March 19, 2017

Goodbye to Jimmy Breslin.

"Jimmy Breslin, Legendary New York City Newspaper Columnist, Dies at 88," the NYT reports.
With prose that was savagely funny, deceptively simple and poorly imitated, Mr. Breslin created his own distinct rhythm in the hurly-burly music of newspapers. Here, for example, is how he described Clifton Pollard, the man who dug President John F. Kennedy’s grave, in a celebrated Herald Tribune column from 1963 that sent legions of journalists to find their “gravedigger”:

“Pollard is forty-two. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.”

And here is how he described what motivated Breslin the writer: “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”
This is me, in 1970, sitting under a Mailer/Breslin poster:

Althouse in 1970, age 19
PHOTO CREDIT: Stephen Cohen.

The NYT obit makes no mention of the political frolic with Mailer, but here's an earlier article, from when Mailer died (2007), "Mailer’s Nonfiction Legacy: His 1969 Race for Mayor":
His running mate for City Council president was the columnist Jimmy Breslin, who suspected the worst from the very beginning: that Mr. Mailer was serious....

Mr. Breslin recently recalled Mr. Mailer’s arguing brilliantly at Brooklyn College that the minds of white and black children would grow best if they were together in the same classrooms. One student interrupted: “We had a lot of snow in Queens last year and it didn’t get removed,” he said. “What would you do about it?” To which Mr. Mailer, abruptly dislodged from his lofty oratorical perch, replied that he would melt the snow by urinating on it.

Mr. Mailer’s political nadir was a campaign rally at the Village Gate nightclub where he vilified his own supporters as “spoiled pigs.” Mr. Breslin left the rally early. He later told a friend, “I found out I was running with Ezra Pound.” Mr. Breslin was referring not to Pound’s poetry, but to his insanity.

Mr. Mailer’s “left-conservative” platform called for a monorail, a ban on private cars in Manhattan and a monthly “Sweet Sunday” on which vehicles would be barred from city streets, rails or airspace altogether. He championed self-determination — the city itself would secede and become the 51st state. Individual neighborhoods would be empowered to govern according to their own prerogatives, which could range from compulsory free love to mandatory church attendance. 
I love the random resonances of blogging: Ezra Pound just came up 2 days ago. Poets. Poetry. I love it all. Even the "lofty oratorical perch." Reminds me of that famous Samuel Johnson line: "Sir, a fish's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

And I love that poster.



New York City — the 51st State. Makes me think of that old song:
As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right....
How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again....
But it's all lost to the distant past. I'm not 19 anymore. Norman's gone. Jimmy's gone. The is-he-insane blustery assemblage of masculinity isn't a satirical mayoral candidate but President of the United States. And there's no newspaper columnist to give a damn about.

81 comments:

Phil Beck said...

A "fish preaching"? Johnson referred to a "woman preaching." I think you conflated the Johnson line with the line attributed to Gloria Steinem that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bycicle.

Dagwood said...

Saw your photo and was reminded of a young Diane Keaton.

mezzrow said...

Life's unpredictability is one of the chief reasons we stick around. Funny old world, isn't it?

RIP, Mr. Breslin.

Michael K said...

Phil beat me to it.

You did have the Keaton look.

Bad Lieutenant said...

I never liked him anyway. You hardly need to read him to know what he was thinking. He had an interesting Runyonesque thread on 'One-Eye, the boss of all crime in America' but never delivered the goods.

And he went out like a punk with an election-eve prediction of defeat for G.W. Bush (a pasting, ISTR he expected), which obviously, as he simultaneously retired, he would never be called upon to defend. (I forget whether this was 2000 or 2004.) No, no great loss. Murray Kempton, by comparison, made him look like an insect.

Jupiter said...

Are you perchance suggesting that sometimes a bicycle needs a fish?

Bad Lieutenant said...

To be fair, Jimmy Breslin as far as I know never stabbed his wife or anybody else, so I suppose he brought much-needed balance to the ticket.

Ann Althouse said...

"A "fish preaching"? Johnson referred to a "woman preaching." I think you conflated the Johnson line with the line attributed to Gloria Steinem that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bycicle."

I'll refrain from chicksplaining because I want to be more surprising.

Birkel said...

