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You are here: Home / Absent Friends / RIP / RIP, Ed Koch

Reader Interactions

75Comments

  1. 1.

    Mystical Chick

    Karl Frisch is saying too bad that Koch’s obit won’t discuss his homosexuality. I had no idea (not that it was any of my business anyway!) – just surprised to learn it. RIP Mayor

  5. 5.

    pamelabrown53

    Read an Ed Koch quote at p.m. carpenter’s blog which I’ll share: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist”.

    RIP, Ed Koch, though in your later years you seemed to be John McCain’s democratic counterpart yelling at clouds to get off your lawn.

  11. 11.

    JGabriel

    OT, but:

    The geniuses at NRO have decided to attack President Obama for characterizing Nazism and the Holocaust as “senseless violence”.

    Yes, really.

    Eliana Johnson @ National Review Online via DKOS:

    Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.”

    I’ve always thought Conservatives and Republicans were the kind of people who thought the Nazis made a lot of sense, but I never expected them to confirm it in print.

    Edited to add: The comments to that NRO post are hilarious.

    .

  12. 12.

    Hal

    I thought Koch was openly gay personally, but was never quizzed about it by the press. If he was, I’m guessing he didn’t go running out of the interview like Illinois himbo Aaron Schock. I wonder if we’ll her from his partner, or will he be shuffled to the back of the room?

    I wasn’t aware he was doing so poorly health wise. The last I had heard from him, he was on NPR basically saying Obama had better be more pro-Israel or he might lose the Jewish vote, which of course turned out to be complete bullshit.

  14. 14.

    PurpleGirl

    @Yutsano: Koch was never married. It led to rumors for many years. When he left Gracie Mansion, he didn’t move back to the small, rent-controlled apartment on Waverly Place, he moved into a large Co-Op across from Washington Square Park. He also began living out, without making an announcement about it.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Doug Galt: I had the opportunity to shake his hand and tell him that, when he was running for Governor and hanging out at subway station entrances. He seemed to take it in stride, which I chalked up in the plus column.

  20. 20.

    Hal

    @PeakVT:

    We should also note the death of Scott Brown’s Senate career.

    I was watching MSNBC the other day and Steve Kornacki insisted Brown was days away from announcing his run. Hopefully some of the diarist at dailykos can take a breather now, but I’m wondering if Bill Weld isn’t going to give it a go. Brown has his eyes on the Governorship, and would have faced re-election in 2014 as a Senator, if he won.

    It will be interesting to see how he contrasts himself to a very popular Democratic Governor in a state doing very well fiscally.

  21. 21.

    Suffern ACE

    Vote for cuomo, not the homo – yeah the rumours were there and he gave evasive enough answers about it that theres no point in doing the expose in the obituary.

    There’s a documentary on his life coming out to theaters in a few weeks that looked pretty good when I saw the preview last weekend.

  23. 23.

    PeakVT

    @lamh35: Mass elects Republican governors a lot more often than Republican Senators, so Brown probably made a good decision.

  24. 24.

    Doug Galt

    @burnspbesq:

    Annoying, dim-witted self-promoter a la Al D’Amato.

    The ego of Giuliani, the charisma of Bloomberg, and less competent than either.

  25. 25.

    Smiling Mortician

    @burnspbesq: Can’t speak for Doug, obviously, but for me it was largely about his manipulative, illogical, bad-faith arguments in favor of the death penalty.

  26. 26.

    burnspbesq

    @Hal:

    If Koch was in fact gay, that puts the slow and inadequate response of NYC institutions to the onset of the AIDS epidemic in a vastly different perspective.

  27. 27.

    Doug Galt

    After leaving office, Koch frequently endorsed prominent Republican candidates, including Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg for Mayor, Al D’Amato for U.S. Senate, Peter T. King for U.S. House, George Pataki for Governor, and, in 2004, George W. Bush for President of the United States

    Just another neocon douche.

    He can rot in hell with Peter King, Al D’Amato, and Rudy G.

  28. 28.

    burnspbesq

    @Doug Galt:

    You still haven’t convinced me that any of the alternatives that were available at the time (Percy Sutton, Bella Abzug) wouldn’t have been even worse.

  29. 29.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Doug Galt: The Times obit says “he was a feisty, slippery egoist who could not be pinned down by questioners and who could outtalk anybody in the authentic voice of New York.” That seems to be intended as a compliment.

  30. 30.

    PurpleGirl

    @Hal: For the past year or so, he was in and out of the hospital frequently. For several years he had health issues, mostly heart and lung.

  31. 31.

