I was immediately delighted to see Bayard Rustin’s name in the first sentence (besides listings) in the New Yorker. As the 20th anniversary of his death passed without a whisper in the press, I first thought they were finally making up for lost time. They spoke of his arrest in 1953, and then paid a paragraph of tribute:

The episode was a source of shame for Rustin, not on account of his homosexuality (about which, for that era, he was astonishingly relaxed) or because of the stigma of jail (he had spent two years in federal prison as a conscientious objector) but because he knew that his carelessness had let down his colleagues in the nonviolent movements for peace and racial equality. Yet his service to those causes did not end. Though he had to resign from the F.O.R., its secular twin, the War Resisters League, soon hired him as its executive secretary. In 1956, he became a mentor to the young Martin Luther King, Jr., beginning an association that, while rocky at times, culminated, on August 28, 1963, in the epochal March on Washington. The cover of the next issue of Life featured not King but the instigator of the march, the labor leader A. Philip Randolph, and its principal organizer, Bayard Rustin.

But then I blinked when I realized they were doing it as a way to talk about Larry Craig, the Senate’s famous closet case and national embarrassment. But no, not about Craig, but about the Reeps who are scared by him:

Rustin’s homosexuality, the Pasadena incident in particular, embarrassed and angered some of his political comrades. But none of them responded to it with cruelty or contempt. Senator Larry Craig, of Idaho, has not been so lucky. No sooner had Craig’s brother Republican politicians learned that he had been caught with his pants down in a men’s-room stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (where, a year from now, they will arrive by the planeload for their National Convention) than the stampede began.

My admiration for Hendrik Herztberg knows few bounds. But I really wish he’d returned to Rustin at the end, to make clear that he was dealing in two contrasts: a fractious but supportive community and a real leader with a moral message versus a sad, conflicted charlatan.

I now find myself wondering what Roy Cohn, whose stance on the subject exemplifies Craig’s so well, thought of Rustin’s “relaxed” strength.

Update: I can’t be old school and rely on the printed word.  My new friend (and Rustin’s widower) Walter Naegle, tipped me off to Hertzberg’s blog, where he reveals that he actually
grew up knowing Rustin, a dear friend of his Jewish activist parents.  Hertzberg knew long ago, apparently, what I only learned in depth this spring: that the civil rights hero was a prototypical Chelsean.

As a child, I saw him as a literally towering figure, impossibly tall and sinuous. His appearance was as operatic as his voice, with an electric explosion of pepper-and-salt hair, hawklike features, dandyish clothes, and a beautifully carved cane that concealed (I was thrilled to be told) a sharp sword.

Apologies to Hertzberg for my doubts. And Walter also finally put to rest my anxiety with his own response:

 Yes, there is no comparing the two men, but their treatment by their respective “friends and colleagues” says something about “movements” versus “politics.”

Now I’m wondering if Hertzberg grew up in Penn South, where he also might have run into Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine) and the great A. Philip Randolph.

I knew it was coming; now I’m examining the result almost as an experiment, as dispassionately as I can.

After three-plus weeks of messing around with the story about the Hotel Breslin, the SRO whose tireless tenants are trying to fend off its conversion to luxury quarters, I was hardly surprised when Breslin Tenants Association President Stephen Colvin reported a phone call from Greg Beyer of the New York Times. “I told him I only wanted to talk to you,” Colvin said with a startling loyalty. Sensibly enough, once I was done with piece #4, the association relented and let him into a meeting.

Looking into Mr. Beyer’s work, I found out that he was one of those Columbia J-school golden children, graduated in 2007 winning every award possible and publishing in the Times while still in RW1 (Reporting and Writing 1).. I also learned that Beyer, whose pieces often adorn the paper’s The City section, had a wonderful affinity for historical material and a tight, elegant prose style. I thought, Oh, OK. He’s good. It might not be the skanky real estate story I’d feared (like this 2005 piece by Patrick Healy, “The Art of Persuading Tenants to Move”).

Through the magic of social networking sites, I contacted him, and he was gracious: “My story will definitely mention your series, and I hope prompt readers to check it out, since I just won’t have the space to reach into the story’s more remote corners.”

He kept his word in today’s story and mentioned Chelsea Now, if not that we’d seen enough there for four stories. The title’s reference to the Chelsea Hotel is appropriate, and he found a wonderful character for his narrative lede. He mentions the rest simply as tenants’ complaints, and their planned legal appeal as probably doomed – which fits the elegiac tone of the article.

The rest of my thoughts I’ll keep to myself, lest I be accused of nothing but jealousy. It’s a very skilled piece, and God knows it’s hard for me to compress that much info so elegantly. I will be curious to see how the tenants and their lawyers feel.

And I’m nothing but amused that GFI Capital wouldn’t talk to the Times, either. I’d thought for sure they’d jump at the chance to share their “vision” for the “reconstruction of two boutique hotels in the Chelsea area of Manhattan” with the Gray Lady. Maybe they’re waiting till Patrick Healy calls.