@ Althouse "And there's no newspaper columnist to give a damn about."

And there never was.

Ann Althouse said...

"Saw your photo and was reminded of a young Diane Keaton."

We were both young at the time, and I got a lot of that. But thanks. Most people these days say I look like a member of the Manson family.

Ann Althouse said...

"Are you perchance suggesting that sometimes a bicycle needs a fish?"

LOL.

But I am suggesting the NYT needs better editing. How can people not hear what they are writing?!

Greg Hlatky said...

Dog-hating bastard. I'm glad he's dead. Mean people seem to have overly-long lives.

cubanbob said...

What was the line he wrote that truly applies to politicians of all stripes, something like "if these guys owned a gas station and stole the customer's cars they still couldn't make a buck". RIP Mr. Breslin.

Bad Lieutenant said...

And here is how he described what motivated Breslin the writer: “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”

Funny, I've always thought that people like that should be euthanized.

YoungHegelian said...

compulsory free love

AKA, rape.

The 60's was still thrilled about sexual liberation, & wasn't about to let any female squeamishness spoil the party.

Darles Chickens said...

The Mailer article link contains what I've always thought was Breslin's best line. In the wake of the mayoral race loss, he said he was mortified to have taken place in a process which required the closing of the bars. I was a high schooler during that race, and that just cracked me up.

William said...

He was a terrific columnist, A good read for the subway or a bus ride. A few good phrases but nothing that would cause you to miss a stop,. I didn't think his novels were that good.......When I was young, I thought he was a hard hitting truth teller. As I got older, I thought his righteousness was a form of bigotry. I found Bernard Goetz to be a sympathetic figure, but Breslin made him out to be some kind of evil scumbag. Still, I looked forward to reading his column.

gg6 said...

"...And there's no newspaper columnist to give a damn about."
An interesting, fun, and enjoyable article/reminiscence,/eulogy. But it seems to me the 'entire point and 'punch line' is your closing comment above.....yet you don't include it as a Tag, e.g. "Journalism". How odd.
:-)

buwaya said...

The rest of NY state would have benefited tremedously had it been freed of NYC.
Missed opportunity there.

Yes you were a cool chick.

veni vidi vici said...

Heh - some blonde you were!

Once written, twice... said...

Now that Jimmy has died does that now mean Ann won't have another reason to repost this picture of herself that she is so smitten with?

gg6 said...

In the comments, I'm afraid I have to agree that "William" is essentially correct...in his most 'famous' latter years, Breslin wrote like the self-righteous, bigoted and nasty alcoholic he was. He became a self-parody.

rcocean said...

"Breslin wrote like the self-righteous, bigoted and nasty alcoholic he was."

IOW, he stopped being a liberal.

rcocean said...

Manson family? Yeah. I think its the long black hair and spooky eyes.

rcocean said...

BTW, what was Mailer going to do about Long Island? Was it going to be part of the 51st state?

I always thought the 51st state idea was a good one. Although, I'd rather just split New Jersey in 1/2 and attach NYC, Long island to the northern half and and the southern NJ to Delaware.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Def. It looks like a photo from a tattered thrift store paperback copy of Helter Skelter. Time is passing.

Wince said...

The following pull quote from Ed Driscoll's Instapundit post on Breslin unique contribution to opinion writing reminded me of Althouse's quote of the Tracy Ullman character as a writer on a recent episode of "Girls."

Newspaper columns had become a classic illustration of the theory that organizations tend to promote people up to their levels of incompetence. The usual practice was to give a man a column as a reward for outstanding service as a reporter. That way they could lose a good reporter and gain a bad writer. The archetypical newspaper columnist was Lippmann. For 35 years Lippmann seemed to do nothing more than ingest the Times every morning, turn it over in his ponderous cud for a few days, and then methodically egest it in the form of a drop of mush on the foreheads of several hundred thousand readers of other newspapers in the days thereafter...

