Danny Schechter - ColdType

PrefaCe
By Larry Beinhart
Dear Prosecutors,
Tell your secretary to hold your calls, close your office door,
and take a private moment. Lean back in your chair. Close
your eyes. Conjure up these names: Thomas Dewey, Rudolph
Giuliani, Eliot Spitzer ….
… Hold it. Clear the image of Ashley Dupre in her bikini
from the back of your eyelids … OK … now …
Meditate on the headline: Dewey Defeats Truman.
He didn’t, quite. But the crusading prosecutor had three
terms as governor of New York and came within an eyelash of
becoming president.
Rudolph Giuliani, the crusading prosecutor, went on to
serve two terms as mayor of New York, became a serious
presidential contender, and along the way became exceedingly
rich.
Eliot Spitzer went from crusading prosecutor to Attorney
General of the State of New York to governor. If he hadn’t
been “Client number 9,” a run at the presidency would have
been in his future, too.
Someday, someday, someone is going to use that base – crusading
prosecutor – to make it all the way to the White House.
It could be you.
When you think of Tom Dewey, you think “Gangbusters!”
He took on big time racketeers. Waxey Gordon, Dutch
Schultz, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter – the head of Murder Incorporated
– and Lucky Luciano, the Capo di Capo Tutti, head of
all organized crime in the United States.
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