Posted on 04/07/2004 4:14:17 PM PDT by O.C. - Old Cracker
NEW YORK - The head of a conservative lobbying group accused Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin of making up quotes attributed to him in Wednesday's column.
The newspaper's editor said Breslin, a Pulitzer Prize winner, told him the quotes came from a 1992 interview, and that it would have been better if the columnist had made that clear.
The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition (news - web sites), said he has "never met Jimmy Breslin, never had the conversation described in his column today and never said those sentences to anyone in my life."
In the column, Breslin wrote, "'Homosexuals are dangerous,' Sheldon assured me one day. ... 'They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual.'"
Sheldon, speaking by telephone from Anaheim, Calif., said he has never said anything of the kind.
"I don't agree that homosexuals come to someone's door and kidnap their children, and I've never said that," he said.
He said the column, in which Breslin refers to him as "a fruitcake," is intended "to demonize me."
The editor of the New York edition of Newsday, Les Payne, said Breslin told him the conversation with Sheldon took place at the Republican National Convention in Houston in 1992.
"He told me that he interviewed him and they had a give-and-take," Payne said.
Breslin did not immediately respond to a request for an interview placed through the newspaper.
Breslin quoted Sheldon, whom he called "the little minister," about homosexuality and pornography in an Aug. 18, 1992, column from the GOP convention.
The quotes from 1992 and from Wednesday are not the same, but Breslin said there was a larger exchange, Payne said.
Sheldon said he was at the convention but does not recall speaking to Breslin.
He said he had sent a telegram of complaint to Newsday. Payne said the newspaper would respond to Sheldon's complaint, but he didn't say how.
Breslin did not mention in Wednesday's column that he was quoting a conversation from 1992. Asked if that should have been made clear, Payne said, "I think our readers should be let in on the time frame, sure."
Breslin won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for distinguished commentary writing and has written several books. He also had a late-night television show, "Jimmy Breslin's People," which lasted just 13 weeks in 1986.
The Traditional Values Coalition, founded in 1980, describes itself as the largest church lobby in the United States. Its mission is to "restore America's cultural heritage" by opposing gay rights, abortion rights and the teaching of evolution in public schools, among other issues.
This was actually a very interesting show. Who else would interview the physicist Isidor I. Rabi (radar pioneer and discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance)? Rabi was a fascinating guest. The interview was conducted in a branch library where, as a boy, he had read every book. Rabi, a Jew, said that the world is indebted to the Anglo-Saxon people for the invention of constitutional government.
When I lived in Manhattan years ago there was a murder on my street. I walked out of my building and saw police tape up the block a ways. As I got closer I noticed Jimmy Breslin himself standing by the crime scene, jotting notes on a pad just like a rookie reporter.
As I approached I said in a friendly way, "Well what do you know, Jimmy Breslin, I'll be..." or some other such brilliant ice-breaker. Guy just looked at me. Not hello, not an acknowledgement of my presence, nothing. Just a grim glare and he went back to his notes.
What a pearl.
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