In any case, Breslin made a revolutionary discovery. He made the discovery that it was feasible for a columnist to leave the building, go outside and do reporting on his own, actual legwork. Breslin would go up to the city editor and ask what stories and assignments were coming up, choose one, go out, leave the building, cover the story as a reporter, and write about it in his column. If the story were big enough, his column would start on page one instead of inside. As obvious as this system may sound, it was unheard of among newspaper columnists, whether local or national. If possible, local columnists are even more pathetic. They usually start out full of juice, sounding like terrific boulevardiers and raconteurs, retailing in print all the marvelous mots and anecdotes they have been dribbling away over lunch for the past few years. After eight or ten weeks, however, they start to dry up. You can see the poor bastards floundering and gasping. They’re dying of thirst. They’re out of material. They start writing about funny things that happened around the house the other day, homey one-liners that the Better Half or the Avon lady got off, or some fascinating book or article that started them thinking, or else something they saw on the TV. Thank God for the TV! Without television shows to cannibalize, half of these people would be lost, utterly catatonic. Pretty soon you can almost see it, the tubercular blue of the 23-inch screen, radiating from their prose. Anytime you see a columnist trying to squeeze material out of his house, articles, books, or the television set, you’ve got a starving soul on your hands . . . You should send him a basket . . .


Ullman's character...

"That’s the mistake we all make, isn’t it? Believing that being a writer means being, you know, totally and utterly uninterrupted—it means silence, it means, you know, a room of one’s own. No, no. That’s bullshit. That’s what we perceive a male writer to have. And that can lead to horrible solipsism and disconnection from humanity. I’m not naming names, never naming names... Martin Amis, Woody Allen, Saul Bellow."

Unknown said...

More photos of the young Althouse, please.

Roughcoat said...

Never liked either Breslin or Mailer. Awful people, the both of them. Breslin was a professional Irishman, a terrible thing indeed, and Mailor was an uber-creep.

Sebastian said...

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.

Distracted by law on her way to creating a whole new art form.

Roughcoat said...

Okay, with Brelin's passing we have our "Three": Breslin, Berry, and James Cotton.

William said...

With the passage of time, I wonder who will prove to be more ephemeral: Chuck Berry or Jimmy Breslin. I think Berry will endure for a generation longer. Fats Waller is still going strong but Winchell is on the ash pile.

Roughcoat said...

Winchell is on the ash pile.

Nonsense! His performances with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff are still funny!

traditionalguy said...

I nominate Bob Dylan's Dream to be the Althouse Blog's Theme Song. I never hear it without triggering intense feelings.

I'm Full of Soup said...

I loved Breslin'sbook The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Oh and if you don't believe me, buy it now via the Althouse Amazon portal and see for yourself.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Michigan just blew up a record number of brackets I bet.

gadfly said...

Jimmy Breslin's choice to write about one of several gravediggers who dug John Kennedy's grave seems to be an offbeat approach to the emotional experience of the JFK funeral and its attendant ceremonies. To those of us standing within the sight and sound of the JFK gravesite below the Custis-Lee Mansion remember sighting Caroline and Jon-Jon approaching the grave and we remember a bugler's broken note during his rendition of Taps.

It might be interesting from a New Yorker's point of view that a $3.01/hour employee worked on Sunday to dig a grave, which likely meant $4.50 per hour overtime on Sunday, but U.S. Army personal stationed at Fort Myer and other MDW military bases nearby in attendance at the ceremony made made even less per hour. In this time when men were drafted, my 2nd Lieutenant's pay was $222.30 per month plus $47.88 for separate rations and $110.10 for off-post quarters allowance - paid monthly. Buck privates (E-2) were paid about $85.80 per month. Third Infantry "show troops" who made up most of the military presence, practiced their skills almost every day for such marching events as this. The bugler, Army Sergeant (E-6) Keith ClarK enlisted in the Army in 1946 to be a trumpet player in the U.S. Army Band at Fort Myer, so his pay was $325 per month plus $110.10 quarters allowance.

Quaestor said...

The poster is interesting... but where are the Blue Meanies?

Bad Lieutenant said...

Roughcoat, please explain to me this concept of the professional Irishman. I think it may fill a gap for me. I have been noticing that prominent Irish politicians and writers and celebrities all seem to be to the left of Yasser Arafat. I'm thinking that probably explains it. Do people here know that Eamon de Valera declared an official day of mourning for Hitler?

Big Mike said...

@Althpuse, what color was your hair in that photo? I could have sworn you once wrote that you were a strawberry blonde in your youth. As to the hair style, attire, and even the expression on your face screams "generic late 60s, early 70s hippie chick."

