[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 60 (Friday, May 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4287-S4289]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             MURRAY KEMPTON

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, on Monday of last week, Murray 
Kempton died. With his passing, we mark the end of a legend in New 
York, and in American journalism. Kempton was the kindest man and 
toughest reporter we have known in our time. A certain incandescent 
sweetness now departs. Yet his memory and, yes, his legacy remain.
  The Daily News' columnist Sidney Zion captured Kempton's unique 
ability and thus legacy when Zion wrote: ``Kempton used his power to 
condemn, but loved his right to absolve. And when he absolved the 
sinner, he owned the territory.''
  This was Kempton's singular power. With characteristic flair, Kempton 
would challenge corruption with voracity. Then instead of reveling in 
victory, would show compassion for the humans beneath the deeds and 
absolve the sins of some of the greatest losers in New York's history. 
Carmine DeSapio, Alger Hiss, Carmine Persico, Roy Cohn. Such was the 
power of the words which Kempton wielded.
  When the reformers in the City had finally overcome DeSapio, one of 
the great Tammany bosses, Kempton wrote, as only he could: ``The age of 
Pericles had begun because we were rid of Carmine DeSapio. One had to 
walk carefully to avoid being stabbed by the lilies bursting in the 
pavements. I wish the reformers luck--with less Christian sincerity 
than Carmine DeSapio does. I will be a long time forgiving them on this 
one.'' Kempton felt sympathy and respect even for the rogue. He stood 
up for the loser whether it was Carmine DeSapio, a deposed dictator, or 
a shunned local New Yorker.
  J. Edgar Hoover once called Mr. Kempton a snake and a rat. From one 
who was once referred to by Mr. Hoover as a skunk, I take pride in 
knowing that my work was seen in the same light as Kempton's. But I 
fear no one else has what the Washington Post called, ``[Kempton's] 
skeptical sympathy'' required to continue his work.
  The Age of Kempton is over. Budding writers would do well to re-read 
and emulate his work; public figures continue to thank and rue the day 
Kempton chose them to be subject of his column; and for we who knew 
him, only sorrow bursts through the cracks in our hearts today.
  I ask that the following articles about Murray Kempton be printed in 
the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

                 [From the New York Post, May 9, 1997]

              Kempton's Funeral Is a Lesson in Simplicity

                      (By Christopher Francescani)

       Even in death, Murray Kempton's disarming humility ruled 
     the day.
       There were no eulogies at the legendary columnist's simple 
     Upper West Side funeral yesterday, although hundreds of the 
     city's greatest literary, political and newspaper voices were 
     on hand.
       There were no limousines, although Kempton was considered 
     royalty among the city's press corps.
       And there were no gaudy floral tributes, only small bursts 
     of potted cherry blossoms, Casablanca lilies and white 
     azaleas perched unassumingly on the altar.
       But the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, who sounded off 
     for decades on every aspect of the city he loved, was 
     remembered--and remembered well.
       ``The funeral was pure Murray,'' Post columnist Jack 
     Newfield said. ``His manner, his grace, his kindliness, his 
     humility beyond self-effacement. He was the benchmark.''
       Kempton, 79, whose gentle elegance and amusing 
     eccentricities won him the respect of virtually all of his 
     ``fellow workers,'' died Monday at a Manhattan nursing home.
       In a note written in 1989, entitled, ``My Funeral,'' he'd 
     requested a brief ceremony with no eulogies. His body was 
     cremated earlier this week.
       ``He chose a simple ceremony in the classic Anglican 
     manner, which focuses on God's love and the equality of all 
     persons in the face of death,'' said the Rev. Gaylord 
     Hitchcock of the Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch.
       ``His [funeral] runs against the grain of most American 
     funerals, where the Mass turns into a celebration of the 
     person.''
       Kempton, known among his colleagues as much for his 
     intricate sentence structure as for riding his three-speed 
     bicycle to news events--jazz humming through his headphones--
     spent most of his 55-year career at the New York Post and 
     Newsday.
       The Baltimore-born scribe, who once ran copy for H.L. 
     Mencken, won a Pulitzer for commentary in 1985.
       The pews of the tiny Gothic-style church where Kempton 
     worshiped for decades were filled to capacity 30 minutes 
     before the ceremony began.
       William F. Buckley Jr. and Mayor Giuliani pressed their way 
     through the crowd. Writer Nora Ephron sat pensively in a rear 
     pew as the church bell rang out 79 times, once for each year 
     of Kempton's life.
       Columnist Jimmy Breslin, Post editor Ken Chandler, Daily 
     News editor Pete Hamill, writers Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Roth 
     and Calvin Trillin, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer were there--
     as were former Mayor David Dinkins, Manhattan Borough 
     President Ruth Messinger and hosts of other dignitaries.
       Off to the side of the altar, a choir clad in black sung 
     hymns softly in Latin.
       Some of Kempton's favorite passages from the Bible took the 
     place of speeches.
       Instead, eulogies were whispered between pews and among the 
     crowd of mourners outside the chapel.

