This morning I was greeted by an email from a prominent member of the political chattering classes who had actually once been an intern for Carl Kruger:
“I just threw up in my mouth, several times, reading the NY Mag piece.”
The problems with Geoffrey Gray’s tear jerking King Carl of Canarsie begin even before the piece actually starts.
While prior to his election to the State Senate in 1994, Carl Kruger had always had a strong Canarsie connection (and really lived there at the time of his election, using a bogus Georgetown address to fake his eligibility), he's never represented even one square inch of it in the State Senate. The infamous Kruger/Turano "dream house" built by Gaspipe Casso was not in Canarsie, but across the Paedergat Basin in a very different area known as Mill Island.
There’s not been a more inaccurate title since “Krakatoa, East of Java” (check a map sometime).
Sadly, when your title gets it so wrong, it’s hard to redeem one’s self. But the title is utterly defensible, because it prepares one for the waterfall of error which follows.
Let’s start with this description of the one Democratic County Leader produced by the venerable Thomas Jefferson (TJ) Club, and his younger protégé:
"Short, stocky, never seen without a cigar or cigarette, [Meade] Esposito had a weapon in winning the wars in Brooklyn politics—a heavy, gruff, and inspiring assemblyman named Tony Genovesi."
But this is just wrong; by the time Tony G went to the Assembly, Meade, who by then spat on the ground every time Tony’s name was mentioned, was already out of power.
Tony’s real power emanated from his being Democratic District Leader at the TJ (as well as being a top staffer at the Assembly—his being elected to the body actually cut his power there).
District Leader was a crucial position in those days (and still crucial at the TJ) the existence of which Gray doesn’t even acknowledge (he refers to current Leader Frank Seddio—also a former County Surrogate—as a “former Assemblyman,”).
“Kruger wanted to get upstairs, and swiftly. When local state senator Howard Babbush was indicted for allegedly abusing taxpayer dollars, Kruger voiced an interest in running for his seat, a move that was widely perceived as overly aggressive, considering that Babbush was a beloved member of the T. Eventually Kruger backed down, but many became wary of him and wondered where such ambition came from.”
Part of Gray’s problem is the sequencing of events. The narrative makes it look like Kruger was a young upstart at the time he indicated his interest in taking indicted State Senator Howie Babbush’s place in the State Senate.
In actuality, Kruger was by then the Chair of the local Community Board (as well as its former District Manager), a former Chief of Staff to a City Councilman, and a top staffer with the State Assembly.
But the idea that the aloof, stumbling drunk Babbush, (famous for being found asleep on Albany lawns in the wee hours of the morning) whose indictment stemmed from one of several affairs with psychotic women he put on his payroll, was “beloved” is laugh out loud hilarious. In fact, Babbush’s defeat finally came when the TJ Club pulled the plug on him because he was detracting effort from trying to beat Clarence Norman’s candidate in a race for Kings County Surrogate.
And there’s more:
“Less than a month after Kruger took office, a major issue for Genovesi was coming up for a vote. Genovesi had been such a staunch opponent of the death penalty that his office was once picketed. In Albany, Genovesi expected that Kruger would vote with him. After all, Genovesi had been instrumental in Kruger’s career, and Kruger’s vote was crucial.”
It’s a great story, and largely true, but the idea that Kruger's vote on the death penalty in 1994 was "crucial" is in the realm of fiction. With or without him, it would have passed the Senate, but with or without him, it could not have gotten past a gubernatorial veto.
“As a freshmen senator, Kruger was expected to befriend other Democrats. Instead, he kept to himself. “Socially, he’s a very strange cat,” said Marty Connor, who ran the Democratic conference during Kruger’s early years in the Senate. I’ve known Carl for over 30 years and never had lunch or dinner with him.”
Actually, when Kruger was a freshman Senator, the Democratic Conference was run by Manfred Ohrenstein.
The biggest problem with so many errors is that one doesn’t know what to believe, which is a shame, when so much seems so credible.
Here, for instance, the author gets the TJ Club’s attitude towards Kruger pretty much right:
"Back at the T in Canarsie, members loathed Kruger for his lack of party loyalty yet admired his cunning. “To watch Carl maneuver in politics is like stepping into Picasso’s studio and watching him paint,” one member said. “He puts himself in a position to put himself in position.”
As I’ve noted more than once:
“As To TJ, talk is, in the immortal words of Woody Allen, they love Carl like a brother: David Greenglass.
