The fundamental question about the Koch administration is no longer why the mayor gave power to so many crooks, but exactly what happened years ago when whistleblowers, law enforcement investiga­tors, and private citizens first tried to warn him

“Suicide, especially one as violent as Cobain's, is the loudest possible invocation of silence; it's a perfectly clear way of turning your life into a mystery.”

When King Kong and the Democrats came to New York City.

In 1976, the culture critic asked, “What is it that Americans share?”

Before Roe, terminating a pregnancy meant confronting a nightmare of quacks and butchers, knitting needles and wire coat hangers. The exceptions were people like Dr. X, “the stars of the underground abortion circuit.”

“The question is, why are all these personal treasures in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, instead of with the sun god Ra?”

“Jewish children in years to come may live much like my par­ents, with a subtle but consuming sense of dread. America could yet turn out to be not so different from the Old World my grand­parents fled.”

“There are times when the subway, like the city itself, seems so grotesque that, indeed, one wonders how this entire enterprise can continue to call itself human. Much less continue.”

Almost three decades before his “A Christmas Story” became a TV staple, the radio maestro took a look at Christmas Yet to Come in the pages of the Voice.

“The nation’s only openly gay city official had been shot dead, allegedly by the city’s most anti-gay official.”