[[Page S4288]]

       ``He was the last great gentleman poet,'' said Post 
     columinist Liz Smith.
       Writer David Halberstam said,
       ``I'll miss meeting him on the street, and having the 
     choice of talking about the Knicks, the mayor, the Clintons, 
     anything. He was great fun on every subject.''
       ``He was the soul of kindness,'' said WCBS Radio reporter 
     Irene Cornell.
       New York Post managing editor Marc Kalech edited Kempton's 
     copy in the late 1970s, when the columnist worked at The 
     Post.
       ``Editing Kempton was like editing Shakespeare,'' Kalech 
     said. ``You'd read it, you'd struggle to understand it, and 
     then you wouldn't touch it.''
       But perhaps the greatest tribute to one of New York's 
     greatest columnists came from someone who never met Kempton.
       ``I'm just a reader,'' explained Ray Belsky, a retired 
     health-care consultant who sat alone in the back of the 
     church.
       ``He touched me with his integrity. There was a courtliness 
     about everything he wrote. Even when he wrote about common 
     men, and common problems, he gave them the dignity they 
     deserved.
       ``I never met him. I just admired him and I read him . . . 
     every day.''
                                                                    ____


                   [From the Daily News, May 8, 1997]

                   Murray Kempton Was No Paper Saint

                            (By Sidney Zion)

       I left the courtroom for the newsroom 35 years ago by 
     parodying Murray Kempton, and if I were true to his newly 
     minted ghost, I'd slip this fact into a fog bank somewhere 
     around midstream in this piece.
       But every journalist who got a nod from Kempton became his 
     memorialist before I could get a word in edgewise, given the 
     tyranny of column calendars. He died Monday, and here it is 
     Thursday, so I play my credentials on top.
       In December 1962 the New York newspapers were in the throes 
     of their longest strike. Victor Navasky, today the publisher 
     of The Nation, decided to put out a parody of the New York 
     Post, and he asked me to do Kempton. I was an assistant U.S. 
     attorney in New Jersey, but Navasky knew I was a Kempton 
     buff.
       I wrote the column, and the next thing I knew I was being 
     pursued by the Post. I took a leave of absence from the 
     Justice Department and never got back to court.
       Murray was bemused. He thought I was more than a little 
     crazy for this move, but I insist that it establishes me as 
     his true short biographer. Who else changed his profession, 
     his life, because of Kempton?
       And I say that he wouldn't like the canonization that 
     greeted his death. Nothing bothered him more than good 
     intentions, so I feel free to patronize those who 
     sentimentalized him as the patron saint of the losers of the 
     world.
       The losers' dressing room was indeed his locker, but only 
     because there were winners. He used his power to condemn, but 
     loved his right to absolve. And when he absolved the sinner, 
     he owned the territory.
       Carmine DeSapio, Alger Hiss, Carmine Persico, Roy Cohn--all 
     cases in point.
       Every phone call I received upon Kempton's death from old 
     pals mentioned first his great column on DeSapio the day the 
     Village reformers destroyed the Tammany boss.
       Kempton had been in the forefront on the reform movement, 
     but when DeSapio was beaten, he wrote: ``The Age of Pericles 
     had begun because we were rid of Carmine DeSapio. One had to 
     walk carefully to avoid being stabbed by the lilies bursting 
     in the pavements. I wish the reformers luck--with less 
     Christian sincerity than Carmine DeSapio does. I will be a 
     long time forgiving them this one.''
       This column drove the Village reformers crazy. But it was 
     classic, and Kempton repeated the theme until his death. Let 
     anyone else praise DeSapio, and Murray would have at him. He 
     knew why DeSapio was a dignified loser, but if you said so, 
     watch out.
       The same with Hiss, and then some. Murray knew Hiss was 
     guilty because like Hiss, Kempton was a shabby-genteel 
     Gentile out of Baltimore--and a former Communist. (Everybody 
     I knew, Jew or Gentile, assumed Murray was a Jew--who knew 
     his first name was James?--and he wrote for the then-liberal-
     Jewish New York Post.)
       But Kempton had no time for the right-wing attackers of 
     Hiss. Hiss was his, and the rest were know-nothings.
       None of this came to me until the day Murray ran into me on 
     Broadway and said he had attacked my book on Cohn. Always the 
     gentleman, Kempton said: ``Don't worry, I put it in a paper 
     that nobody will read.''
       I said, ``But you were at every party for Roy, and with a 
     better table than I had.''
       Murray cringed, and in that cringe I recognized that only 
     he could absolve the sinner. I had crossed over the line and 
     had to be punished.
       He was the best there was in his time, don't get me wrong. 
     But he was the best because he was sly, he knew everything 
     about everybody, and only when he didn't want you to know it 
     he ran into fog banks, each one chartered by Kempton out of 
     Henry James.
       And he was always ``cosmic,'' despite his denials. Murray 
     Kempton knew the cosmos and played it every time, whether 
     with Adlai Stevenson or John Gotti. They bury him today. He 
     smiles at the Maker, and vice versa.
                                                                    ____