    'Niques

    When I first read the post title, I thought it was referring to one of the “Koch Brothers” and must admit it brightened my day. My bad.

  32. 32.

    ranchandsyrup

    Johnny Ryall is the bum on my stoop
    I gave him fifty cents to buy some soup
    He knows the time, with the fresh Gucci watch
    He’s even more over than my mayor Ed Koch

  41. 41.

    Jay C

    Sorry to hear Ed Koch is gone: like him or not (and for me, I didn’t, particularly) he WAS quite the genuine, old-fashioned Noo Yawker (of a kind they make many of any more) – and was as good or bad a Mayor as anyone else might have been. But I think that like many another Mayor of NYC, the job did him in in the end, and the inevitable death of a subsequent political career put him on that long slow rightward slide into old-man crankery that spoiled whatever Elder Statesman cred he might have had.

    RIP Ed.

  42. 42.

    shortstop

    @burnspbesq: I’d have thought the “If you don’t like A, you must be enthusiastic about B” attitude was the one that lacked perspective. Not to mention failing freshman logic.

  43. 43.

    Doug Galt

    @burnspbesq:

    I’m supposed to like an annoying neocon self-promoter because he was better than the other candidates in an election 35 years ago?

    You’ve lost me.

  46. 46.

    Doug Galt

    @Suffern ACE:

    Incompetent. He really thought he could buck Shelly Silver et al. without them dishing tons of dirt on him? It was embarrassing. (I was on his side, but he got rolled so badly.)

  48. 48.

    handsmile

    @Doug Galt:

    I knew it, I knew it, I knew if I stayed on this fucking blog long enough, we’d finally agree on something (well, there’s Charles Lane too)!

    But my own loathing for Koch has more than to do with his actions since leaving the mayor’s office (your #26 comment for example) than with his service in that position (of which I am less reliably informed.)

    And try working on that fucking perspective of yours, while you’re at it….

  49. 49.

    shortstop

    @handsmile:

    And try working on that fucking perspective of yours, while you’re at it….

    It is a bit like shrieking, “CALM THE FUCK DOWN,” isn’t it?

  51. 51.

    PurpleGirl

    @Jay C: He didn’t need a post mayoral elective office career. He’d already spent many years as a congressman. Besides, post-mayoralty is when he could get that high-paid of-counsel job at a large law firm that would make him wealthy.

  52. 52.

    geg6

    So not a fan. This is a gay man who was so afraid of coming out or being outed that he preferred to see hundreds, if not thousands, of his fellow gay men die from AIDS than admit who he was. Randy Shilts and Larry Kramer were right about him and they convinced me that he was worthy of my contempt.

  59. 59.

    Yutsano

    @Raven: That sounds like the title of the musical about her life!
    @geg6: Wink wink nudge nudge say no more. This is exactly why I’m keeping my mom and the NYD far from each other right now. Fortunately the USMC is assisting me in that goal. He rides horses. She’ll instantly love him. I’ll be married within a week if they met!

  60. 60.

    shortstop

    @Yutsano: God, it sounds so sweet to hear “I’ll be married within a week,” because, now, you know, YOU CAN FINALLY DO THAT IF YOU WANT TO. Arc of history, bitches!

  66. 66.

    geg6

    @Maude:

    No, they aren’t, as I can attest to myself (never married and never will). But usually, people who never marry have some significant other in their lives. Koch never did or, at least, he never had one that anyone knew about.

  67. 67.

    Suffern ACE

    @geg6: I believe he said he was “married to New York City”.

    You haven’t met her. She lives in Canada and they could only meet in the summers at band camp.

  68. 68.

    Ohio Mom

    One thing I think should be pointed out is that Koch became mayor back when NYC (my hometown) was still reeling from its brush with bankruptcy. He was just what the city needed at that time because he was such a big booster and the city really needed its morale built back up.

    I remember an interview with him on 60 Minutes, he was pointing out the huge wooden water-tanks that are on top of every building, crowing about how amazing they were, what other place had such water tanks?

    It was somewhat ridiculous, they are hardly NYC’s best feature. I mean, it’s like showing off your garbage disposal or the float in your toilet when someone comes to your house for the first time. They all might be essential to making things run but that’s it.

    But his love for the city was very, very endearing and his enthusiasm reassured people that it didn’t matter that President Ford had essentially told us to Drop Dead, we had what it took to come back even better than before.

    But yeah, in later years he turned into a real right wing yuck.

  70. 70.

    Ohio Mom

    Also want to add that I didn’t know it was a secret he was gay. At one time, Bess Myerson, “The First Jewish Miss America,” who served as the head of the city’s Consumer Protection Bureau, was a beard of his.

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