am not a homosexual. If I were a homosexual, I would hope I would have the courage to say so. What's cruel is that you are forcing me to say I am not a homosexual. This means you are putting homosexuals down. I don't want to do that."
Koch also expressed anger a year ago at how he was portrayed in Kirby Dick's film Outrage, which outed closeted politicians — not because the film said he's gay (which it did), but because he said the film defiled his record (the film claims his record on AIDS and gay rights was virtually nonexistent).
Said Koch to Page 6: "It's a [bleep]ing outrage. Bella Abzug and I, in the early '70s, introduced in Congress a bill that would outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation...And when we later said the law applied to contractors doing business with the city, the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army sued me. In 1984, I was the first mayor to march in the Gay Pride Parade. I was the first mayor to appoint openly gay judges."
Late last year, Koch took the time to review How to Survive a Plague, but was blasted by AIDS activists featured in the film for not mentioning his own failed response to the AIDS crisis.
As part of the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York in 2011, Koch recorded a video in support of New Yorkers for Marriage Equality. *
To be fair, no mayor could have stopped the virus from its diabolical campaigns in the bloodstream. But in the days before cell phones and the Internet, when the New York Times still refused to use the word gay and the hometown gay newspaper sold just 6,000 copies — a time when it was impossible to reach the at-risk community outside of the mainstream — he could have shown leadership. He could have promoted risk reduction and community education. This is what was done in San Francisco, where Dianne Feinstein was mayor. The money and the bully-pulpit worked. The epidemic there, while devastating, was nothing like it became in New York.posted by ericb at 2:44 PM on February 2 [3 favorites]
Koch’s failure in AIDS should be recalled as the single-most significant aspect of his public life. The memories of all we’ve lost deserve no less.
April 20, 1983posted by ericb at 2:49 PM on February 2 [2 favorites]
Mayor Ed Koch holds his first meeting with gay-community reps, agreeing to proclaim the last week of April “Aid AIDS Week”—and little else. “Gays did not have a seat at the political table in those days,” recalls longtime activist Bill Dobbs. “And so the anger over the way Koch and others treated us sparked a stunning activist movement.”
June 2 , 1987
Mayor Koch calls for mandatory HIV testing for visitors and immigrants to the U.S. Those with HIV should be denied entry, he says.
p. 245: Two days later, on March 9, Mayor Ed Koch and Health Commissioner David Sencer hurriedly announced the formation of an Office of Gay and Lesbian Health Concerns....Of course, it was led by someone committed to a "low-key" approach to the crisis; i.e., someone who would do nothing. On April 10, Koch finally deigned to appear in public at a conference about AIDS, after months of pressure and only after a Catholic cardinal was also slated to appear:
p. 265: The mayor's nervous aides even refused to list the event in the standard schedule of mayoral public appearances routinely issued to the media.A week later, Koch finally agreed to a sit-down with "a maximum of 10" gay community leaders (Larry Kramer, who was almost single-handedly responsible for the meeting happening at all, was not allowed to participate and resigned the GMHC board). This is the key bit right here:
p. 275-6: There were two types of requests the New York AIDS Network took with them to their first and only meeting with Mayor Ed Koch at City Hall - the kind that cost money and the kind that didn't. Mayor Koch warmly embraced the requests that cost the city nothing. Yes, he would declare a "state of concern" about AIDS for the week of the GMHC circus fund-raiser and the candlelight march. Of course, he would join Diane Feinstein's AIDS Task Force of the U.S. Conference of Mayors...He'd talk to the city's lobbyist about pushing for more federal funds [for research].The evidence from folks who were there is very clear; if anyone has a better source than Shilts on the early years of the epidemic I'd love to know. It's difficult to decide what's worse: 1) Koch's despicable 1994 attempt to revise history and get folks to believe in an imaginary world where he "had done more" than officials in San Francisco for people with AIDS, or 2) the fact that once the NYT realized its obit completely left out one of the worst failures of Koch's career, it "corrected" the mistake by spreading the dead man's lies and smears - "my brilliant work never got through to those darn gays...they were brainwashed that they were getting shortchanged" - without any attempt to verify if the lies were actually true.
Then, there were the other, peskier, requests. No, the city would not provide housing or hospice space for AIDS patients kicked out into the street. That would be preceived as being 'special treatment' for gays. As for gay requests for a health center in Greenwich Village, that was impossible. On a general level, Koch said he would match San Francisco's spending on AIDS, "dollar for dollar," but he never indicated where that money would be spent...
[E]ven the ever-optimistic Paul Popham was disheartened by the visit. The mayor did not seem vaguely concerned about the epidemic. Every answer came to quickly, almost flippantly, Paul thought. And he could see that Health Commissioner David Sencer was not going to push the mayor on this issue...There was nobody in city government who had responsibility for the AIDS epidemic, Paul could see now; there was nobody who really cared.
It was during this month of April 1983 that the momentum of movement on the AIDS epidemic shifted from New York City to San Francisco, typified, as much as anything else, by that meeting in New York City Hall. For the next two years, AIDS policy in New York would be little more than a laundry list of unmet challenges, unheeded pleas, and programs not undertaken...the city's gay leadership pursued its policy of constructive engagement with a mayor who seemed petrified of being highly identified with any gay issue, perhaps because of his status as a perennial bachelor. The New York fight against AIDS would be left to a handful of doctors and overtaxed gay organizations, and many would die there, while AIDS came to be seen as a San Francisco phenomenon because that's where the action was.
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posted by bz at 10:21 PM on February 1