                      [From Newsday, May 6, 1997]

    ``One of a Kind''--Murray Kempton Dies; ``Kindest Man, Toughest 
                               Reporter''

                           (By Fred Bruning)

       Murray Kempton, the erudite, pipe-smoking scribe whose 
     penetrating intellect made complicated issues seem simple and 
     whose audacious sentences made the English language more 
     joyously complex, died yesterday at the Kateri Residence, a 
     skilled nursing facility in Manhattan. Kempton was 79.
       A son, Arthur Kempton, 48, said his father died at 4:40 
     a.m., apparently of heart failure.
       In January, Kempton, a columnist at Newsday since 1981, was 
     diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his son said. Kempton 
     recently underwent surgery and was being treated by 
     physicians at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 
     Manhattan.
       Kempton's death prompted expressions of sympathy from a 
     multitude of admirers--President Bill Clinton among them.
       ``Hillary and I were deeply saddened today to learn of the 
     death of Murray Kempton,'' Clinton said in a statement. 
     ``Murray's reporting during his illustrious 45 years in 
     journalism was marked by courage, honesty and compassion. He 
     represented the very finest of his profession and we will all 
     miss him.''
       Kempton covered the campaign of Republican challenger 
     Robert Dole last year. Yesterday, Dole mourned Kempton. 
     ``Murray is a longtime friend,'' Dole said. ``I enjoyed his 
     presence on the campaign plane. He will be greatly missed by 
     friends and family and his objective voice will be missed in 
     the world of journalism.''
       Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said of Kempton: ``He 
     was the kindest man and toughest reporter we have known in 
     our time. A certain incandescent sweetness now departs.''
       Newsday publisher Raymond Jansen said Kempton's absence 
     from the paper represented a major loss. ``We certainly are 
     going to be poorer for his not appearing in our pages any 
     longer,'' Jansen said. ``He was unique. That term so many 
     times applies to people who really aren't, but in this case 
     he was truly one of a kind.''
       Jansen said Times Mirror of Los Angeles, Newsday's parent 
     company, was to have presented Kempton with its Special 
     Distinction Award tomorrow in recognition of achievements 
     ``epitomizing the very top of his field.''
       For colleagues at Newsday, and for thousands of devoted 
     readers in New York and elsewhere, it will be difficult to 
     imagine a world without the wry, unyielding Murray Kempton to 
     help sort out the daunting issues of the day.
       His last columns, published in January, were typically 
     eclectic--the pieces dealt with Presidential politics, bad 
     cops and corporate greed--and resonated with trumpet blasts 
     of the brash but sophisticated voice that Kempton had 
     cultivated over a half-century.
       Writing about a woman who was suing the manufacturer of 
     artificial breast implants, Kempton said: ``Her case, whether 
     won or lost, will likely pass unremarked, because we are 
     already satiated with reminders that American corporations 
     are fixedly future-blind in engagements with the welfare of 
     their customers and for that matter of themselves.''
       The paragraph was vintage Kempton--insightful, challenging, 
     artfully obtuse. In characteristic fashion, Kempton was 
     gleefully standing newspaper convention on its head by taking 
     the longest, not the shortest, path between two points. Aware 
     that his prose was viewed by some as unorthodox and 
     difficult, Kempton joked that he likely never would be 
     successfully sued for libel because no judge or jury would be 
     able to untangle his sentences.
       Kempton could afford to be self-effacing. He knew that many 
     considered him a master of contemporary letters, a reporter 
     who took the journalistic form about as far as it could go, a 
     rare breed who found a way to survive as much on his powers 
     of analysis and abstraction as the assorted facts scribbled 
     in his notebook.
       ``He was like one of those comets hurtling past,'' said Les 
     Payne, a News Day assistant managing editor and a long-time 
     friend of Kempton.'' We will not likely see his kind again.''
       In addition to the admiration of fans and co-workers, 
     Kempton earned the esteem of the publishing establishment. He 
     won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1985 and twice took 
     the respected George Polk Award. His book ``The Briar Patch'' 
     won the National Book Award for contemporary affairs in 1974, 
     as well as a number of other honors. Among his most cherished 
     was a 1987 Grammy from the National Academy of Recording Arts 
     for liner notes accompanying the album, ``Sinatra--
     Standards.''
       Though he wrote regularly for News Day, Kempton contributed 
     to a wide range of publications. Over the years, his work 
     appeared in Esquire, Playboy, Commonweal, Life, Harper's, and 
     Atlantic Monthly.
       He published four books. The last ``Rebellions, 
     Perversities, and Main Events,'' released in 1994, was 
     dedicated to his old pal, William F. Buckley Jr. The 
     conservative stance of Buckley, editor of the National 
     Review, did nothing to discourage Kempton, whose politics 
     strayed in another direction.
       Kempton enjoyed persons who held contrary views and, in 
     turn, was revered by Americans of many persuasions. ``Murray 
     set a high journalistic standard,'' Sen. Alfonse

