Jimmy Breslin

Weapons caused her greatest pain

July 15, 2007

The moment she saw the car pulling up on her street, 229th Street in Rosedale, on this summer night in quiet Queens, she stood at the dark screen of her two-story attached house and watched the car, with one man inside, without any feeling at first and then she felt the beginnings of anxiety.

    Recent columns

  • In case we all forgot, Americans are still dying in Iraq

    August 6, 2006

    By the way, there are many American soldiers fighting in the Middle East.

  • Weary shoulders shrug off Prez visit

    September 1, 2004

    'No, I'm not going to see Bush," the woman in the Stadium Bar on Grand Avenue in Elmhurst was saying yesterday. "I'm going to Ireland at eight o'clock tonight."

  • From the heights of hypocrisy

    August 30, 2004

    Rudolph Giuliani, favoring his old wound from Gallipoli, said yesterday that Bush stands on the very pinnacle, the highest snowy peak, with historic war leaders so familiar to Giuliani that he mentioned them with authority, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

  • Marching because our soldiers can't

    August 29, 2004

    The first thing she did when she took over carrying the casket was to put a hand on the flag covering it, for the casket was only cardboard and the flag fluttered and she patted it down and then tucked it underneath.

  • No Romance in Wednesday's Ride

    October 16, 2003

    The rush-hour crowd milled around South Ferry, but the boat was not running. The harbor showed horses, which is the term for whitecaps driven by a strong wind. The ferry ride to Staten Island is one of the most pleasant ways to come home from work anywhere. At other times, the ride is a thrill for out-of-towners and romantics.

  • Saving Dollars, Breaking Souls

    April 20, 2003

    In assiduously scouring the budget, somebody with two frigid eyes went to the bottom of the city to find the municipal rubble, that if not removed, can surely cause the metropolis to topple on its budget.

  • He'll Bring the Energy To Race for President

    January 21, 2003

    Al Sharpton held an intense meeting of his committee in formation for Sharpton for President yesterday in his office one flight over Madison Avenue and 124th Street.

  • 'Son of Sam' flashbacks

    October 10, 2002

    In this Washington morning, there was a police car outside the nursery school. The school's blinds were drawn and the glass door was papered.

  • City Going To The Dogs

    September 18, 2002

    Six a.m. is my time of day, and I am on Broadway and 68th Street in Manhattan about to go the Village Voice vending machine so I can read the superb city coverage of Tom Robbins and Wayne Barrett.

  • The Pipes, the Pipes Were Calling

    September 12, 2002

    The first call to awaken a city for the start of its day dedicated to mass grief was a single note that came through the overnight darkness and mist at Floyd Bennett Field, where Brooklyn goes into the water.

  • Lincoln's Speech - But Not A Lincoln

    August 7, 2002

    On Sept. 11, that famous day of which we are all going to celebrate and mourn and commemorate, Gov. George Pataki will read the Gettysburg Address. He was chosen for that because he is just like Lincoln, tall.

  • His Grandeur Was a Delusion

    June 11, 2002

    "Do you know what this is?" one of the other hoodlums in the car said.

  • What The Feds Call Intelligence

    June 6, 2002

    After the first day, his neck hurt. He had spent most of the morning searching the staircase and platform of the El stop at Boyd Avenue and 88th Street in Ozone Park, which is in Queens. He wanted a space that would give him a clear view, for eye and camera, of the sidewalk outside the clubhouse where Peter Gotti and the rest of the Gambino gang often congregated.

  • FBI Slaps Helping Hand

    June 4, 2002

    Sometime last fall, the FBI ran ads asking for people who could speak Middle Eastern languages. This was at least a scandal. We had just been attacked by Arabs and were going to wage war on an Arab country and hardly anybody on our side could speak Arabic or any other Middle Eastern language. Around the United Nations in New York everybody says that this bin Laden has the best translators anywhere and the United States is comical. When Rumsfeld announces that we have captured bin Laden's hard drives, he can't give you the names of the people who can read them. He can't because most of the time there isn't anybody.

  • Ceremony Is No Antidote

    June 2, 2002

    They worshiped a golden calf in ancient Israel. It was their God present on earth, right in front of them and worthy of all prayer. I don't recall reading that the golden calf had done anything more than standing still while prayers bounced off its inanimate body.

  • The Hierarchy Of Decency

    May 19, 2002

    One day in my past, I was in the hallway at a book publisher, Viking Press, and a new editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was asking for help in getting her first book as an editor. I had just been in Chicago, where I had been with Eugene Kennedy, a priest who was at Loyola University Chicago. He wanted to write and he talked about a book on Mayor Richard J. Daley.

  • Pain of Abused Lost in Wisps Of Vatican Fog

    April 23, 2002

    Rome - I was walking down the hallway to get on the plane to Rome on Sunday night and some people were talking about the day's news and now in the plane's doorway a man in a black suit turned around. He was - Avery Dulles, a cardinal.

  • Real Security Hard To Find

    April 21, 2002

    In the middle of the day on Friday, Ashcroft, the attorney general, announced that the bin Laden enemy was planning to attack financial institutions in the Northeast.

  • Church Leaders Should Leave

    March 19, 2002

    A priest I know for some time is married and has two children. His life in his parish is spent on the slow, the troubled and the ill and those around them. However, he has disregarded the Catholic Church's rule on celibacy from the day he was ordained, "I believe in love, not a cold life,” he says.

