Ed Koch is Dead

Ed Koch, the famous confirmed bachelor and former three-term mayor of New York City, died early Friday morning at Columbia-Presbyterian. In reading the lengthy obit by Robert McFadden the role of the shooting death of black teen Yusuf Hawkins a month before the 1989 Democratic primary is cited as a factor in Koch's loss to David Dinkins.

As residents of the East Bay for the five years prior, and therefore not unfamiliar with black-on-white animosity, my wife and I arrived in New York City the summer of 1988 at the height of the Tawana Brawley case.

Though Tawana Brawley's alleged rape took place in Wappingers Falls 75 miles up the Hudson from New York City, it played out every night on the local news and on the streets of the five boroughs. Al Sharpton, along with lawyers Maddox and Mason, represented Brawley and argued her case in televised jousts with Attorney General Robert Abrams. It was intense. And the way that it was presented you found yourself having to choose sides. And what made it more intense is that it came on the heels of Howard Beach.

Then after Howard Beach and Tawana Brawley you had Bensonhurst and Yusuf Hawkins. And that was it for me. Teenage kids who go to look at a used car should not be beaten with baseball bats and shot to death as Yusuf Hawkins was. Sharpton helped organize a public response in all three cases.

Koch was a shrill, acidic, pompous Bozo who ruthlessly attacked any critic of the city. Maybe he hadn't always been this way. Certainly 12 years in elected office, let alone mayor of New York City, could embitter anyone. But the Ed Koch I saw in 1988 and 1989 was offensive, and I was glad to see him go and Dinkins take over. One could argue that it was Al Sharpton who cost Koch his fourth term as mayor.

Joe Nocera's column today looks at Koch through the lens of the recently released Neil Barsky documentary Koch. Nocera sees the strength of Koch's three terms in the housing built in the city:

What was most striking about “Koch,” however, was the extent to which, for Hizzoner, it was always about, well, Ed Koch. He needlessly picks fights, calling people “schmucks” and “idiots” when they disagreed with him. He takes actions designed to win him praise in the media. One of his former aides recalls him saying, after reading the paper, that nothing of note had happened that day. What he meant was that he wasn’t mentioned. “How’m I doin’?” wasn’t just a trademark phrase; it was an expression of a deep psychological need. On the other hand, if that is what drove him to spend $5 billion on new housing, who can complain?

The last few years the only time I saw Koch on TV -- then again I largely stopped watching television news about three years ago -- was when he was acting as an automatic apologist for whatever Israeli act of aggression was being debated at the moment.