Quaestor said...

Do people here know that Eamon de Valera declared an official day of mourning for Hitler?

De Valera's stunt was outrageous, but it wasn't exactly "an official day of mourning", On 2 May 1945 (Hitler blew his brains out two days earlier.) Eamon de Valera and Joseph Walshe visited the German Embassy in Dublin to offer condolences. By 1945 Germany didn't have many diplomatic missions abroad; Ireland was one, Spain another, as well as Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and a few others. Ireland had missions in all of them, but only the Irish minister to Spain, Leopold Kerney, emulated de Valera's stupidity. If it had been an officially declared day of mourning, one would expect there would have been more condolence visits.

Quaestor said...

BTW, my defense of Eamon de Valera, which amounted to not evil, just vapid should not be interpreted as a bid for professional Irishman status. On St. Paddy's Quaestor wears orange.

Bad Lieutenant said...

is orange what will get you a beating, or black and tan?

tcrosse said...

A professional Irishman is like a stage Irishman for whom the world is a stage.

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quaestor said...

is orange what will get you a beating, or black and tan?

Not when accompanied by a wolfhound.

Quaestor said...

Growing up I had little cognisance of Jimmy Breslin the writer. To me, he was just a blustery, fast-talking Nooyawkah who appeared on the Tonight Show from time to time and said not much of importance. Only when I began my auto-didactic studies of the Mafia that I began to appreciate his significance. Breslin became a kind of publicist-cum-social-secretary for one Joseph Gallo, a.k.a. Crazy Joey, one of the most bloodthirsty hoodlums since the Prohibition Era. Breslin presented Gallo and his confederates to the public as just "woikin' class guys husslin' for a bigger slice of da pie". Breslin also shepherded Gallo into the salons of the Upper East Side, where Gallo became the frequent guest of the rich and famous. Jerry Orbach, by way of his friendship with Breslin, was even persuaded to host Crazy Joey's wedding. I think it was Tom Wolfe who coined the term gangster chic to summarize this collusion of the self-righteous and the bestial. Gallo went on three more weeks after the wedding at the Orbach's, only to end in mid-munch of scungilli at Umberto's Clam House. A Breslin obituary followed.

Jupiter said...

Once written, twice... said...
"Now that Jimmy has died does that now mean Ann won't have another reason to repost this picture of herself that she is so smitten with?"

If you had a picture of your sorry ass that looked half that good, you'd keep it in your wallet and show it to strangers sitting next to you on a bus.

Jupiter said...

Ann Althouse said...
"Are you perchance suggesting that sometimes a bicycle needs a fish?"

LOL.

"But I am suggesting the NYT needs better editing. How can people not hear what they are writing?!"

Ah! Sometimes a fish is just a fish. But sometimes it's a lofty oratorical flounder.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Haha Q. I know an older Jewish guy who says that he likes to go out on St Patrick's Day wearing black and tan in his Irish neighborhood and doesn't catch a beating so he feels that some point about racial or ethnic Harmony is thereby made. No, not sure I get it either. Although I think that in America we should be glad for if this is the case our short memories. Remembering back to the field of blackbirds 500 or a thousand years ago doesn't really do a thing for the former Yugoslavia or former yugoslavians.

William said...

DeValera was born in Brooklyn on the wrong side of the sheets to a Cuban father and an Irish mother. He was raised in Ireland and perhaps because of his outsider status became a fierce Irish nationalist. He was under sentence of death during the Easter Rebellion. The English would have definitely killed him were it not for the fact that the English wanted to placate the Americans. De Valera really, really hated the English. De Valera wasn't so much pro- Hitler as anti- English.

Ann Althouse said...

"@Althpuse, what color was your hair in that photo? I could have sworn you once wrote that you were a strawberry blonde in your youth. As to the hair style, attire, and even the expression on your face screams "generic late 60s, early 70s hippie chick.""

My hair was red, which photographs dark in black and white.

Here's about how it looked.

It wasn't strawberry or carroty. I wish I could have that color back, but it has been gone for many years. I have to darken it to get to blonde.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

You were so cool then.

What happened?

MisterBuddwing said...