[[Page S4289]]

     D'Amato (R-N.Y.) said, ``He was tough, but fair.''
       Since a young man, James Murray Kempton prepared himself to 
     move easily among the American throng--as attentive to the 
     struggles of the ordinary citizen as the maneuverings of the 
     rich and powerful.
       He was born in Baltimore on Dec. 16, 1917, and, as a young 
     man, became a devoted reader of the Baltimore Evening Sun--
     and particularly of the Sun's iconoclastic essayist H.L. 
     Mencken. Drawn to newspaper work, Kempton found a job at the 
     Sun, attending his first national convention as a copy boy 
     for Mencken, his hero.
       After graduation from Johns Hopkins University, Kempton 
     followed his leftist political instincts. He worked as a 
     labor organizer, wrote for the Young People's Socialist 
     League and the American Labor Party. Even in later years as a 
     reporter, Kempton played off his lefty background by greeting 
     colleagues as ``fellow workers.''
       In 1942, Kempton joined the New York Post as a reporter but 
     with World War II intensifying, soon enlisted in the Air 
     Force.
       During a three year hitch, Kempton served in New Guinea and 
     the Philippines. He once noted that he was assigned to a unit 
     called the Cyclone Division. ``They call it the Cyclone 
     Division because all its tents got blown down on maneuvers,'' 
     said Kempton. ``That's how it is with my team every time.''
       After the war, Kempton returned to New York and began his 
     writing career in earnest. He worked again for the Post and 
     then a succession of other publications--New Republic 
     magazine, New York World Telegram, New York Review of Books. 
     He taught journalism at Hunter College and ``political 
     journalism'' at the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University.
       While covering the civil rights movement for the Post in 
     1961, Kempton showed his wily instincts. Freedom Riders were 
     traveling by bus through the South to illustrate how blacks 
     were denied access to public accommodations. There had been 
     violence along the way, and likely, there would be more. In 
     Montgomery, Ala., journalists were told a busload of Freedom 
     Riders were heading out at 7 a.m. Other reporters piled into 
     cars to follow the bus. Kempton went them one better--he 
     bought himself a ticket that allowed him on the bus.
       ``He wrote a helluva story,'' said Michael Dorman, who 
     covered the Freedom Rides. ``It was a master stroke to buy 
     that ticket--and just the sort of thing Murray would do.''
       At Newsday, Kempton's reputation preceded him but the new 
     man--a star by any measure--proved affable and without the 
     aura of celebrity.
       Working out of the now defunct New York Newsday, Kempton 
     looked like an aging Ivy Leaguer--shirt and tie, natty suit 
     well-pressed--but had a gift for gab and generous nature that 
     neatly undercut his formal bearing. He loved jazz and the 
     blues and, as if that weren't enough to cement his man-of-
     the-people reputation, Kempton traveled to the office by 
     bicycle. Murray Kempton couldn't drive.
       On his 75th birthday, Kempton got a plant from a fan--the 
     wife of alleged mobster Carmine Persico, about whom Kempton 
     had written. Kempton said he had no talent for horticulture 
     and gave the plant, an amaryllis, to staff member Anthony 
     Destefano. The amaryllis thrived, but never flowered until 
     this spring, Destefano said, when it bloomed red, and bright.
       By then, Kempton was seriously ill and his own brilliant 
