Sunday (or any day that ends with "y") lunch with........Jimmy Breslin.
Posted on 09/12/2004 9:17:21 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
People in the news business are 100 times smarter -- or more educated, I should say. And, by far, the most freakin' boring group of people."
"They've missed the entire idea of life and death and everything," Jimmy Breslin says, whisper-screaming it like there's a good-size frog in his throat, forcing the words out between massive, mouth-filling bites of his Billy Goat double cheeseburger.
We're talking about the Catholic Church, the nominal topic of the legendary columnist's latest book. But the "they" could be anyone on his enemies list: editors, rich people, right-wing politicians.
"When the World Trade Center went up," he says, switching to the present tense because that's how it still is, three years later, "I'm on the street and I'm looking up, and all these people are stuck above the flames and some come down, flying out of windows. You know they're all going to be gone up there. Anybody up there who had a phone was calling their home, and most of the messages are on tape because nobody was home. Every one of them was the same: 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' That's all you heard. And I'm going down the street, and a fireman who just lost five in his unit was up against a wall in this mess, we didn't talk, we didn't say anything, he just said, 'I have a daughter in college in Baltimore, and I love her.' To me, that's a religion. There's no other religion."
Breslin's The Church That Forgot Christ is an angry tirade of a book, a rant against the scandal-plagued church that, he says, has lost its moral authority in a wave of sex abuse cases and misplaced priorities. The book is also an artifact of profound grief.
Breslin's daughter Rosemary, who died in June, just as the book was being published, is named for her mother, his late wife. The third of his six children, she was, for a long time, the only one of the family who was not a regular churchgoer. She'd been battling a rare blood disease for 15 years and knew an early death was inevitable. Her father knew, too, though he thought he'd have more time with her.
Rosemary appears over and over again in the text of Breslin's book, a voice of dissent and challenge, a moral figure who refuses to allow her fiance to lie to get an annulment of his first marriage so they can marry in the church, a young woman who has had an abortion and refuses to believe that one choice damns her to hell forever.
And, though he centers his rage on the clergy sex abuse cases, and the bishops who covered them up, it is Rosemary -- her courage, her suffering, her refusal to be the second-class citizen the Catholic hierarchy wants her to be -- who gives shape to Breslin's screed against the church to which he'd once claimed undying loyalty.
It isn't like it used to be
None of the charges he makes against the church is new. There have always been towering cathedrals built at great cost while the people around them starve. There has long been a prohibition against women joining the priesthood. But now, in this book, it's personal.
"I'm a hell of a one to have to shill for women's rights or something," he says, looking as sheepish as Jimmy Breslin can possibly look, "but it's true."
Things are different, his whole body seems to say. It is all different now.
Breslin, long famous for his ability to sustain anger and convey it in print, seems like he is something more than angry now: sad and frustrated and grieving and raw. When he quotes that doomed, grieving firefighter -- "I have a daughter . . ." -- he is doing something more than telling a story, he is channeling. A part of him has not left that moment.
When I'd met him outside the Billy Goat Tavern, down in the shadows below Michigan Avenue, he seemed quiet, even a little confused. I wondered if I'd waited too long to meet my hero, if Breslin, at 75, wasn't past his Pulitzer Prize-winning prime.
But the worry evaporated just as soon as we'd walked in and he started to banter with the guys behind the counter -- in Greek.
He knows this place, of course, as Mike Royko's hangout.
"Where do they go now?" he asks, wanting to know where the journalists drink after work these days.
"I really don't know," I confess, "But I think they mostly just go home."
He shakes his head.
"The saloons where everybody went," he says, "it was good for the business. You talked about who wrote what, who said what. And there were guys at the bar who could remember way back. Studs Terkel could remember, he had a memory like out of a computer."
I can't help agreeing: The writing probably was better in those days, when columnists like Royko and Breslin held court. But I also can't help thinking about it from another point of view, from my generation's perspective -- the perspective of the little kids whose heroic newspaperman fathers never came home sober. I mean to ask Breslin about that, if he misses the time he might have had with his children, but I can't quite form the words. It seems too cruel to ask a grieving father that sort of question.
