In the Company of Giants

He looks a bit frail and rambles a little when he talks, but the gentleman above is still Jimmy Breslin.
While it is incomprehensible to some of us that he was never so honored before, maybe the same year as his buddy, Pete Hamill, nevertheless, the Deadline Club chose Breslin and seven fellow journalism legends to induct into their Hall of Fame on Thursday, November 14.

                                         Here's Hamill with Colin DeVries of the Daily News

The luncheon was at Sardi's, as you can tell from the smiling faces on the wall above Breslin and Alex Tarquinio, president of the Deadline Club. I believe that is Lucille Ball in the upper left-hand corner.
Breslin talked about getting into journalism after learning the electrician who fixed things in his grandmother's basement in Richmond Hill would occasionally drive to Ossining (literally "up the river) to throw the switch on the electric chair at SingSing. He wanted to watch. Of course, but the time he was working for The Long Island Press and could go, he no longer wanted to see the spectacle.
I shook Jimmy Breslin's hand once before. When I lived in NYC, he and Norman Mailer, ran for Mayor and City Council President of the city and they announced on Staten Island, because no one had ever announced there before, not on The Forgotten Borough. So, once settled on Staten Island, they decided to announce at Wagner College, certainly one of the loveliest places on the Island, and a bit of an anomaly, a Protestant Parochial College within the city limits.
That earlier experience didn't diminish meeting him again.
I met his friend, Hamill when Alex asked me to herd the attendees to their tables. I pointed out to Pete it was above my pay grade, but asked him to find his seat.
Breslin wasn't the only honoree who brought friends.
Cindy Adams was the first honored, alphabetically. She came with Barbara Walters, who looks much more frail than Breslin.
Adams was funny. She talked about how her career started because her husband knew the Shah of Iran, who, was, at that time, dying in a city hospital. She also told of her acquaintance with Manuel Noriega ("if you're indicted, your invited"), including being cut off when he called her from prison by her Yorkshire Terrier, Jazzy.

 

Also honored was Grayden Carter, editor of Vanity Fair. Being an editor, he said little more than "thank you."

Bob Herbert worked for two of the great newspapers of the city, The Daily News, in the days when that tabloid was in its iconic 34th Street building with the giant globe in the lobby. The globe is still there, but it no longer rotates. Sort of like The Day the Earth Stood Still.The Daily News was used as The Daily Planet in the Superman movies. Herbert was also an op-ed columnist for The Grey Lady, The New York Times. Among his stories was one about expense accounts in the old days. If a reporter had to go out of town, it involved getting a cash advance from the basement finance office. It also involved a lot of paperwork. One day, Herbert was asked if he had a credit card. He said yes and was sent to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Carol Loomis is a senior editor at Fortune and the editor of a biography of Warren Buffet. My daughter the accountant says "there are a lot of those," but hers is Tap Dancing to Work. The audience related to her talk about being afraid every day at work. "Fear is a great motivator."
Linda Mason was the first woman to work as a producer for the CBS Evening News. She worked with Walter Cronkite, which is very much like working with God. She started her career at the Times-Herald-Record in Middletown, NY.

I had the pleasure of telling Bill Moyers we have a mutual friend, Cathy Bao Bean. But, I've known her longer. Moyers is a great speaker -- big surprise, I know. He pointed out that "news is what people want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity." He also noted "getting at the truth is almost as hard as hiding it in the first place."

Norman Pearlstine, unlike several of the other honorees, started his career in broadcast and now is becoming Chief Content Officer at Time, Inc. He calls this the "second phase" of his career.
After the luncheon (which was amazing) and speeches, we sophisticated, classy journalists acted like school kids with our heroes.
Of course.
We were in the company of giants.