  • Abducting The Tragedy

    February 10, 2002

    The Twin Towers Fund has enough money in it, tens of millions of donations that were decently given and are being handled with motives so miserable as to cause suspicion, that it now becomes a mirror as big as a wall that shows the character of this Rudolph Giuliani.

  • Abducting The Tragedy

    February 10, 2002

    The Twin Towers Fund has enough money in it, tens of millions of donations that were decently given and are being handled with motives so miserable as to cause suspicion, that it now becomes a mirror as big as a wall that shows the character of this Rudolph Giuliani.

  • City's People Were Real Heroes

    January 1, 2002

    In the morning yesterday, Michael Bloomberg came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to hear a barrage of sermons and prayers and a little brilliant singing at a gathering of ministers of many faiths and hues of the city.

  • Trial Belongs Right Here

    December 13, 2001

    I am standing with a container of coffee on the eighth floor of the federal court building in Manhattan yesterday, looking right across the way at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The ninth floor is where they usually keep terrorist bombers. This was the floor where Louis Pepe, a federal correction officer, was stabbed in the eye by Mamdouh Mahdud Salim and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed in November of last year. They used a sharpened comb on Pepe and the comb went into his brain and now he is blank. They still face charges.

  • Flights Of Fear, Anger At JFK

    December 6, 2001

    "You treat me like a criminal," the passenger shouted at the airlines woman at the gate.

  • Money Buys Everything, Even Death

    November 22, 2001

    Eleven of these mass murderers who were on the planes that attacked this city came from Saudi Arabia. This has not disturbed Saudi Arabia in the least.

  • Fight Terror With Curtains

    November 20, 2001

    Hastings, who is known as Wartime Hastings because that's what the president tells him, that he is at war, began the day in his 23rd Street apartment by limping on a bad right ankle to the two bedroom windows that had a blackout cloth covering them. He decided to untack them for the day. But the blackout curtain would be up again at night. He kept the house air-raid dark at all times after sunset. Wartime Hastings was certain that he was the first person in New York to run a blackout.

  • A Faith Stronger Than Evil

    November 11, 2001

    "How old?" the mother was asked.

  • A Faith Stronger Than Evil

    November 11, 2001

    "How old?" the mother was asked.

  • Her Offense? Bad Timing

    October 21, 2001

    Observing the sellout crowd of defendants on the second floor of the federal court in Brooklyn, attorney Joel Winograd, voice throbbing with patriotism, announced, "This is America. Here we have whites, blacks, Hispanics, Russians, women. There is no Mafia anymore. This is the poor stealing in a group. How could anybody want to bomb a country like this?"

  • As Rights Wane, Siegel's the Man

    October 9, 2001

    On Sept. 10, this country was paying for a sprawling, so utterly sophisticated intelligence agency, the CIA, and also the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Army intelligence, the FBI, the customs, and the immigration service.

  • Losing Liberty One Bit at a Time

    October 8, 2001

    The cab driver was wearing a red turban that was as bright as a traffic light.

  • It's Not About Mayor at All

    October 2, 2001

    Firefighter Stephen Bellson was in the water at Rockaway on the Tuesday morning when people on the shoreline began yelling about the World Trade Center. Bellson was out of the water and into clothes and driving madly to Manhattan. He arrived at the World Trade Center just in time to get killed.

  • Ferrer a Class Act in Chaotic Race

    September 30, 2001

    Here is Rudy Giuliani listening to himself.

  • A Smile Gone, But Where?

    September 25, 2001

    I stand on the street corner in the darkness and wait for her, but for another day she is not here.

  • Morgue's Empty Receiving Room Dims Spirits of One Here to Help

    September 21, 2001

    It made sense for the medical examiner's office to call Dr. Skip Sperber, a San Diego dentist and assistant medical examiner, to come in to help identify bodies. Sperber started an identification system used by the federal NCIC. And years ago, Sperber trained at NYU Medical Center.

  • War Leaves Him Alone at the Altar

    September 17, 2001

    Herewith a true story from one of the low-density neighborhoods of the city. These are the two-story neighborhoods that have found it so costly to have jobs working in great buildings in Manhattan that suddenly turned vulnerable.

  • Public Displays Not for Everyone

    September 16, 2001

    "Where was it?" I ask. "There," she says. "Between those two buildings." I am in my bedroom in the morning and I am looking straight downtown at the place where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center always stood for all to see in their high silvery commercial grandeur and glory.

  • Survivors Face A Harsh Reality

    September 15, 2001

    I was coming from the downtown East Side, where on streets like Avenue C and D there had been no garbage picked up for three days and no trucks were allowed in to make food deliveries. People had no bread or milk. Some women civic workers were out on Avenue D, looking for a bodega owner who asked people to pay $5 for a quart of milk. This never should have been done in time of war. He ducked and the women looked on.

  • And Then They Were Gone

    September 14, 2001

    There is no laughter in the morgue.

  • Those Who Rush When Alarm Sounds

    September 13, 2001

    YESTERDAY, the city belonged to those who do real work.

  • Jimmy Breslin: Suddenly, a War at Home

    September 12, 2001

    Always, all our wars were somewhere else. The one this time is here.

  • The War Comes Home

    September 11, 2001

    Always, all our wars were somewhere else. The one this time is here.

  • Looks Like a Racket, John

    December 3, 2000

    A LETTER FROM OZONE PARK

Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin

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