     season almost through. But even feeling poorly, Kempton kept 
     his edge. Spencer Rumsey, a Newsday editor who checked 
     Kempton's columns, said that Kempton told him he likely got 
     sick because New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani kicked the Mafia 
     out of the Fulton Fish Market. ``When the mob was in charge, 
     you could always count on safe fish,'' Kempton said.
       It was Kempton as Kempton would want to be remembered--
     sassy, sardonic and unexpected. ``He represented the very 
     best that there is in this business,'' said Newsday Editor 
     Tony Marro. ``It was our great good fortune to have him as a 
     colleague and mentor, and we'll miss him terribly.''
       Kempton is survived by three sons, Arthur, of 
     Massachusetts; David, of Fallsburg, N.Y. and Christopher, of 
     New York; and a daughter, Durgananda, also of Fallsburg. His 
     first wife, Mina, lives in Princeton, M.J. His second wife, 
     Beverly, died last year. A son, Murray Jr., died in an auto 
     accident in 1971. Kempton also leaves a companion, Barbara 
     Epstein.
       A funeral is set for 11 a.m. Thursday at St. Ignatius 
     Episcopal Church, 552 West End Avenue, New York.
                                                                    ____


             [From the New York Post, Tuesday, May 6, 1997]

                       Murray Kempton (1917-1997)

       Murray Kempton, who died yesterday at 79, was one of the 
     mainstays of New York journalism. For more than half a 
     century--most of that time here at The Post--he brought to 
     his craft a unique perspective that made him a legend.
       Though his famously wordy style could be dizzying, Kempton 
     had a reputation as a master phrasemaker. A congressman once 
     said that ``Sometimes I can't understand what he's saying, 
     but the end effect is enormous.''
       Kemption never thought of himself as an oracle, but rather 
     as an observer. He was attracted to society's rogues and 
     underdogs and made an art form out of covering criminal 
     trials.
       He described himself as a Normal Thomas Socialist--but he 
     avoided political orthodoxies of any stripe and believed 
     journalists should not wear labels.
       ``The trouble with thinking of yourself as a liberal or a 
     conservative,'' Kempton once wrote, ``is the danger that you 
     might unwittingly die to preserve an unconscious image. It's 
     not the reporter's responsibility to lie for a political 
     party, no matter what it is.''
       Such attitudes might explain the esteem in which Kempton 
     was held by ideological friends and foes alike. When Kempton 
     won a Pulitzer Prize in 1985, George Will proclaimed him 
     ``the class of our class.'' William F. Buckley, Jr., even 
     while chiding his good friend's political naivete added: ``As 
     a columnist, Murray Kempton is the noblest of us all.''
                                                                    ____


                   [From the Daily News, May 6, 1997]

                             One of a Kind

       The death of columnist Murray Kempton will provide over the 
     coming days an outpouring of praise and affection from the 
     journalistic community. And not a few anecdotes aiming to 
     capture Kempton's huge talent and equal heart.
       What is remarkable is that all the best eulogies will have 
     the distinct advantage of being true. Kempton was a giant, a 
     man whose contributions to his craft, his city and his 
     country were unique to his generation. To say he will be 
     missed doesn't begin to capture the void he leaves.

                          ____________________