18
Friday, April 26, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Zion-isms
A selection of Sidney
Zion's opinions, culled
from our interview:
On writing for deadline: "I need dead-
lines to work, because I'd rather do almost
anything else. When I was writing a regu-
lar column I used to give myself four
hours, but I needed more pressure so I cut
it down to two-and-a-half.
"Writing is the opposite of sex: it's on-
ly good when it's over."
On 'labeling' columnists: "People like to
categorize who they read right away. Oh,
he's a conservative or he's a liberal. But
they can't peg me. All I really go by is the
Bill of Rights."
On meeting Ben Hecht: "I only met him
once, a couple of months before he died. It
It also got Zion fired from New York
magazine. They said he violated his ex-
clusive contract, even though he'd gotten
his editor's permission. Zion's parting shot
to his editor: "Don't worry, they'll get rid
of you, too. People that fire me get fired
sooner or later."
That's what happened, and Zion is still
going strong.
t present, Zion is working
on a book about Jewish
gangsters, for whom he has
always shown a strong
fascination and begrudging
admiration. Never one to
hide the truth, Zion feels
the era of Jewish criminals is a curious one
that deserves attention. "I don't know if
Jews feel -a need to read about that stuff,
but they like it," he says. "At least some
of them do."
In one of the funniest pieces in his col-
lection, Read All About It!, Zion describes
how he and a rabbi shared the pulpit at the
1970 funeral of Izzy Schwarzberg, a Jew-
- ish gangster Zion had known well. After
the rabbi offered a few platitudes about
the deceased, Zion, at Izzy's request,
delivered the eulogy to the overflow crowd.
"I told the congregants that Izzy had
made certain requests for the occasion,"
he writes. "He wanted an Alden Whitman
obit in the Times, he wanted the obit in-
dexed, and he wanted me to give his
eulogy. He did not expect to die, or any-
was the day of Lyndon Johnson's Inaugur-
ation, January 1964. Everyone loved LBJ
then, and Hecht asked me what I thought
of his speech. I told him I thought it was
great. And he said, 'I think he's an evil
man.' Ben said, 'I watched him as if I was
watching a potato bug and when I saw his
eyes tear over at the playing of the Na-
tional Anthem, I knew we were all in trou-
ble."
On aliyah and Zionist organizations:
"Let's face it, American Jews aren't going
to go live in Israel, so why waste all that
money. And anyway, it's better if all the
Jews aren't living at the same address.
There are as many Zionist organizations
now as there were before 1948, and that's
crazy. I mean, there is a state."
On the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith: "Peter Bergson used to say to me,
'how would you like it if there was a league
against the defamation of Sidney Zion?'
We just don't need all that stuff."
On anti-Semitism: "We're always trying
to figure out why the goyim don't like us:
But that's their problem. We should ignore
it. Let them worry about it."
When Zion named
Daniel Ellsberg as
the source of the
famous Pentagon
Papers leak, the
story made front
pages across the
country but Zion was
branded as "the
most despised man
in the American
press:'
thing like that, but sometimes it happens,
you can't be sure.
"As you all know," I said, "the first
couple of items have been performed per
his request. We got the Alden Whitman
notice in the Times. we got it indexed and
we got the lead piece to boot. Plus, I can
now announce that The Miami Herald ran
the Whitman obit on page one."
The crowd cheered.
Izzy wanted me to do the eulogy, I said,
because he didn't trust any rabbi to "tell
the truth" about his life. "They'll make me
On Ariel Sharon: "He's a friend of mine
and I think he'd make a helluva prime min-
ister. People say all kinds of terrible things
about him, that he'd be a dictator. But as
politicians go, he's honest. The Arabs re-
spect him. And he's more concerned about
civil liberties than anyone who has ever
headed the Israeli government. The thing
about Arik is, he doesn't take any crap
from anyone, especially American cabinet
secretaries and presidents."
On how to improve Israel's public rela-
tions image: "First of all, it's horrible now,
and they don't seem to realize just how im-
portant it is. If I was in charge I'd fight
for people's minds and I'd make that fight
just as vital as the military battles. I'd set
up a war college of the best minds and
fight to win people back. They're losing
that war something terrible."
On Jews vs. Jews: "That's the most
serious battle Israel faces, not the Arabs
but the Jews. We haven't been out of the
dungeons of the Diaspora long enough to
respect our fellow Jews. In Israel, people
say, 'why should I do that for him? He's
just another Jew.' It's very sad and very
scary."
look like some kind of schmuck who went
to work every morning. No good, I don't
want that. I want everything said. I want
all the crimes told, no cleaning up after
me."
The rabbi, who was standing next to me,
began to move away.
"The only stuff I want you to leave out,"
Izzy said, "are those things on which the
statute of limitations never runs." Of
course, the only crime with no end, with
no statute of limitations, is murder. But
I didn't spell this out for the audience. All
I said was that I asked Izzy why he would
care about the statute at his funeral.
"Very good!" Izzy said. But minutes
later he told me to leave it out anyway. I
asked why. He said, "Suppose they don't
accept me there, suppose they send me
back? Do I need to walk into the hands of
Frank Hogan with a confession on my
back? All my life I took the Fifth, what am
I gonna get stupid now that I'm dead?
Forget about it!"
The joint cracked up. The rabbi was now
close to the wall. By the time I finished
laying out the no-longer indictable high-
lights of my friend's colorful life, the
rabbi was looking for secret exits. But no
good! He had to get back and say the final
prayer for the deceased.
"Be of good faith," he said, his fifty-G
voice now down to a sawbuck. "If he isn't
bound up with the Eternal, he'll be safe
elsewhere."
The rabbi had consigned Izzy to limbo,