From the Department of Things I Thought I Remembered and They Turned Out to Be True:

Jimmy Breslin for Olivetti typewriters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFGB0rNaU28

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

You were so cool then.

What happened?

3/19/17, 4:45 PM

She told you.

"I'm not 19 anymore."

Danno said...

Ann said... "Most people these days say I look like a member of the Manson family."

I have seen the Young Althouse pic numerous times, but I think you have a point there.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Anyone can be cool.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Anyone can be cool.

3/19/17, 5:48 PM

Of course they can. But you appear to associate "coolness" with radical left politics, which many of us grow out of.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, what a lovely hair color!

FullMoon said...

Ann Althouse said... [hush]​[hide comment]

"@Althpuse, what color was your hair in that photo? I could have sworn you once wrote that you were a strawberry blonde in your youth. As to the hair style, attire, and even the expression on your face screams "generic late 60s, early 70s hippie chick.""

My hair was red, which photographs dark in black and white.

Here's about how it looked.


Poor Laslo, two pics of young Ann, and Laslo is forced to hold his tongue. I am crackin' up!
Put up another one professor, bathing suit, from the rear, make him really suffer !

FullMoon said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...

Anyone can be cool.


Prove it.

William said...

Althouse is more attractive in the second photo, but the first locates her in a time and a place and an attitude.

William said...

The Mailer/Breslin campaign was silly more than visionary. The ideas weren't ahead of their time. They were just stupid......Steinem worked on the campaign. She had a one night stand with Mailer. She claimed it was a mercy fuck. Sometimes a woman needs a man like a fish needs a wife stabber.......The American justice system is inequitable. Case in point: Mailer. It was a sincere attempt at murder, and he walked on the basis of his fame and celebrity.

Roughcoat said...

De Valera was also a professional Irishman, and a son-of-bitch: a scheme and a deceiver. Also something of a fascist; certainly an authoritarian type, after the fashion of, say, a Roman proconsul or elected dictator for life in the Roman Republic. He probably felt real remorse over Hitler's downfall, partly because he (Dev) hated the Egnlish and partly because of his own fascist proclivities. Not unlike Gandhi, he wanted Ireland to remain a fundamentally rustic country and the Irish to remain a simple folk, with the women working at their spinning wheels while the men labored in the fields. He wanted Ireland to be frozen in time and that time was to be a sort of Medieval Celtic twilight, a dreamland on the fringes of modernity. Of course, he wanted to dominate the nation and the people. He reminds me not only of Gandhi but even more of Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

Michael Collins, by contrast, was a true Irishman. As a Chicagoan myself, I'm rather proud that Collins had a connection with my hometown, whereas the disgusting De Valera had a connection with the awful New York (it figures). Collins's older brother is buried here. At one point, the brother was urging Michael to immigrate to Chicago, and the Big Fellow was seriously considering making the move. But, fortunately for Ireland, he stayed in Erin.

Roughcoat said...

A professional Irishman is a bullshit artist, among other things. Ireland and the Irish (including Irish Americans) produce them by the bushel-full. The difference between a professional Irishman-cum-bullshit artist and a true Irishman -- the kind with real honest charm and wit and a gift for gab (and poetry, and song, and storytelling), is not always apparent to outsiders. The line between bullshit and blarney can be blurry. But there is a difference, I assure you.

For example: Jimmy Breslin, professional Irishman; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, true Irishman.

But it gets complicated. The Kennedys and the Bulger Brothers (Whitey and Billy) and Mickey Featherstone of the Westies were also true Irishmen, but they were not admirable people; the Whitey and Mickey were downright evil.

In other words: a true Irishman is not necessarily a good person, and a professional Irishman is not necessarily bad (usually isn't).

Hope this helps.

William said...

Michael Collins, as he knew he would be, was assasinated by the IRA. If you joined the IRA back then you were six times more likely to kill another IRA member as you were to kill a member of the Black and Tans. Collins was a superb athlete, but he refused to play soccer, rugby, or cricket because he considered them British garrison sports.......James Joyce said that the English owned the bodies of Irishmen, the Romans owned the souls, but the nationalists owned you body and soul.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Oh, you Rough-ian, don't get me started on Chicago. At least we never sent Barack Obama to the White House!

Bad Lieutenant said...

