Ed Koch has died

Did he ever come out?

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No he never came out. If I remember correctly he always remained offended by the question.

He cruised me in the men's room of the Quad Cinema once.

>sniff!<

And now he's gone....


RIP, Ed.

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there was an off broadway play once called KOCH, my dad has the playbill (the banner is blue instead of yellow) and said it was very funny

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We've lost a real "New Yorker." A most beloved man and mayor. I remember the closest I ever got to him was when he led the Gay Pride Parade for so many years. Tall guy! I'm sad this morning.

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Larry's in Litchfield, CT., having brunch.

He'll have the house-boy do it.

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He was far from a perfect mayor (is anyone?) but the few times I've encountered him he's been an incredibly warm, charismatic individual. He did a lot of good for the city and he will be sorely missed.

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The city was a mess when he took office! I was working for a city run shelter for abused children and we were going to close due to thethe sad state of the economy. Koch came in and turned it all around. Yes, he did turn a blind eye to the AIDS crisis, many high elected officials did (cough! Saint Ronny…cough!). It might very well be he didn't want to be outted. Heck what was Cuomo's slogan for a brief time when he ran against him "Vote for Cuomo, not the Homo"? I often wondered if Reagan had said anything if Koch would have followed suit. Doesn't matter, a lot people died, it is something he had to live with on his conscience.
He did however do a lot of good and was very much the mascot of New York for the entire world. Dinkins, Gulianni and Bloomberg have not embodied what the world sees New York as like Ed "How'm I doin'?" Koch.
Rest in peace.

ETA: We will never see something like this for Bloomberg!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSVKptu-8J8&feature=youtu.be

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Updated On: 2/1/13 at 05:37 PM

At the moment this thread comes just after the one that reads "I have good news and bad news".

I always loved the Village Voice line about him that I think appeared in an article called, "How'm I doin'?" I paraphrase: Long ago realizing he was unable to govern New York City, Ed Koch decided instead to entertain it.

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"I do not agree with Larry Kramer, who charges Koch with the murder of so many back then. What people died of in Koch’s New York was a viral infection. How they died and how quickly they died — those are the things he might have helped ease. And he didn’t. It is as though he couldn’t empathize with the dying or the rest of us who stood helplessly at their bedsides."

I'm so grateful for smart people like David France who wrestle with complicated issues and come to conclusions like this. I appreciate his rigorously holding the line against using illness and death as metaphor, which is exactly where Kramer drops the ball. In my perfect world, work like "How to Survive a Plague" would be widely seen and understood to be one part of that specific story, as opposed to "The Normal Heart," which is the "Zero Dark Thirty" of the era.

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And just think how much more beloved he would have been if he had done what Diane Feinstein did as mayor of San Francisco.

After the first case of AIDS was discovered in Los Angeles in 1981, Mayor Feinstein allocated $180,000 to help fund treatments for patients. By 1988, funds allocated for AIDS programs in SF had grown to over $20 million, more than the federal budget.

The people of San Francisco were as devastated by the disease as were the people of New York, but they never felt that they were abandoned by their mayor, let alone by a mayor who was a closeted gay, avoiding a leadership position merely to protect his closet.

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