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Can 'Lolita' Seduce Long Island Readers?

New LI Ear column gives Amy Fisher a 'second chance'

By Katti Gray | Staff Writer

5:44 PM EST, November 13, 2003

Amy Fisher went to jail for putting a bullet in Mary Jo Buttafuoco's head a decade ago. Mary Jo, whose husband, Joey Buttafuoco, was teenage Amy's lover back in her pistol-packing days, pardoned Amy in public for her headline-making transgressions.

If the victimized wife from Massapequa could summon up that kind of grace, the editors of the New Long Island Ear figured they would take a cue from that. "If Mary Jo can forgive her, then who can complain?" said Robbie Woliver, the Ear's editor in chief and a self-proclaimed Fisher fan.

He has made Fisher, still a parolee after spending seven years behind bars, a columnist for the free biweekly newspaper.

Her column debuts Wednesday.

For the record, Woliver said, Fisher is not granting interviews to any news organizations about her new job. He is fielding all calls on her behalf and this is what he has to say:

Amy Fisher, who graduated from Nassau Community College, can write. The 28-year-old's words first appeared in the Ear's June 20 edition in a cover story carrying the headline "My Story."

The first-person essay touched on her falling and attempting to rise again:

"... Sometimes I think my luck can't get any worse, but then something good will happen which makes me think of life as one big roller coaster. I've done wrong, but I have also been dealt some hard blows; granted, some self-inflicted. But through it all I've learned to survive, learn and grow as a person. To me, the glass will always remain half-full rather than half-empty. I know I will put the pieces of Amy Fisher back together. I have a positive attitude toward the future and remain with the hope that eventually I can be myself again, with acceptance...."

Fisher's columns will be drawn from her own life and will run with an "Amy Fisher" banner and her photo. The first three already have been written and, in order of their scheduled publication, will be musings on cyberdating (she met her husband-to-be online), overcoming personal obstacles and overcrowding in the suburbs that reared her. She grew up in Merrick.

Fisher has a contractual agreement with the Ear to earn what Woliver says are the usual fees, an amount he would not disclose. She will work from home some days and head into the Garden City newsroom on others.

All the way back to their days at the now-defunct Long Island Voice, Woliver said he and managing editor Bill Jensen had pondered how they might find space for Fisher, given her notoriety and her being so homegrown, to pen something.

"We thought this would be a perfect forum for it," Woliver said. "There are few people who are as iconic a Long Islander as she is. And I'd heard from a couple of people at the college she attended that she was a good writer. We thought 'let's give her a second chance.'"

Fisher's 1,000-word columns will be available on newsstands, college campuses, record stores and elsewhere, as well as online at the Ear's Web site, www.island ear.com.