That said, thank you for attempting to explain about the Irish thing. It sounds like to be a professional Irishman you have to play a part and conform to expectations and if you have any thoughts of your own hide them well. Hope the pay is good.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Put up another one professor, bathing suit, from the rear, make him really suffer !
3/19/17, 6:21 PM


Yeah, hurt me!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

But you appear to associate "coolness" with radical left politics, which many of us grow out of.

I don't associate it with stodginess and conservatism, which rational people prefer to avoid.

There's no need to make irrationality the definition of cool.

StephenFearby said...

NY Times obit:

"...Mr. Breslin had been recovering from pneumonia."

Newsday obit:

"...Dr. William Cole, the Breslin family physician and a friend for the past 15 years, said Breslin died in his Manhattan home at about 8 a.m. Sunday. The cause of death was complications from pneumonia, Cole said."

Breslin was 88. Older people seem to have diminished immune system competence:

Sharyl Attkisson July 28, 2015

Govt. Researchers: Flu Shots Not Effective in Elderly, After All

'An important and definitive “mainstream” government study done nearly a decade ago got little attention because the science came down on the wrong side. It found that after decades and billions of dollars spent promoting flu shots for the elderly, the mass vaccination program did not result in saving lives. In fact, the death rate among the elderly increased substantially.

The authors of the study admitted a bias going into the study. Here was the history as described to me: Public health experts long assumed flu shots were effective in the elderly. But, paradoxically, all the studies done failed to demonstrate a benefit. Instead of considering that they, the experts, could be wrong–instead of believing the scientific data–the public health experts assumed the studies were wrong. After all, flu shots have to work, right?

So the NIH launched an effort to do “the” definitive study that would actually prove, for the first time, once and for all, that flu shots were beneficial to the elderly. The government would gather some of the brightest scientific minds for the research, and adjust for all kinds of factors that could be masking that presumed benefit.

But when they finished, no matter how they crunched the numbers, the data kept telling the same story: flu shots were of no benefit to the elderly. Quite the opposite. The death rate had increased markedly since widespread flu vaccination among older Americans. The scientists finally had to acknowledge that decades of public health thought had been mistaken.'

https://sharylattkisson.com/govt-researchers-flu-shots-not-effective-in-elderly-after-all/


Now, pneumonia and flu are both lung issues that people can die from. If flu and pneumonia are both less responsive to antivirals or antibiotics in the elderly, the issue seems to be one of diminished immune system competence if you are long in the tooth.

A consequence of concern:

Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (2016)

Microbes and Alzheimer’s Disease

(Editorial signed by 33 senior scientists and clinicians from a dozen countries.)

"...Given the failure of the 413 trials of other types of therapy for AD carried out in the period 2002–2012 [79], antiviral/antimicrobial treatment of AD patients, notably those who are APOE 4 carriers, could rectify the ‘no drug works’ impasse. We propose that further
research on the role of infectious agents in AD causation, including prospective trials of antimicrobial therapy, is now justified."

http://preview.tinyurl.com/jjcgv57


Given that Jimmy Breslin probably had the best of known conventional care to address his pneumonia, good luck with that.

Patrick Henry was right! said...

Would one get banned if one suggests that Althouse, circa 1970, had more than a little Manson girl in her look?

Just sayin.......

Roger Sweeny said...

I thought at the time and I still think it should have been Breslin-Mailer, not Mailer-Breslin.

Robert Cook said...

"Okay, with Brelin's passing we have our "Three": Breslin, Berry, and James Cotton."

There were three in the world of cartooning this same week: Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, both part of the first generation of underground cartoonists that included Robert Crumb, and Berni Wrightson.

Robert Cook said...

The emphasis on getting flu shots is misguided, even if well-meaning. At any given time, there are a myriad of flu viruses being passed around, while the annual "flu vaccine" is geared only toward the one strain of flu that (it is guessed) will be the predominant virus being passed around in a particular year. If you get the vaccine and contract one of the other viruses, you'll still get the flu.

Michael Gazonymous said...

What a long strange trip it's been. If you were to write a memoir what would the title be?

Wally Bock said...

Great post.

Douglas B. Levene said...

The poster is OK but I love the picture of the hippie chick underneath it.

Meade said...

1

2

3

Meade said...

with a touch of Cilla.