Besides, Breslin is an idol to me. And, as the Catholic Church was for him, he is for me. In the face of your idol, you swallow the obvious doubts, write them off as flaws in yourself.
"Now," he goes on, "people in the news business are 100 times smarter -- or more educated, I should say -- but afterwards they don't go to these places, they go to the health club and then they go home. . . . They're the best educated, healthiest group. And, by far, the most freakin' boring group of people. The writing is desperate. It's dead."
When your idol says this, you nod. And wish you were more interesting.
'We're here to see Studs'
As we finish eating, and he drains the last of his coffee, Breslin asks me to come along as he heads off to visit Studs Terkel, who is recovering from a fall.
I'm newspaper-geek excited about this, thinking the conversation between these two lions of the business will be something verging on the historic.
We arrive at the medical center building where Terkel has been convalescing, and Breslin announces to the young woman at the reception desk, "We're here to see Studs."
For ID, he flashes his New York City press pass, which he wears around his neck like a saint's medal.
The young woman has instructions not to let people past unless they ask for Terkel by his formal name. Breslin doesn't know it.
An argument ensues, a display of the legendary Breslin temper. Awed and ashamed of the whole thing -- it's not really her fault, is it? -- I draw a complete mental blank and stand by, useless and silent.
And then, a strange thing happens. Breslin gives up.
"Forget it," he says. He'll just go back to his hotel. He's spent enough time in hospitals lately.
"I'll call him later," he says. "It's not worth it."
He climbs back into the car, too tired to be angry anymore, waiting for someone to step up and take his place. But no one does.
mailto:dpickett@suntimes.com
Funny, I was thinking about old Jimmy Breslin. Back during the election of clinton/Bush 41, Jimmy was very upset with clinton. He stated that clinton would bring down the democrats. He was right! I wish I could find that article.
Sunday (or any day that ends with "y") lunch with........Jimmy Breslin.
I read one of his articles the week of the RNP convention, where he was ranting like a crazy person about dogs, and the people that owned them.. He was going to take something with him to the convention that would make the dogs "go crazy" or something like that, and get out in the road and be killed....it was the worst thing I've ever read....he went on and on and on about dogs and wanting them killed in some way and out of New York...
he is a crazy psychopath.. what the in WORLD is he doing in the newspaper?? who LIKES this kind of mean man??
sheesh
Degrees from the bastions of liberalism just show that you can regurgitate politically correct talking points.
Oh, certainly......they're not at all likely to....say...... fall for Word documents being passed off as pre-PC memos or anything.
I'm not Catholic, but I don't think this has ever been that (or any other) Church's doctrine. Classic straw man fallacy.
Now refusing to admit to and repent of a sin such as abortion...
Drunken old fool. This is the kind of person the leftist media considers a hero and a role model. That figures.
Isn't Jimmy Breslin the Union guy who guaranteed thousands would loose their jobs by killing off eastern airlines by his business stupidity? If you go to miami, the building that USED to house eastern airlines is called the Jimmy Breslin Memorial.
His idiocy is largely fueled by an inane liberalism, and a surfeit of alcohol. I was in an Irish Pub years ago. The proprietor gave Breslin and his entourage the heave ho!
Jimmy Breslin has always been in the tank for the Democratic Party. He was a dishonest reporter, a dishonest columnist, and now he is one of those ex-Catholics who won't admit to being an ex-Catholic, for whom the Democratic Party is the REAL church.
BTW: Clemenza spent many a night at the Billy Goat washing down grilled cheese and chips with a few cans of Old Style himself.
It is along the 836 by the airport I believe. FEMA used it after hurican andrew.
I thought his book was going to be about the Church that forgot Christ. But it isn't. It's about the Church that forgot Breslin. That's too bad, because the Church really has forgotten Christ in a very important way.
Sad, but true.
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