If and when the Commission ever give sanction to a hit upon Mr. Kruger, one can rest assured that, Tony Blundetto style, the Jefferson Club will insist, as an act of mercy, upon carrying out the execution itself.
One can also rest assured that when the word goes out that they are looking for a volunteer to carry out the distasteful task, the line in front of the club will run three thick around the block and down to Flatlands Avenue.”
We also learn how Frank Seddio really feels about the man he defended in public
Asked about Kruger right after his indictment, Seddio took the trouble of repeating what he said is Kruger’s (somewhat un-Christ-like) response, which mostly consisted of the word “Fuck,” after which Seddio offered his own opinion.
SEDDIO: "I don't know what will happen with Carl Kruger but anytime I have dealt with him he has been an honest broker…I stand on the belief that you stand by your friends. If that is something that would hurt me so be it. I am not going to shrink away from people that I have a relationship with just because some one made an allegation.”
Whatever one thinks about this, it is the sort of old-fashioned expression of loyalty rarely seen anymore. Many may not like Frank Seddio’s value system, but given the overwhelming negative press coverage of Kruger in the indictment’s wake, one had to acknowledge that Seddio had a sense of honor and a value system, and it is one which stood up in the worst of times, consequences be damned.
Surely, Kruger, a gay man who first voted against same sex marriage, would not have done the same for Seddio. For Kruger, expedience always trumped honor.
But now that it over, and Seddio is understandably feeling betrayed, while biased observers like Gary Tilzer and the fans of Kruger fellow traveler Marty Golden over at “The Jig is Up Atlas” lump him with King Carl, we hear a somewhat different tune:
“There’s some Jekyll and Hyde there,”
“Carl is a guy that doesn’t follow the flock,” said Seddio. “He does not go out for popularity. He goes out for what he thinks is right. The problem is, he’s innately nasty. He can be a great friend or a terrible enemy.”
“ In 1980, Kruger was indicted with another civic booster for allegedly extorting money from a local builder, a Holocaust survivor, and his partner. Before the trial, Kruger claimed he’d been diagnosed with cancer. Seddio remembers driving Kruger to the hospital with operatives from the Jefferson Club and waiting in the car for Kruger to come out after meeting with his doctor. At trial, the charges against Kruger were dropped, as, apparently, were Kruger’s cancer treatments.”
In other words, the author gets the lyrics wrong, but there’s much reason to believe he got much of the music right.
But, in the end that doesn’t matter. In the end, the errors don’t even matter.
What’s most wrong with this article is its pusillanimous mollycoddling excuse making for a cynical criminal little better than Gaspipe Casso, and in some ways more destructive. .
I may be naïve, but I believe most politicians went into the business, not only out of ego (certainly always a factor), but for motives good. I say this about virtually all of them, left, liberal, moderate, conservative and far right.
I even say it about those with no discernable ideology.
It certainly is the reason I went into the business (and the reason why I eventually became disillusioned with it) . In this link I discuss some of the perils of such a life. Many people who embark upon such a course lose their way, but even most of them probably believe they are in the business to do good.
I also think society often has unreal expectations. The realities of the system alone require compromises to achieve good, which many, if not most, normal human who care (itself a possible contradiction) probably find distressing.
The distorted view of the public, as refracted subsequently by the media and prosecutors, sometimes results in what some politicians claim is an effort to “criminalize politics.”
Many times this complaint is nonsense; sometimes it is justified, and perhaps most often, it is part of a fuzzy gray ambiguous haze.
But there was nothing ambiguous or fuzzy about Carl Kruger.
Kruger’s case was not about the “criminalization of politics.”
Carl Kruger politicized criminality.
Kruger justified a cynical belief that “they are all crooks.’ Such a belief, when widely held, only makes things worse.
If one believes they are all criminals, nothing shocks. If one believes they are all criminals, government can never be justified as a means for doing good.
That is Carl Kruger’s biggest crime.
And he deserves as much sympathy as Kruger extended to those wrongly convicted of murder got when Kruger betrayed Tony Genovesi.
But in Gray’s article, we learn that poor wittle Carl Kruger was a child literally put into a cardboard box and abandoned by his mother –sort of like Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot in Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns,” but played by Wally Shawn instead of Danny DeVito.
I’m truly sorry that Kruger, returned to his mom, was never allowed to eat lunch with the other boys, and therefore could never bring himself to eat lunch with Marty Connor. I’m also truly sorry he felt compelled to share with us tales of his sister’s alcoholism to get our sympathy.
Bottom line: I’m still glad that Batman won out in the end.